#if you have a dyslexia/ another processing issue or speak english as a second language you’re immediately forgiven for all of them though.

[five-crows-in-a-trenchcoat]

Guys I’ve got a question for you

[vergess]

About the 3 letter word reading problem- I hope reading disability is being considered, too. The teacher has a selection of children who are behind and struggling, the chance of undiagnosed reading disabilities is high. Dyslexia, for example. It's important teachers recognize when a child is struggling for so long a disability could be involved - help for such things is often more available to children than adults in the US, & the poor are least able to access help, especially as adults.

Yes, these types of disability are being considered. However, many of these disabilities require testing for the extremely basic skills that are no longer being taught in schools.

For example, testing for both visual disabilities and dyslexia involves identifying if the child is able to visually process the shapes and arrangements of letters.

So! What happens if children are not being taught what those letters are in the first place? Children whose primary difficulty in reading is a lack of learned skill will also fail those tests! But treatment for the dyslexia or visual disability, even where it does exist, will only partially resolve the actual problem.

The gap in basic skill is still there.

In fact, many English speaking Americans will only begin learning to read when they begin learning another language, because only then are they taught to relate letters to sounds.

Except, very few will learn another language in school.

And many at home learning apps assume you have certain basic literacy skills already.

So that isn't exactly a real solution.

Worse: this creates confounding difficulties for English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. Many of them, both children and adults, are very literate in other languages. But, not English. The knowledge of "how" to read in another language can help or hinder their reading skill in English. This is especially impacted by their spoken fluency in English outside the classroom.

These are just a few of the factors that make English literacy difficult to test with multilingual children. And, by adulthood, literacy rates tend to change very little. In many cases, this is because people age out of the school system and lose most opportunity to develop reading or research skills. Those who already learned these skills have them forever. Those who didn't learn them easily could, but the chances to be taught in a supportive way are gone.

Anyway! Back to disability.

Because people are being, often correctly, diagnosed with disabilities but previously completely effective treatments are no longer fully solving their literacy issues, we even create a false impression that disabilities are being "over diagnosed."

After all, if specialized glasses solve dyslexia's visual difficulties, but the kid still can't read then the glasses weren't the real issue. The child may very well be dyslexic, and the disability aid very necessary. But they still aren't being taught to read.

Worse still, we're actually under diagnosing. In spite of the illusion to the contrary!

These disabilities are often missed in people who perform specific testing tasks well.

For example: my own dyscalculia, which was undiagnosed in spite of my college level statistics training. It was easy to miss. I tested well. Spreadsheet formulas made more sense to me than basic arithmetic. So I got really good at them. I can operate graphing calculators like a freak.

I can't count past 13.

But I can count 12 zeroes. I know that if I'm multiplying absolutes, there will be the same total number of digits as there are both the numbers being multiplied. So I count them, not knowing what any of the digits are.

125x348 and ###x### look exactly the same to me. They're both going to make an answer that looks like ###,### or ##,###. If I focus, I can tell that these are smaller ones, so probably ##,###.

On a test, I can look for the multiple choice answer that has 5 digits. It will be the right one.

And I will have no idea what any of those numbers were. I had to tediously count ##,### to make sure it was 5 long, because I want to call it 2,3 and I can't remember that 2+3=5 because the numbers are already too fucking hard to look at.

But on anything more specific than a multiple choice, I need a calculator. In this case, the calculator says 43500. And that's 5 digits. Close enough to pass a test.

If anything we're still under diagnosing disabilities. However, we're also under treating them. Or, more correctly, we are not treating a confounding factor.

We have to teach kids to read to be able to treat reading disabilities.

And again, this is not a condemnation of teachers. Teachers often try to teach these skills, but are themselves prevented. Lawmakers and especially funding administration are to blame. No child should have a pass/fail test before age 10, only placement exams to determine their skill level for each subject they are being taught. If we want all children to have certain basic skills, then all of those skills need to be taught to the children based on their own demonstrated ability.

Not based on some arbitrary testing schedule that says kids by age 7 should be able to pass a test, or else their school is punished and the child forced into an even worse environment.

Mandatory testing is bad enough. Testing that adjusts funding based on a pass/fail rate is unspeakable. It's immoral. It actively punishes any school with a disabled student.

[adventuresoftheordinarysort]

To add on to the points you already articulated so well, fic writers do seek out advice and crit. That’s what a beta reader is for! That’s why @anarchycox and I will text each other with plot conundrums! We talk to people who understand what we’re trying to go for, and want to help achieve our vision as best we can. A rando coming into the comments to say “do it this way” does not have the background with the writer to know what the intent was.

And most of unsolicited crit is a matter of personal opinion. For example: what set this whole discourse train in motion was that anarchy was defending me from a crit gremlin that informed me a flashback chapter would have worked better as the first chapter. Would that really have improved my writing skills? No! That was a personal preference. I put them in the order they were in because my first chapter was far more gripping than the flashback, and personally if I read a fic where the intro was the flashback, I would’ve had to make an effort to stick it out and hope it got more interesting. Yet I couldn’t delete the flashback altogether because it served to explain how the plot was set in motion. Concrit gremlin couldn’t know that was my intention, yet felt compelled to offer “advice” without telling me what I did well.

This brings me to another point, want to help a fic author improve? Make an emphasis in your comments to mention the thing you think worked. Was it dialogue? Characterization? Description? When authors get the same comment on what they did well, they can learn their weakness on their own.

Your example brings me to two different points. The first, you never know when English might not be their first language. If English is a secondary language for the author, then of course the phrasing is going to sound strange or clunky to us native speakers. That doesn’t mean we should be busting into their comments to point out all their mistakes. We should be impressed with the risk they are taking by publishing in a second language.

The second point, your dialogue example could be considered an accessibility issue which is different than concrit. Saying to someone “Hey! I love you fic and want to keep reading but my brain is having a hard time processing who’s speaking. Would it be possible for you to make dialogue tags clearer?” isnt advice. It isn’t presuming you know the author’s intent better than the author, or insisting that it would be a higher quality fic if only they followed your instructions, it is asking them to make the text more accessible. This includes letting authors know when screen readers don’t pick things up properly, or pointing out that hosting site chewed the author’s format so now it’s just a block of text that makes it difficult for people with adhd, dyslexia, etc. None of this is asking that the author change the integrity of the work, and as long as your frame it that you want to keep reading but there’s something physically preventing that from happening, the author is likely to accommodate you.

Is changing the chapter order an accessibility issue? No. Is saying “this feels out of character” an accessibility issue? No. Is saying “your dialogue needs work” an accessibility issue? No.

TL;DR: Authors have places they go where they seek advice to improve, and it comes from people who know the authorial intent, not randos on the internet. Most unsolicited advice is solely personal opinion. Want an author to improve, tell them what they did well and they will identify their own weaknesses. Don’t be an asshole, especially when the author might not be a native English speaker. Asking for increased accessibility is usually fine, just don’t be a dick about it.

I don't understand why *constructive* criticism is seen as something negative in the writer community. I mostly hang out with visual artists and in those spaces people would often kill for concrit. Do you not want to hone your craft? I see "it's just a hobby!" thrown around a lot but like... how is that a reason for not seeking improvement? If u cook for your friends as a hobby, wouldn't you want to keep getting better so they can enjoy it more and you can bask in the praise? /1

/2 eg Some time ago I read a fic that had lots of chars in all scenes. Problem: The way it was written made it nigh on impossible to discern who was talk/acting at any given moment. The plot? Interesting! The dialogue itself? Engaging! -once you painstakingly puzzled out who was talking. I didn't dare voice my concern and instead quietly closed the tab. Just as I did with the authors next story,which still had the same issue. As a content creator I cannot imagine this to be the desired scenario?

So, my first instinct was to get frustrated, but you are asking I believe in earnest, so I am going to reply the same, though a lot of this was discussed thoroughly in the comments and reblogs of the post that set all of this off.

You are removing the crux of the argument here, the thing that so many of us are passionate about. You say “constructive criticism” deliberately leaving off the part that has us taking a stance. UNSOLICITED. 

When my boss gives me constructive criticism in my performance reviews, I listen and apply. When I ask my husband to taste a new sauce I’ve made for dinner and he says it needs more spice, I listen. When I use a beta on a fic, or spitball plot points with a friend and they make suggestions - I listen.

Because I want those particular people helping me improve, grow, make things better.

What makes you so sure that a random person telling me I am wrong, or made a mistake is going to improve me? Do you know me? Do you know what my day was like? Do you know my mental health? Do you know why I wrote? Do you have the experience, knowledge, and authority to help me - or are you just so sure that you are right and I am wrong that you have to share it.

When you want to leave UNSOLICITED concrit on a fic, it is absolutely about you and never about the writer. You want to turn their pleasure into labour. If they say okay I did everything you suggested, are you going to go back and reread and praise all their work? Or will you just feel it a personal victory and keep going and never know that maybe your comment was the one to make a person stop writing entirely.

As a content creator I cannot imagine this to be the desired scenario?

Maybe it isn’t for you, or your friends that you say would love concrit. Then as I said before great! Let people know that. That is for you. Why does it have to be for everyone?

When I read this you come across as saying your need to ‘improve’ people matters more than the writer having fun and enjoying themselves. I have a lot of hobbies and the best way I have improved on every single one is seeing other peoples work and practicing frequently and asking for help. ME ASKING.

It is very simple. When people want help and advice they will ask for it. If you weren’t asked, don’t offer unsolicited criticism. It shouldn’t be that personally difficult to be kind to people just trying to have fun, and if it is such a struggle, then isn’t that about you and not them?