this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Collapse
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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.
Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.
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Anxiety is a good explanation for what's happening here, yeah. There a social pressure of what is essentially an oral exam, and even if it's basically an open book test there's a test taker right there judging them.
That still implies something kind of bad? Not that they are illiterate, but they are so socially dysfunctional that it makes them illiterate.
Relatable.
I think it's fair to say that them handing this poorly isn't a good sign when it comes to their ability to handle stress (and their social acumen?), but I do think that begs the question: how correlated is their inability to handle a high stress situation here with typical tasks you'd use English proficiency for, or things we'd normally associate with English proficiency?
"In real time, verbally translate an archaic 19th century novel you haven't previous read while under high stress" isn't a situation I think a lot of English majors or scholars find themselves in very often — the closest analogues I can think of would be other specific tests or maybe something like a student asking them a question in a literature course where they're the professor. The vast majority of the time, even on most tests, people can take their time reading, write down notes or make annotations, and re-read the passage as necessary, without needing to verbally dictate their logic.
I really can't understand this sentiment. That is modern English
First off, the linked article uses the term "archaic" first to describe the text, which is where I'm taking it from. Regardless, I don't think "archaic" is an unfitting term here — Bleak House was written 171 years ago, with a setting even further back than that. It has a particular written style that is distinctly different from typical, modern English, and it uses now uncommon terms that most modern English speakers (outside of maybe those from the UK?) won't recognize. Mind you, I'm not saying it violates grammatical rules or uses something like Middle English, but at least some of what makes it a challenging read is how old it is.
For example, did you understand what "Michaelmas Term" was without looking it up or having it defined in the article?
I'm sorry, my tone was off somewhere. I was not criticizing you at all, but rather the source material. It just surprised me that they characterized it that way.
I do apologize for the confusion.
No worries, I feel like it's hard to convey tone on the internet. I often personally find it challenging not to come off as confrontational, no matter what my actual intent is.
Reflecting on it a little further, I also think my inconsistent use of "modern" in the prior posts as sometimes a shorthand for both "contemporary" and also "plainly understood" wasn't doing me any favors in conveying my argument.
Right, understood. I'm saying that's it's Modern English as opposed to, say, Middle English. I can (mostly) read Chaucer, for example, but I still have to look stuff up. To me, that's archaic. I cannot read Old English at all. And difficult, to me, would be, say, James Joyce (over my head, honestly), or Thomas Pynchon (readable, but requires a lot of thought), or say Foucault's Pendulum (Eco is so much more erudite than I am).
Edit: punctuation, ironically