#readingcomprehension — Public Fediverse posts

“Spring Rain” by Sara Teasdale

Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) was an American poet, celebrated for her works that explored themes such as love, beauty, nature, and mortality. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she published her first collection of poems in 1907 as a member of “The Potters”—a group of young women authors. She quickly gained recognition for the clarity and simplicity of her writing. Notably, she won a Pullitzer prize in 1918 for the collection Love Songs. Sadly, her life was marked by severe personal struggles, including a lonely marriage, divorce, and declining health, ultimately leading to her tragic death by suicide. She is still remembered as an important voice of the early 20th-century American literature.

In this post we’ll get acquainted with her poem “Spring Rain”, first published in 1917. In many ways typical of her style of writing, the poem is simple yet deep, using imagery from the natural world to reflect on the poet’s emotions and memories. In the first stanza, the sounds of rain and thunder trigger a recollection of a past love; the rest of the poem takes us down the memory lane. You’ll notice that the poem itself is brief, just like a typical spring rain; and the weather described is stormy and intense—just like passionate young love.

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say...

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Love Songs by Sara Teasdale – free ebook, downloadable in various formats

Sara Teasdale’s biography – a Poetry Foundation page

COVER PHOTO CREDIT

Image by Levi Guzman via Unsplash

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

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To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

Free ebook: “Departure” by Sherwood Anderson

Dear all,

It’s the spring equinox and the time for another quarterly ebook. This time it’s a short story by Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), American novelist and short story writer best known for his book ” Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life.”

Departure comes from that same collection of stories. It’s about a young man leaving his small hometown to begin a new life in a big city. As he’s leaving, thoughts about the familiar people and places fill him with melancholy. It’s a bittersweet story that I hope you will enjoy!

To get your PDF copy with vocabulary notes, please click on the link below:

CLICK HERE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD

If you’d like to access more ebooks, visit the English Library section of this website.

NOTES

I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.  

If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the box below. You can also subscribe to my free monthly Newsletter and get a regular recap with additional content.

To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!

COVER PHOTO CREDIT

Jake Sheppard via Unsplash

Reading’s Thin Line Between Difficult and Boring

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.educationnext.org/readings-thin-line-between-difficult-and-boring/

Calling all #readers and #writers! Are your skills up to the challenge?

Suneung: #SouthKorea exam chief quits over 'insane' #English test https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w792x0ggyo

#education #standardizedtesting #readingcomprehension #college

If we don't want to say and do horrible things accidentally, reading comprehension is very important.

Especially on the Internet, where we could have nuance...

...if we ever chose to make any space whatsoever for it.

#AntiRacism #Racism #SocialJustice #ReadingComprehension #Nuance #OnlineDiscourse #Discourse

🤔 Oh, Chester Lam! 🎉 Thank you for enlightening us on the groundbreaking revelation that Intel’s Arc #B580 does, in fact, not defy basic geometry. A stunning exposé on how reading comprehension is still a crucial skill for tech journalists! 📚🤦‍♂️
https://chipsandcheese.com/p/raytracing-on-intels-arc-b580 #IntelArc #readingcomprehension #techjournalism #geometrictruths #ChesterLam #HackerNews #ngated

“Beautiful Snow” by John Whittaker Watson

John Whittaker Watson was a 19th century poet and journalist from New York. The author of many serials, poems and short stories published in various magazines, today he is probably best known for his poem “Beautiful Snow.” It is found in the collection of poems by the same title, published in Philadelphia in 1871.

I first heard of this poem in an episode of my all-time favourite TV shows from the 1990s, Northern Exposure. I’m sure fellow fans will immediately recognise it as the poem featured in the “First Snow” episode (season 5, episode 10), read out by Chris Stevens on his radio show. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about here, please check out the links below the poem. And go watch some Northern Exposure!

O THE SNOW, the beautiful snow,
Filling the sky and the earth below!
Over the house-tops, over the street,
Over the heads of the people you meet,
          Dancing,        
            Flirting,
              Skimming along.
Beautiful snow! it can do nothing wrong.
Flying to kiss a fair lady’s cheek;
Clinging to lips in a frolicsome freak;        
Beautiful snow, from the heavens above,
Pure as an angel and fickle as love!

O the snow, the beautiful snow!
How the flakes gather and laugh as they go!
Whirling about in its maddening fun,        
It plays in its glee with every one.
          Chasing,
            Laughing,
              Hurrying by,
It lights up the face and it sparkles the eye;        
And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound,
Snap at the crystals that eddy around.
The town is alive, and its heart in a glow,
To welcome the coming of beautiful snow.

How the wild crowd go swaying along,        
Hailing each other with humor and song!
How the gay sledges like meteors flash by,—
Bright for the moment, then lost to the eye!
          Ringing,
            Swinging,        
              Dashing they go
Over the crest of the beautiful snow:
Snow so pure when it falls from the sky,
To be trampled in mud by the crowd rushing by;
To be trampled and tracked by the thousands of feet        
Till it blends with the horrible filth in the street.

Once I was pure as the snows,—but I fell:
Fell, like the snow-flakes, from heaven—to hell:
Fell, to be tramped as the filth of the street:
Fell, to be scoffed, to be spit on, and beat.        
          Pleading,
            Cursing,
              Dreading to die,
Selling my soul to whoever would buy,
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,        
Hating the living and fearing the dead.
Merciful God! have I fallen so low?
And yet I was once like this beautiful snow!

Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like its crystals, a heart like its glow;        
Once I was loved for my innocent grace,—
Flattered and sought for the charm of my face.
          Father,
            Mother,
              Sisters all,        
God, and myself, I have lost by my fall.
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by
Will take a wide sweep, lest I wander too nigh;
For all that is on or about me, I know
There is nothing that ’s pure but the beautiful snow.        

How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it would be, when the night comes again,
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
          Fainting,        
            Freezing,
              Dying alone,
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for my moan
To be heard in the crash of the crazy town,
Gone mad in its joy at the snow’s coming down;        
To lie and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow!

LINKS

“Beautiful Snow, and Other Poems”: full e-version of the collection

Northern Exposure Wiki: the “First Snow” entry

Oh, the Snow – insert from the “First Snow” episode of Northern Exposure

COVER IMAGE CREDIT

Simon Berger via Unsplash

I had so much trouble parsing this subject line.

Like, why is the ABC sending me emails about a person whose username is Jerky Sales expressing their approval of a social media item entitled ‘flowers for men’

#ReadingComprehension #TooEarly

“If Sasha needs 10 minutes to saw through a wooden plank twice, how long does it take Sasha to saw the plank into 3 pieces (assume everything else stays the same)?”
#learnmath #mathskills

The purpose of a question like that is not to test your skill at calculating. Instead, it tests your reading abilities:
- can you grasp the language?
- did you fall for the trick question?
- do you understand how the trick works, so you can avoid falling for it next time?

#readingcomprehension matters.

Long shot here. Could anyone point me to research showing that we *believe* we read better than we actually do?

(IE thinking that we are grasping the full meaning or context we aren't, perhaps between we read faster on screens and skim more.)

I’m sure I’ve read about this, but now I need a reference, it escapes me.

I don’t think Maryanne Wolf mentioned this specifically in “Reader, Come Home”.

Patricia Alexander found that students incorrectly judged their comprehension as better online than in print. But that’s not quite the same as thinking their overall reading comprehension is better than it is.

Any leads would be great, or if you feel like giving this a boost to help spread the net, I’d appreciate it.

#ReadingSkills #ReadingComprehension #OnlineReading #OnscreenReading

Long shot here. Could anyone point me to research showing that we *believe* we read better than we actually do?

(IE thinking that we are grasping the full meaning or context we aren't, perhaps between we read faster on screens and skim more.)

I’m sure I’ve read about this, but now I need a reference, it escapes me.

I don’t think Maryanne Wolf mentioned this specifically in “Reader, Come Home”.

Patricia Alexander found that students incorrectly judged their comprehension as better online than in print. But that’s not quite the same as thinking their overall reading comprehension is better than it is.

Any leads would be great, or if you feel like giving this a boost to help spread the net, I’d appreciate it.

#ReadingSkills #ReadingComprehension #OnlineReading #OnscreenReading

Long shot here. Could anyone point me to research showing that we *believe* we read better than we actually do?

(IE thinking that we are grasping the full meaning or context we aren't, perhaps between we read faster on screens and skim more.)

I’m sure I’ve read about this, but now I need a reference, it escapes me.

I don’t think Maryanne Wolf mentioned this specifically in “Reader, Come Home”.

Patricia Alexander found that students incorrectly judged their comprehension as better online than in print. But that’s not quite the same as thinking their overall reading comprehension is better than it is.

Any leads would be great, or if you feel like giving this a boost to help spread the net, I’d appreciate it.

#ReadingSkills #ReadingComprehension #OnlineReading #OnscreenReading

Long shot here. Could anyone point me to research showing that we *believe* we read better than we actually do?

(IE thinking that we are grasping the full meaning or context we aren't, perhaps between we read faster on screens and skim more.)

I’m sure I’ve read about this, but now I need a reference, it escapes me.

I don’t think Maryanne Wolf mentioned this specifically in “Reader, Come Home”.

Patricia Alexander found that students incorrectly judged their comprehension as better online than in print. But that’s not quite the same as thinking their overall reading comprehension is better than it is.

Any leads would be great, or if you feel like giving this a boost to help spread the net, I’d appreciate it.

#ReadingSkills #ReadingComprehension #OnlineReading #OnscreenReading

Long shot here. Could anyone point me to research showing that we *believe* we read better than we actually do?

(IE thinking that we are grasping the full meaning or context we aren't, perhaps between we read faster on screens and skim more.)

I’m sure I’ve read about this, but now I need a reference, it escapes me.

I don’t think Maryanne Wolf mentioned this specifically in “Reader, Come Home”.

Patricia Alexander found that students incorrectly judged their comprehension as better online than in print. But that’s not quite the same as thinking their overall reading comprehension is better than it is.

Any leads would be great, or if you feel like giving this a boost to help spread the net, I’d appreciate it.

#ReadingSkills #ReadingComprehension #OnlineReading #OnscreenReading