Comprehension

[HarlotOTara]

This may well have been covered previously so there might be some irony regarding me saying this (only did a brief check). However, I am really concerned about the comprehension, and reading skills, of the many posters on this site. I have been here for many years and believe understanding of messages has got worse over time. This frustrates the hell out of me and would love to see if other people have the same view. Is comprehension not been taught in schools for many years?

To me, it doesn't seem that comprehension skills are a significant factor in people's apparent misunderstanding of messages. I think the problem is attitudinal. People don't really read with the goal of understanding. They read with the eager hope of spotting error, bigotry, stupidity, wrongthink, etc., in posters' words. Even as they are reading, their brains are skipping ahead to the fantasy of destroying those words with their own witty and/or righteous riposte.

It's an unconscious or habitual choice to misrepresent what they have read, rather than a simple lack of comprehension skills.

If it were to be challenged in schools, it wouldn't be via literacy lessons. What's needed are thinking skills, social or citizenship skills, and skills of self-monitoring.

Perfectly put, @MyThreeWords. Nailed it.
But yes, comprehension is most certainly taught in schools. Children have undergone national testing in it at year 2 and 6 for many years and it features heavily in the secondary English curriculum.

There is certainly a focus on comprehension and inference skills in schools. This will be noted and raised when pupils can read well but understanding lags behind.
I know there are those who may be quick to react or make a witty or caustic comment but others are probably just reading quickly during a work break or rare moment of peace.
Often people will edit a reply or apologise as they hadn’t noticed a detail or misunderstood.
Obviously some posts can lack key details or context but there may be good reasons for this.

People skim read and misunderstand. I think that's in the nature of fora. People read two lines, get it into their head that they know what the poster is saying and reply accordingly, even when they've got the wrong end of the stick.

It's annoying because you can't do a 'sorry, Sandra, I think you misheard, Sally's daughter is only three.' (although some posters do, but it's usually too late by then). But it's the nature of the beast when you've got lots of people all eager to chime in with their experiences.

Unless I've misunderstood your question, of course...

Is comprehension not been taught in schools for many years?
Ahem! This is Pedants' corner.

@HarlotOTara , People skim read and miss parts of the OP.
There are different types of people on here, and some might be distracted, half-asleep etc.

I just read a thread in which the OP says "I have contacted the police and am meeting with them later today", while the very first comment says "You need to contact the police."

I once started a thread asking for lunch ideas which didn’t involve bread as I felt I was eating too much of it. First suggestion was ‘beans on toast.’

Yes and oddly it’s often the very first post too. I saw the Police comment and thought wtf 😳. It’s like they’re so desperate to be the first that they just don’t bother reading properly and it’s really ramped up recently.

@PuppyMonkey That might be because they skimmed it and registered 'lunch'+'bread'.

The best example I read was something like 'Since my divorce, I've been single but I had an ONS...'. First poster: 'Where was your husband...'

Oh goodness! I hang my head in shame for my very bad grammar.

No shame - that looked like an editing error to me, where you start writing one thing, amend it and forget to change a word that no longer fits. On the other hand, I'm inwardly screaming at the number of 'should of's I've seen on Mumsnet tonight. It's everywhere. Even from people who use 'would have', for example, correctly in the same sentence!

I think too, that people pick up on one aspect of a post, one phrase or sentence perhaps and run with it, ignoring the rest of the post, which probably makes the whole thing make sense.

I posted something on a thread last night and I got one response.
The post was something like 'Jane says Mary and Maryam aren't from the same name but they are'.
The response was something like "I don't know why you are saying they're not from the same name. Jane is the one who's right."