3 ms·

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that th

by jraph 1y ago

> walk into any average grocery store and hand someone a page out of a book and ask them to read it out loud to you. Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words Of course. I would likely find this situation very unsettling, if not stressful. I would probably be caught off guard. I would probably perform badly if I accept at all for all sorts of reasons unrelated to my ability to read smoothly. Unless I'm feeling particularly positive and gather the energy to pace my mind, apply myself, enter a character like I'm having a role in a play, and remember to be slow, and to forget about the content. Reading out loud is more complicated than simply reading for yourself: you are, at the same time, both reading and articulating speech. What's more, when you speak, you are using your own words, your own (oral) phrasing, and you know where you are going, or at least enough to have a decent prosody. When you read out loud, you are reading phrasing from someone else, which may make the prosody less smooth. And if you haven't read the whole sentence in advance, or at least ahead enough, you may struggle. Independently of knowing how to read (fast), reading out loud probably takes practice to be smooth. With your experiment, you are testing all sort of things unrelated to knowing how to read, to the point that you can't draw any conclusion on the ability of people to read. Parsing a text also depends on the writer's ability to write well. If the text is boring or its phrasing is overly complicated, yeah, it will be difficult to read. We also live in a world plagued by focus disruptions. You are not only dealing with people's ability to read, but also their ability to remain focused… in a setting where they possibly get interrupted very frequently. For all sorts of reasons, reading a wall of text is indeed hard. This includes the reader's environment, the presence of their smartphone next to them, how tired they are, whether they are concerned by something else, whether the text is actually interesting to them, and how well the author of the text writes.

kixiQu 1y ago
> With your experiment, you are testing all sort of things unrelated to knowing how to read, to the point that you can't draw any conclusion on the ability of people to read. Even "caught off guard", not "feeling particularly positive", and "reading phrasing from someone else", some people have so fundamentally mastered reading as a skill that this wouldn't be difficult for them even if the challenge were attempted drunk. The point of the parent comment was, I believe, that for such people it may be hard to imagine that others would believe "reading a wall of text is indeed hard" because it isn't for them.
sneak 1y ago
You have spent a lot of time and effort to explain precisely how and why you failed to get GP’s point, which is completely true and valid despite whatever unintentional misdirection you have posted in response.
- jraph 1y ago
  Enlighten me. To me, GP's point is that people aren't capable of reading. They illustrate this point with an experiment. I'm convinced the experiment doesn't prove their point and that's what I have spent time on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549089#44586441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549089#44586441 makes a good point, although I'm not convinced that was the intent of GP.
DrammBA 1y ago
Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? Any one of my classmates could read a page out loud fluently even if you stopped them randomly at the grocery store, and most of us are not even 30 yet.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  For whatever reason I could never do that. We did it in school and something about the pressure made it impossible for me to read things smoothly even though, reading in my mind to myself things felt smooth. It's the same with typing. I suddenly can't type if someone standing over my shoulder watching me. It makes no sense. It could be my best friend but it doesn't matter. Suddently I can't type well.
- jraph 1y ago
  > Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? They did when I was at school. But it was not so often, not often enough to get good at it if you weren't already. And I don't think I'm good at it. Every so often, I find myself reading Wikipedia excerpts out loud for people around when some question comes up and we want an answer. When I do this, suddenly it feels like time slows down, I feel like I sound dull, and everything. I guess I could improve if I were to do it more frequently. I think I do read relatively slowly, but doing it out loud doesn't help, and that also doesn't prevent me from reading a page of text for myself if it's worth it. I would not engage in unbounded out loud reading.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  I could write cursive when I was in school - my handwriting is shit because I write maybe 2-3 times a year since school - so 15 years now ? I went to recitation competitions (not sure what the exact English translation is) when I was in elementary school. I struggled reading children's books for my kids because I almost never read out loud anymore. Then I stopped struggling after I was doing it for a while. So reading out loud is just a bad test of reading ability.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
smeej 1y ago
I think you're missing the point that most of the things that make this hard for people are also what makes it hard enough for them to read that they won't do it well, even for things like emails. Reading is a skill, and it's not the same as being (technically) literate. For someone who's a competent reader, there's nothing at all more intimidating about being asked to read a page from a book (you can choose the book, but a page from a book is not a "wall of text," and the book's publication also implies at least some pre-screening for accessibility) than being asked to have an impromptu conversation about where to find the potatoes, and whether you know any tasty recipes for them. Most people don't read well. They read well enough to understand street signs before they pass them, or to get through an article intentionally written to a 6th grade level. But anything where the details are important? Or that requires explanation? They either cannot do it, or find it so difficult that they won't.
- jraph 1y ago
  Not convinced. You'll have to prove that this impromptu reading out loud experiment indeed tests the agility to parse a text. I believe you won't succeed because I think it's wrong. I also believe this potato and recipe conversation in a supermarket won't unsettle many people, including people who can't cook.
_dain_ 1y ago
It's actually not that hard to speak text fluently. You need to practice, but only a little. The trick is to speak a little slower than you read, and pre-emptively flick your eyes to the right, skimming the oncoming text, so you have a buffer of context in your mind. Pause a little more at sentence boundaries; this gives you more headroom and makes you sound more refined. The idea isn't to fully process the future text, but to get a rough sense of where it's going -- a question, a subordinate clause, a list, etc -- so you can adjust your intonation in advance. As an experiment I spoke your comment aloud as I read it. It sounded natural and I made no mistakes at all.
- jraph 1y ago
  Fully agree.

by jraph 1y ago

kixiQu 1y ago

> With your experiment, you are testing all sort of things unrelated to knowing how to read, to the point that you can't draw any conclusion on the ability of people to read. Even "caught off guard", not "feeling particularly positive", and "reading phrasing from someone else", some people have so fundamentally mastered reading as a skill that this wouldn't be difficult for them even if the challenge were attempted drunk. The point of the parent comment was, I believe, that for such people it may be hard to imagine that others would believe "reading a wall of text is indeed hard" because it isn't for them.

sneak 1y ago

You have spent a lot of time and effort to explain precisely how and why you failed to get GP’s point, which is completely true and valid despite whatever unintentional misdirection you have posted in response.

jraph 1y ago
Enlighten me. To me, GP's point is that people aren't capable of reading. They illustrate this point with an experiment. I'm convinced the experiment doesn't prove their point and that's what I have spent time on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549089#44586441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44549089#44586441 makes a good point, although I'm not convinced that was the intent of GP.

DrammBA 1y ago

Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? Any one of my classmates could read a page out loud fluently even if you stopped them randomly at the grocery store, and most of us are not even 30 yet.

socalgal2 1y ago
For whatever reason I could never do that. We did it in school and something about the pressure made it impossible for me to read things smoothly even though, reading in my mind to myself things felt smooth. It's the same with typing. I suddenly can't type if someone standing over my shoulder watching me. It makes no sense. It could be my best friend but it doesn't matter. Suddently I can't type well.
jraph 1y ago
> Do schools not ask kids to read out loud in class anymore? They did when I was at school. But it was not so often, not often enough to get good at it if you weren't already. And I don't think I'm good at it. Every so often, I find myself reading Wikipedia excerpts out loud for people around when some question comes up and we want an answer. When I do this, suddenly it feels like time slows down, I feel like I sound dull, and everything. I guess I could improve if I were to do it more frequently. I think I do read relatively slowly, but doing it out loud doesn't help, and that also doesn't prevent me from reading a page of text for myself if it's worth it. I would not engage in unbounded out loud reading.
rafaelmn 1y ago
I could write cursive when I was in school - my handwriting is shit because I write maybe 2-3 times a year since school - so 15 years now ? I went to recitation competitions (not sure what the exact English translation is) when I was in elementary school. I struggled reading children's books for my kids because I almost never read out loud anymore. Then I stopped struggling after I was doing it for a while. So reading out loud is just a bad test of reading ability.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

smeej 1y ago

I think you're missing the point that most of the things that make this hard for people are also what makes it hard enough for them to read that they won't do it well, even for things like emails. Reading is a skill, and it's not the same as being (technically) literate. For someone who's a competent reader, there's nothing at all more intimidating about being asked to read a page from a book (you can choose the book, but a page from a book is not a "wall of text," and the book's publication also implies at least some pre-screening for accessibility) than being asked to have an impromptu conversation about where to find the potatoes, and whether you know any tasty recipes for them. Most people don't read well. They read well enough to understand street signs before they pass them, or to get through an article intentionally written to a 6th grade level. But anything where the details are important? Or that requires explanation? They either cannot do it, or find it so difficult that they won't.

jraph 1y ago
Not convinced. You'll have to prove that this impromptu reading out loud experiment indeed tests the agility to parse a text. I believe you won't succeed because I think it's wrong. I also believe this potato and recipe conversation in a supermarket won't unsettle many people, including people who can't cook.

_dain_ 1y ago

It's actually not that hard to speak text fluently. You need to practice, but only a little. The trick is to speak a little slower than you read, and pre-emptively flick your eyes to the right, skimming the oncoming text, so you have a buffer of context in your mind. Pause a little more at sentence boundaries; this gives you more headroom and makes you sound more refined. The idea isn't to fully process the future text, but to get a rough sense of where it's going -- a question, a subordinate clause, a list, etc -- so you can adjust your intonation in advance. As an experiment I spoke your comment aloud as I read it. It sounded natural and I made no mistakes at all.

jraph 1y ago
Fully agree.