The Pineapple and the Hare. Simple reading comprehension question BAFFLES NY educators.

reply to post by antonia

That was a great interview with the original author of the story. Even he doesn't understand why they use it on a test since there are no "right" answers for some of the questions.

Here is another teaser, but with a moral we can all understand, At Sandhurst, a group of officer cadets are under instruction, by a sergeant, there was a flag pole lying on the ground, and the sergeant asked the officers to get the flag pole set up (upright) the sergeant stood back for half an hour, watching the officer cadets struggle with the pole,
eventually knowing from past experience that the officer cadets would never get the job done, he called the cadets to-gether in a group around himself, "well sirs, not a very good effort was it? I will tell you how to get that flag pole up without any effort on your part, you send some erk you see to find a sergeant bring him to you, then you say this to the sergeant 'sergeant, get that flag pole up' "

This is what the test is about. It is not about the meaning but the comprehension. That it means something or is logical is not the point. It helps that the text is absurd, it might be absurd but it tells something and because it is absurd, you can't use logic or experience to decipher it, you need your reading comprehension skills.
This text could be based on a much more absurd story, imagine Beckett or Ionesco.

Experience, or schema, is something everyone uses when deciphering/comprehending text.

reply to post by Goldcurrent


As you say, this is a reading "comprehension" test, not an interpretation. They could use famous literature, and then ask factual questions with definitive answers. They could even ask the test-taker to draw some conclusions, as long as there is only one logical conclusion to be drawn. It would be much more useful to have a source with several accepted opinions, than to have an original work with only one person's perspective as to the correct answer. They could also write the answers in a more straight-forward manner. There is no need to try and put trick answers into a multiple choice test. They could put some common erroneous answers there, but they shouldn't just put weirdly worded crap to confuse the test-taker.

I agree with some others it is a shame this was written, and a bigger shame that it got past editors and made it all the way to the students.

There should be a cash reward for students who find errors on tests or in text-books! It used to happen to me all the time, and instead of rewards it just draws disgust and ire from your teachers.

Originally posted by needlenight
The pineapple was eaten by all the animals. Its seeds will then be spread, through the animals feces, which in turn will become parent plants for more pineapples.

The pineapple tricked all the animals, reproduced without spending any energy and in the long run... won.

The pineapple was the most clever.

Nice idea.... but Pineapples don't usually reproduce via seed. And like someone else said, what was the pineapple doing in a temperate forest? Why is it there? What's it's agenda? I smell a conspiracy afloat.

reply to post by tport17


And it will help you if the text is simple. But what if the text deals with difficult abstract concepts, ideas you are not familiar to. How do you learn ? How do you study economics, science, philosophy, law or whatever and read about things you don't have prior knowledge or experience ? Reading comprehension skills is critical.

Can someone answer what books 8th-graders study at school in the USA ?

reply to post by FortAnthem


i have trouble discerning exactly what a paragraph is in this.. maybe the format? dont know.. a single sentence is a paragraph now a days?

other than that my answers where correct.. I answered what I thought was wanted.. not what I thought was right.

regardless.. there are to many variables..

why wouldn't the Hare be the wisest? he called him out. he was challenged by a vegetable with no legs. that's common sense right there.. even the Owl who supposedly was the wisest bet on the Pineapple. did'nt take his own advise? not very wise..

why would they eat the Pineapple at all? apparently he wasn't considered an entity at that point & just food? what would this animals eat since they all are being considered persons? didn't the Pineapple have anything to say about being lunch? didn't he scream while they ate him? seems to me they would have ate him out of anger..

being confusing just to confuse doesn't seem like a very good test..

and not to mention things from the original story were removed that revealed motivation.. like betting on the pineapple..

smart asses being smart asses to fool other smart asses.. who are teaching our kids.

the kids lose out.

i could list $32 million reason's why this was included in the test..

reply to post by Manouche


Hahahahahaha!!!!

IN the US, 8th graders don't study any books, no literature. Maybe some short story collections or poetry, but no real novels. AND, anything they do study is only American literature. The average high school graduate has never heard of Dostevsky or Cervantes, or any other foreign writer.

There are recommended college reading lists available, but I received a full-ride academic scholarship to several big universities, and I was accepted to both Princeton and Purdue, and I had never heard of any of the authors on the suggested reading list.

High school diplomas in the US are a joke. I know kids coming over from Cuba and the old USSR that have elementary school educations that would put our high school graduates to shame.

Originally posted by Manouche
reply to post by tport17

 

And it will help you if the text is simple. But what if the text deals with difficult abstract concepts, ideas you are not familiar to. How do you learn ? How do you study economics, science, philosophy, law or whatever and read about things you don't have prior knowledge or experience ? Reading comprehension skills is critical.

Can someone answer what books 8th-graders study at school in the USA ?

edit on 23-4-2012 by Manouche because: (no reason given)

You're preaching to the choir.

My point was, when you read something, you are using your prior knowledge to help you comprehend what you are reading. You said it was unimportant. I never said reading comprehension is unimportant, I said your schema is a part of reading comprehension.

And you study economics, science, all of it, by starting at the beginning. You don't jump to advanced chemistry, you start with chemistry 101. How are you able to pass chemistry 101? Because you have PRIOR KNOWLEDGE in math and science that you can apply to your new learning and gather some sort of comprehension. You don't learn anything new without having something to connect to what you have learned before. You can memorize it, but it will hold no meaning for you and it will not stay in your mind. [

reply to post by getreadyalready


I was afraid of that...

Then why make a fuss about the text being a bit dumb ? It's only an exercise. Certainly, having kids not reading litterature anymore - even if it's only American litterature, there are very good authors - is what to complain about...
Reading books is a very fast declining pastime and educative mean, not only in the USA.

reply to post by Manouche

Why make a fuss about the text being a bit dumb?

Many reasons.

1. We have lowered our expectations so much, that this is the level of reading we expect out of 8th graders? Sad.
2. This is a perfect opportunity to expose the students to some writing of importance instead of just composing a shoddy adaptation of a real work.
3. A shoddy adaptation has no basis of fact to choose answers from. The "right or wrong" answers are only the opinion of the author, while an accepted classic will have some scholarly opinions backing up the right and wrong answers.
4. It just wasn't that good of a read. It was choppy, it didn't flow well, and it was distracting to read for content even to someone experienced in reading for content. I am an extremely fast reader, but this was written so poorly that I was forced to backup and re-read. In a timed test, it isn't fair to the student to punish them for the author's ineptness.

Just a few quick reasons for criticizing this work, when they could have chosen from 100s of 1000s of classics, and asked better questions of better works.

reply to post by FortAnthem


My answers would be B C A A D C

Is there a correct set of answers to the questions or was it just a way of exploring the understanding and creativity of the students.

Originally posted by keldas
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

My answers would be B C A A D C

Is there a correct set of answers to the questions or was it just a way of exploring the understanding and creativity of the students.

I came to the same set of answers as you. I believe the hare spoke the wisest words overall, the fact that the owl picked the pineapple to win....not so wise after all.

reply to post by tport17


All right, I get what you are saying.

I was only trying to answer to comments that the story was absurd and that it made answering the questions difficult or subjective when actually not.

***

The student has to disconnect from preconceptions to focus on the simple comprehension of what the author (the redactor of the text) is communicating by written language. Preconceptions, expectations, interpretations are what lead to misunderstandings by the recipient in communication. It clouds the comprehension. ATS is a good place for this kind of observation. Every large thread will have posters having a go at each other despite having the same opinion.

As explained by FortAnthem, question 3 is objective. The owl spoke the wisest words because it is the moral of the story. It is of no relevance if the reader finds it a moral or not, or logical or not that it makes the moral for the story. The author says it is the moral and it is what the reader is expected to understand from the text. He doesn't have to agree or find it witty, it is what the author writes in plain words that matters, it is the moral.
Questions 2, 5 and 6 need an understanding of the context implemented. Only question 2 is a bit tricky, it is the more difficult question and requires to guess from the context.
Question 1 is a general comprehension by grammar and conjugation.
Question 6 is about a figure of speech.

As someone who's favorite fable is "The Unicorn in the Garden" this story made perfect sense to me.
As did the moral, and the annoyance factor of the pineapple BSing the group and then producing nothing.
I'm a debunker. That part I am very familiar with. :

reply to post by getreadyalready


It is sad but it is also nothing new to you. We have decades of degeneration of education.
I am very respectful to my elders, many are so much more cultured than me, sometimes astonishingly. And it is not they have lived longer, they have learnt in their youth. We are losing knowledge and the intellectual tools to acquire it.

I see this text like a test in mathematics, the wording is unimportant and not the subject of the test.
Using a classic would be fine but then you would need to adapt it to fit the test. Well I guess I have low expectations myself now and can't even dream of a reference to classics in a random exercise anymore.

Beginning with paragraph 4, in what order are the events in the story told?

A switching back and forth between places

B In the order in which the events happen

C Switching back and forth between the past and the present

D In the order in which the hare tells the events to another animal

definitely B

The animals ate the pineapple most likely because they were

A Hungry

B Excited

C Annoyed

D Amused

C. they are annoyed because they expected the pineapple to win with a clever trick.

Which animal spoke the wisest words?

A The hare

B The moose

C The crow

D The owl

A. the hare was the wisest when he mocked the pineapple for challenging him to a race.

Before the race, how did the animals feel toward the pineapple?
A Suspicious

B Kindly

C Sympathetic

D Envious

A. obviously.

What would have happened if the animals had decided to cheer for the hare?

A The pineapple would have won the race.

B They would have been mad at the hare for winning.

C The hare would have just sat there and not moved.

D They would have been happy to have cheered for a winner.

a definitive answer is impossible. i'd have to say "D" as my final answer, but the pineapple could have had a clever trick to win. maybe his motive was to prove everyone wrong, and if they had rooted for the hare, he would have proved them wrong. it's possible the hare would have just sat there too. B seems the least likely.

When the moose said that the pineapple has some trick up its sleeve, he means that the pineapple

A is wearing a disguise

B wants to show the animals a trick

C has a plan to fool the animals

D is going to put something out of its sleeve

C. duh.

all of the questions have clear answers but the one i mentioned. and yes, i am saying i'm smarter than a 14 year old kid.

reply to post by kaylaluv


if they were simply annoyed they would have just smashed it. They ate it because they were hungry.

here is another that was on one of kids exams:

There is a band leader and 100 other band members. If the band members lined up in rows of 10 how many rows would they have in all?

Originally posted by sligtlyskeptical
reply to post by kaylaluv

 

if they were simply annoyed they would have just smashed it. They ate it because they were hungry.

here is another that was on one of kids exams:

There is a band leader and 100 other band members. If the band members lined up in rows of 10 how many rows would they have in all?

I think you are confusing animals with people. Animals are not wasteful. They might as well get a meal out of the one that annoyed them. Kill two birds with one stone, to quote a Greek fable.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by Manouche

 

Why make a fuss about the text being a bit dumb?

Many reasons.

1. We have lowered our expectations so much, that this is the level of reading we expect out of 8th graders? Sad.

I actually completely agree with you on this point. It really was a disjointed work, although I don't think it would have mattered much what the work was. Reading scores are generally low on most of these tests. I will say kids weren't much better when I was in school. You mention that 8th graders don't read novels. Well, I did that. I didn't do it in class, more for my own entertainment. Novels didn't really come until junior year of high school. Even then they were too easy for me. I tested out of reading class in the 6th grade, scored a 34 on the ACT in that section and pretty much never got bothered about my reading so I don't think I'm a good example of the average. (In fact, I can't tell you how I learned to read. I could do it before I was 5) I do vividly remember being shocked when I was a senior and kids were still sounding out words while reading out loud. I've always figured what I know and can do isn't that special and everyone else can do it. Perhaps I sell myself too short, who knows?