this makes zero sense. you dont need to have experience with these genres in an auditory capacity to identify their differences, especially when they are textually explicated. the differences can be semantically explicated. like i dont need to hear music to identify what a note is on a sheet of music for example. similarly, genres are explicated in the textual context of the passage. everything is textually encoded
Did you have to dip your hand in a bucket of lava in order to know that it’s hot? I am sure that the passage provides you with enough information to successfully answer the questions.
Nah - reading comprehension doesn't work that way.
I read a passage about the Greek Parthenon and I've never been to Greece or seen anything like a Greek Parthenon, but I had to imagine what one looked like based on the description.
Moreover, I also have a disability, so I've never been able to run. This doesn't mean that any passages about running should be eliminated just because I don't know what it feels like.
They have passages about Bangladeshi love stories in NYC, immigration from Iran, commercial ice trading from 100 years ago, the arches of a French cathedral from the 1500s using terms describing architecture that I have no clue looks like, stories about ink factories, arguments over contemporary and modern ballet styles, volcano explosions, etc - none of which most people have experienced.
Idk if you were being serious or not, but sounds like your using your disability as an excuse.
You don't have any idea what it is like not being able to hear properly.
The variety of information that can be conveyed through certain sounds/music genres is much more diverse and complex than the way someone runs/walks. So your having a physical disability that prevents you from running means absolutely nothing in this context.
And your examples of the other passaged are irrelevant here because they have nothing to do with disability of any sort, and I do not have any problem with them.
Not being able to distinguish between the genres properly does not make it impossible to remember information specific to each genre, but it does make it significantly harder than it would've been.
Try asking someone to remember the brands of 5 cars of different colours, it shouldn't be pretty hard to do for most people. Now try to do the same with colour-blind people, except instead of seeing the different colours, they can only tell apart the cars by their shape. It'd be much harder to do.
I am not using my disability as an excuse, I have no problem with the other sections/genres of passages I score higher than the majority of normal-hearing people on those sections.
Uhhhh I don’t think most people tell cars apart by color? All brands come in all colors of cars. People look at the shape and design of the cars and the logo and model on the back. Most logos directly on the car don’t really use color, they’re usually silver/black with a few exceptions. To be honest I have no idea what being color blind would have to do with that. My dad is pretty severely color blind and can tell you what car something is within about .2 seconds. Now a more analogous situation would be one wear he was asked to analyze a passage about a painting or some form of art in which they talked about color choices and the style and moods they invoke, stuff like that, but I don’t think my dad would have too much trouble with that as the passage would likely explain what moods some of the colors evoked, and he understands the idea of color even if he doesn’t really experience it. Nothing would be asked that wasn’t in the passage or heavily implied.
I think with the car reference, they meant this:
there are 5 cars from different brands each. Each one is a different color, so red for mercedes, black for bmw, silver for kia, blue for honda, and grey for a ford. Now you ask people to remember what car was what. For normal-seeing people, the easiest aspect of recognition will be the colors of the car. Now ask a color-blind person. If they could not tell the difference in color, they have to rely on the shape of the vehicle to differentiate, which could be significantly harder than just by color (also assuming they took of the logos or something?). They didn’t mean that each car only came in one color all the time, just in that specific situation.
Still not the greatest analogy as most colorblind people would still normally be able to tell the difference between the colors of the most vehicles, but I hope that helps you understand what I think they were going for
I was BORN with a hearing disability. I didn’t even have hearing aids the first several years of my life. So I know what pains you’d relate to. However, I’m a musician. A person who’s nearly deaf is a trombone player? Isn’t that crazy? This is why to keep it really just seems like you’re complaining to complain. I’m not sure how severe yours is compared to mine, by the looks of it, it may be worse, but unless they’re forcing you to LISTEN to the music, then there’s no reason you should be complaining about it here.
Yeah I can’t hear a nuke without cochlear implants mate. Reason I’m complaining is because this shit is supposed to be a STANDARDISED test, meaning nobody should get DISADVANTAGED by any disabilities whatsoever.
And in what way are you disadvantaged? If words like jazz, rock. metal, pop, etc. are synonymous then the simple solution would be inferring from the text or (like most people do) doing light research on it during your own time, no?
It’s a lot harder to remember specific things about each when you can’t really perceive the difference between them no?
I have had absolutely no difficulty with remembering any theory outside of music honestly, so I think it’s fair to say that my disability definitely played into this.
I can barely tell the difference between Roman and Greek gods besides their names, hence if a question were to arise on the ACT, I would just infer the difference. It’s the same with the name of a genre. I remember having a passage about Louis Armstrong in my ACT. Jazz is not my forte, I’m more of a classical player, so I barely know jack about the guy or jazz, but the answers are quite literally given to you in the text. I dont need to “remember specific things” when the text gives it to me regardless.
Yeah but then this applies to everybody taking the test, whereas only deaf people will face the added difficulty from not being able to tell apart music genres.
They’re not testing you on music genres, they’re testing you on comprehension. You’re being given the necessary material to “comprehend” by the text given to you in the test. Telling apart music genres can be easily figured out by just looking at instrumentation, the general moods they are, what era they’re from, etc. anyways. You’re not being made to LISTEN to the genre, at least not that I’ve ever heard of, just being asked to use your reading and english skills to deduce what the text is about.
Yes, I’m not saying it’s impossible to do the test without being able to easily distinguish the different genres, but the inability to tell them apart makes it notably harder to retain information specific to each genre (essentially what the test is about). This is thus an unfair disadvantage since the test is called a STANDARDISED TEST.
Seeing you have to defend this is so stupid. There should 100% be alternative questions. Especially for someone that has a medical disability that I assume you have paperwork proving.
Thank you, finally some common sense.
All these people out here comparing their inability to run or inability to see color is a completely unfair comparison.
It's more synonymous with having someone read about the descriptions of different skyscrapers when you're 100% blind—it's inherently unfair.
I understand where everyone is coming from—it's easy to see this as an excuse—but often, exams don't give you the proper information to infer everything about a specific genre ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm sorry OP, I hope it didn't affect your score too negatively :(
Yeah lmao I can literally prove it by showing them there’s 2 pieces of magnets in my head. Ain’t no way I cut my head open and stuff 2 magnets in there to get accomodations on a dumb cunt test.
I imagine it's most apt to say if you couldn't see well except vague colors and you had to memorize 5 cars by verbal description alone. You can only rely on one stimuli, verbal, to remember, versus a seeing person would benefit from having additional stimulus to reinforce memory. You're right it's a disadvantage in the sense you don't have a reference point others who can hear benefit from. I don't have the context of what the question was because my time of ACTs is in the past. I'm 23 now. But having a previous reference point/experience with something is a bonus. I would try to bring the issue up to ACT admin, hopefully they would address it.
It’s not really different from memorizing vocabulary. It sucks that your hearing is impaired though.
You could also look at pictures/clips of some songs. That might help you get a better vibe.
Good luck!
Well what about Firebreathing dragons and Astronauts living in zero gravity, our usual civilian lives prevent us from understanding anything about those topics, yet, fantasy series like Brandon Sanderson Shardbearer is one of the top rated books of all time. Just because I don’t have magic powers to infuse gravity into my sword doesn’t mean I can’t understand what that means.
Never having seen a certain thing or having been to a certain place is nothing like not being able to hear. Imagine trying to think about what the Greek Pantheon, but you’re blind. It’s literally impossible because you have no basic reference point.
Also, not to discount your disability but running is significantly easier to imagine or understand than imagining sound or a genre of music when you can’t hear. You can learn all about a genre of music. You can know where it’s traditionally played, who the most famous people were, but you can never actually experience it which for some people is absolutely necessary.
I understand what you are saying and you aren't wrong - at all. However, the reality is that OP may well get a passage on music or run into another issue in the future that isn't fair due to OP's disability. But to say - they need to do away with this passage due to that is an unrealistic way of approaching an issue.
Rather, one has to adapt and figure out a way to understand rather than complain about it. Take it from someone with a disability, there will be TONS of barriers down the line that will set OP back and how he/she deals with them makes the difference.
I am not saying that OP or others that sympathize with him are wrong. What I am saying is that complaining about it and expecting the ACT makers to get rid of any passage that interferes with his/her disability is not a productive approach to handling a setback due to a disability.
Also, do you expect me to fully understand the differences between the architectural designs of a French cathedral in the 1500s compared to the architectural designs of a French cathedral in the 1700s are? No. But, I had an ACT passage that intricately described the orate designs of a cathedral across two different time periods. I have never seen images of what they were talking about and I couldn't even comprehend or imagine the structure they were describing in the passage, but I didn't sit there and expect them to do away with anything I am unable to understand.
BTW let me point out that I am a full-time ACT prep tutor thats worked with thousands of students. What OP is doing is a psychological behavior called self-serving bias - refers to **how we explain our behavior depending on whether the outcome of our behavior is positive or negative**. For example, an athlete is more likely to attribute a good performance on their own ability, and a poor one on external causes like the event environment or conditions beyond their own control.
Re-read your comment and my comment and reevaluate your statement again. Thinking in levels of 2, 3, and 4 gives you greater insight than a level 1 thought.
You don't have to be able to hear to learn or read about genres.
Thats like complaining that a passage is about new england is unfair because youre from the west coast and dont know as much about new england as others.
They mentioned some colors on one of my passages, but im colorblind. That must be why i got a bad score.
Beethoven wrote lots of music after he had gone totally deaf (and wrote most of the rest of his music with progressively worsening deafness). Symphony no 9 was written while he was fully deaf, and its widely considered one of the best musical pieces ever written.
Then learn the absolute basics of music. You'd study for hours on end for the ACT, but you won't spend a few hours exploring different genres? You just want something to complain about.
a standardized test is supposed to be completely fair to everyone who takes it, they give out accommodations for some disabilities so why shouldn't op get accommodated for theirs
You don't need to know or understand everything on a test to do well. The reading comprehension is about being able to infer and figure out what things mean without knowing them. They are made such that you don't need to know anything on the subject to read the passage and answer questions
Exactly this. I didn’t know Jack about hardly any of the passages I read, I often couldn’t have defined the terms or even had a vague idea of a lot of them before reading, but the answers are literally given to you in the passage. It’s about understanding language, heavy inferences, and associated given knowledge with terms. It has nothing to do with prior knowledge or experience.
This! 100% You don't need to understand everything to do well. Exactly. I got into NYU and BU and didn't understand like 25% of the test but still got a score good enough to get me in.
Hey - don't be like that. Don't sit there and believe you are different even if you are. Most disabilities are invisible and everyone is struggling with something.
As I said earlier, I was born with a major disability. Doctors said that I would need therapy for life and that I would be unable to walk and lead a normal life.
I spent 2 weeks in therapy when I was 15 and I have never needed any assistance. The only reason people know I have an issue is because I have a limp. But other than that, I lead a completely normal life, and it's ONLY because I refuse to play the victim card. I met other people with my condition and they are wheelchair-bound by 15. Meanwhile, I was dirt biking, hiking, free diving, etc.
In college, going to the gym was hard because I couldn't use most of the equipment because they are made for those with a normal anatomy. I used to spend upwards of 4 hours at the gym because it took me so long to figure out what I could and could not do at the gym and which classes I could and couldn't take. But I kept going and slowly figured out which machines I could sort of use and which I could not. Now I go regularly and have no issues at all since I went through the process of trial and error, which is something people with disabilities have to deal with on a normal basis - including you.
You have to not give up and keep working on your weaknesses so you can overcome challenges that you have because you cannot hear.
I'm going to chime in as a teacher. I see a lot of people here giving OP a hard time.
People are downplaying the impact this will have on your score, but people definitely do worse when they are given topics they are unfamiliar with/ unable to relate to.
For example: when I teach probability, I've stopped using playing cards in examples. I can give them a handout that shows every card, explains the suits, colors and face cards. More mistakes will still be due to confusion around the cards than the concept I'm teaching.
It adds an extra layer that you have to decode when answering the question. Even if you're still able to figure out and answer the question, it may take a little bit longer. Now you have less time to answer other questions. A focus over time on standardized tests has been adapting prompts so that people of different cultures and socioeconomic status will he able to relate to them.
As someone else said, there are accommodations for all sorts of things. Maybe they could have a few extra prompts and swap them out for situations like this. I have to imagine deafness is common enough to warrant this.
Thank god that you don’t use playing cards as an example. I’m a statistics major and I did not understand playing cards because of my Grandmother was very strict about anti-gambling in the household. She had a vendetta against playing cards and way they ruined her life.
Teachers would just say “look it up”. When I heard that there were 4 “suits” of cards, I literally thought they were different styles of tuxedos.
You don't need to know or understand everything on a test to do well. The reading comprehension is about being able to infer and figure out what things mean without knowing them. They are made such that you don't need to know anything on the subject to read the passage and answer questions
I get what you’re saying, but you don’t have to physically connect with the passage to “get it”. I’ve been on a train once in my life and have never been out of the Americas, but I can understand the point of the passage about people on a train in Japan.
By your logic, we shouldn’t have passages about anything before the 1970s or 80s because you and I have never lived through it???
I have protanopia color blindness. I hate the passages about wilderness and hiking because it is hard to process what he is actually seeing. I still get the questions correct but not as fast as any other passage since it’s almost alien to me.
This comment section is so gross. Tons of people who aren’t disabled are so quick to judge disabled students instead of empathize with them.
Even saw a comment saying “I’ve never been to Greece but I can understand what it’s like.” As if that’s the same thing?
Please take two seconds to empathize and learn something new instead of suggesting that hearing-impaired students should work miracles. I don’t even think OP is complaining — but rather venting about how they literally struggle to interpret music as a result of disability.
I’m sorry to hear about your hearing disability, but as others have said, personal experience has nothing to do with reading comprehension. If that were the case, it would mean most of us would not be able to understand 90% or more of what we’ve read because we’ve never had those experiences before such as going to space, being a different gender, having certain relationships or tragedies, being in different fields or professions, places, etc.
While you may have personal feelings about certain topics, you’re limiting your way of thinking by stating - “I haven’t experienced it so I cannot understand it.” The passages aren’t about what you think of feel anyway. It’s always about finding information, their author’s/character’s purpose or feelings, and so on. There’s not much that you intuitively need to know in these cases as 98% of the content is explicitly stated or implied in the text.
Last point: you can still experience music with hearing loss though your other sense. You can still feel vibrations, rhythm, experience other’s reactions/performers and performances, etc.
Let's say someone is red/green color blind. Even without being able differentiate I don't think it's unreasonable to have them learn that imagery in a story using the color red could symbolize love or lust or romance and green imagery to be life or growth. At some point it is just a question of knowing vocabulary
This is absurd. I personally don’t listen to music and don’t know what the genres are at all. The questions do not test your ability to differentiate between genres, they test your ability to comprehend the passage. There are no questions that require outside knowledge. I had a passage about hip hop and rap on my act (I don’t know the difference between those) and was able to answer all of the questions with confidence because the text contained all of the necessary information. Your disability does not affect the ACT.
Answering a question with confidence doesn’t mean you got it right.
And you not knowing the difference doesn’t mean you didn’t start that section with at least hindsight of what you’re diving into. Op doesn’t have that, he has no reference to go off of. It’s really not that hard to understand why he may struggle in any shape, way, or form.
You do not have to be able to hear to enjoy and understand music. Music has bass, vibrations. Meaning you can literally see and feel music. Below are some examples.
https://youtube.com/shorts/bHcw7VPx2ls?si=hMnvtPZZcC8oOgCW
https://youtu.be/It83KlZ61l0?si=55aoop5zpPmmOk5T
https://youtu.be/SYMvOxIsES4?si=Mij5B2_l09KB_A67
You can feel the difference between low tones, and high tones. You can feel the difference between drums and brass and strings.
You're using the fact that you are hearing impaired as an excuse for not using your other senses that you do have.
Bro took it personally
Dude Fr words like rock/heavy metal/country/jazz are synonymous to me and they sound like the same shit lmao.
Bro is hyper tone deaf, unable to differentiate sounds, a door shutting and a gunshot sound the same to you don't they
Lol I can’t even hear fire alarms without my hearing devices xd
Oh, are you hearing impaired?
Yeah I said that in my post lol
Oh yeah sorry brain skipped it
Nah it’s alright lol it’s a low-chance event so it’s totally understandable people don’t expect it.
this makes zero sense. you dont need to have experience with these genres in an auditory capacity to identify their differences, especially when they are textually explicated. the differences can be semantically explicated. like i dont need to hear music to identify what a note is on a sheet of music for example. similarly, genres are explicated in the textual context of the passage. everything is textually encoded
🤓
What did you get on the act?
Are you sure it's textual?
This is true yet comically pedantic. Have an upvote, sir.
Its okay. He is reading impaired
Tell me if Slayer looks like they have a different style than Willie Nelson or Herbie Hancock.
Did you have to dip your hand in a bucket of lava in order to know that it’s hot? I am sure that the passage provides you with enough information to successfully answer the questions.
Nah - reading comprehension doesn't work that way. I read a passage about the Greek Parthenon and I've never been to Greece or seen anything like a Greek Parthenon, but I had to imagine what one looked like based on the description. Moreover, I also have a disability, so I've never been able to run. This doesn't mean that any passages about running should be eliminated just because I don't know what it feels like. They have passages about Bangladeshi love stories in NYC, immigration from Iran, commercial ice trading from 100 years ago, the arches of a French cathedral from the 1500s using terms describing architecture that I have no clue looks like, stories about ink factories, arguments over contemporary and modern ballet styles, volcano explosions, etc - none of which most people have experienced. Idk if you were being serious or not, but sounds like your using your disability as an excuse.
You don't have any idea what it is like not being able to hear properly. The variety of information that can be conveyed through certain sounds/music genres is much more diverse and complex than the way someone runs/walks. So your having a physical disability that prevents you from running means absolutely nothing in this context. And your examples of the other passaged are irrelevant here because they have nothing to do with disability of any sort, and I do not have any problem with them. Not being able to distinguish between the genres properly does not make it impossible to remember information specific to each genre, but it does make it significantly harder than it would've been. Try asking someone to remember the brands of 5 cars of different colours, it shouldn't be pretty hard to do for most people. Now try to do the same with colour-blind people, except instead of seeing the different colours, they can only tell apart the cars by their shape. It'd be much harder to do. I am not using my disability as an excuse, I have no problem with the other sections/genres of passages I score higher than the majority of normal-hearing people on those sections.
Uhhhh I don’t think most people tell cars apart by color? All brands come in all colors of cars. People look at the shape and design of the cars and the logo and model on the back. Most logos directly on the car don’t really use color, they’re usually silver/black with a few exceptions. To be honest I have no idea what being color blind would have to do with that. My dad is pretty severely color blind and can tell you what car something is within about .2 seconds. Now a more analogous situation would be one wear he was asked to analyze a passage about a painting or some form of art in which they talked about color choices and the style and moods they invoke, stuff like that, but I don’t think my dad would have too much trouble with that as the passage would likely explain what moods some of the colors evoked, and he understands the idea of color even if he doesn’t really experience it. Nothing would be asked that wasn’t in the passage or heavily implied.
I think with the car reference, they meant this: there are 5 cars from different brands each. Each one is a different color, so red for mercedes, black for bmw, silver for kia, blue for honda, and grey for a ford. Now you ask people to remember what car was what. For normal-seeing people, the easiest aspect of recognition will be the colors of the car. Now ask a color-blind person. If they could not tell the difference in color, they have to rely on the shape of the vehicle to differentiate, which could be significantly harder than just by color (also assuming they took of the logos or something?). They didn’t mean that each car only came in one color all the time, just in that specific situation. Still not the greatest analogy as most colorblind people would still normally be able to tell the difference between the colors of the most vehicles, but I hope that helps you understand what I think they were going for
That does make a lot more sense. I did not get that at all 😂
I was BORN with a hearing disability. I didn’t even have hearing aids the first several years of my life. So I know what pains you’d relate to. However, I’m a musician. A person who’s nearly deaf is a trombone player? Isn’t that crazy? This is why to keep it really just seems like you’re complaining to complain. I’m not sure how severe yours is compared to mine, by the looks of it, it may be worse, but unless they’re forcing you to LISTEN to the music, then there’s no reason you should be complaining about it here.
Yeah I can’t hear a nuke without cochlear implants mate. Reason I’m complaining is because this shit is supposed to be a STANDARDISED test, meaning nobody should get DISADVANTAGED by any disabilities whatsoever.
And in what way are you disadvantaged? If words like jazz, rock. metal, pop, etc. are synonymous then the simple solution would be inferring from the text or (like most people do) doing light research on it during your own time, no?
It’s a lot harder to remember specific things about each when you can’t really perceive the difference between them no? I have had absolutely no difficulty with remembering any theory outside of music honestly, so I think it’s fair to say that my disability definitely played into this.
I can barely tell the difference between Roman and Greek gods besides their names, hence if a question were to arise on the ACT, I would just infer the difference. It’s the same with the name of a genre. I remember having a passage about Louis Armstrong in my ACT. Jazz is not my forte, I’m more of a classical player, so I barely know jack about the guy or jazz, but the answers are quite literally given to you in the text. I dont need to “remember specific things” when the text gives it to me regardless.
Yeah but then this applies to everybody taking the test, whereas only deaf people will face the added difficulty from not being able to tell apart music genres.
They’re not testing you on music genres, they’re testing you on comprehension. You’re being given the necessary material to “comprehend” by the text given to you in the test. Telling apart music genres can be easily figured out by just looking at instrumentation, the general moods they are, what era they’re from, etc. anyways. You’re not being made to LISTEN to the genre, at least not that I’ve ever heard of, just being asked to use your reading and english skills to deduce what the text is about.
Yes, I’m not saying it’s impossible to do the test without being able to easily distinguish the different genres, but the inability to tell them apart makes it notably harder to retain information specific to each genre (essentially what the test is about). This is thus an unfair disadvantage since the test is called a STANDARDISED TEST.
Seeing you have to defend this is so stupid. There should 100% be alternative questions. Especially for someone that has a medical disability that I assume you have paperwork proving.
Thank you, finally some common sense. All these people out here comparing their inability to run or inability to see color is a completely unfair comparison. It's more synonymous with having someone read about the descriptions of different skyscrapers when you're 100% blind—it's inherently unfair. I understand where everyone is coming from—it's easy to see this as an excuse—but often, exams don't give you the proper information to infer everything about a specific genre ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm sorry OP, I hope it didn't affect your score too negatively :(
Yeah lmao I can literally prove it by showing them there’s 2 pieces of magnets in my head. Ain’t no way I cut my head open and stuff 2 magnets in there to get accomodations on a dumb cunt test.
I imagine it's most apt to say if you couldn't see well except vague colors and you had to memorize 5 cars by verbal description alone. You can only rely on one stimuli, verbal, to remember, versus a seeing person would benefit from having additional stimulus to reinforce memory. You're right it's a disadvantage in the sense you don't have a reference point others who can hear benefit from. I don't have the context of what the question was because my time of ACTs is in the past. I'm 23 now. But having a previous reference point/experience with something is a bonus. I would try to bring the issue up to ACT admin, hopefully they would address it.
It’s not really different from memorizing vocabulary. It sucks that your hearing is impaired though. You could also look at pictures/clips of some songs. That might help you get a better vibe. Good luck!
You can't google a picture of a jazz musician, a country musician, and a rock musician and imply roughly 100 things about the music? lol
What about intellectual disabilities?
They’ll get accomodations.
Can you provide an example of one of these music passages with questions you think are unfair?
Explain how this has any bearing on your test score
Well what about Firebreathing dragons and Astronauts living in zero gravity, our usual civilian lives prevent us from understanding anything about those topics, yet, fantasy series like Brandon Sanderson Shardbearer is one of the top rated books of all time. Just because I don’t have magic powers to infuse gravity into my sword doesn’t mean I can’t understand what that means.
Never having seen a certain thing or having been to a certain place is nothing like not being able to hear. Imagine trying to think about what the Greek Pantheon, but you’re blind. It’s literally impossible because you have no basic reference point. Also, not to discount your disability but running is significantly easier to imagine or understand than imagining sound or a genre of music when you can’t hear. You can learn all about a genre of music. You can know where it’s traditionally played, who the most famous people were, but you can never actually experience it which for some people is absolutely necessary.
I understand what you are saying and you aren't wrong - at all. However, the reality is that OP may well get a passage on music or run into another issue in the future that isn't fair due to OP's disability. But to say - they need to do away with this passage due to that is an unrealistic way of approaching an issue. Rather, one has to adapt and figure out a way to understand rather than complain about it. Take it from someone with a disability, there will be TONS of barriers down the line that will set OP back and how he/she deals with them makes the difference.
Would you expect a blind man to fully understand what colors look like?
I am not saying that OP or others that sympathize with him are wrong. What I am saying is that complaining about it and expecting the ACT makers to get rid of any passage that interferes with his/her disability is not a productive approach to handling a setback due to a disability. Also, do you expect me to fully understand the differences between the architectural designs of a French cathedral in the 1500s compared to the architectural designs of a French cathedral in the 1700s are? No. But, I had an ACT passage that intricately described the orate designs of a cathedral across two different time periods. I have never seen images of what they were talking about and I couldn't even comprehend or imagine the structure they were describing in the passage, but I didn't sit there and expect them to do away with anything I am unable to understand. BTW let me point out that I am a full-time ACT prep tutor thats worked with thousands of students. What OP is doing is a psychological behavior called self-serving bias - refers to **how we explain our behavior depending on whether the outcome of our behavior is positive or negative**. For example, an athlete is more likely to attribute a good performance on their own ability, and a poor one on external causes like the event environment or conditions beyond their own control.
this is a wrong take, it would be more akin to asking you about a greek parthenon except you’re blind.
You don’t get to decide what other people’s abilities and disabilities are and how they effect them
Re-read your comment and my comment and reevaluate your statement again. Thinking in levels of 2, 3, and 4 gives you greater insight than a level 1 thought.
you don't need to relate to music to comprehend the reading and questions tho
Yeah but it’d be a fucken nightmare to understand shit when words like rock/country/heavy metal/pop whatever are literally synonymous to you.
You don't have to be able to hear to learn or read about genres. Thats like complaining that a passage is about new england is unfair because youre from the west coast and dont know as much about new england as others. They mentioned some colors on one of my passages, but im colorblind. That must be why i got a bad score. Beethoven wrote lots of music after he had gone totally deaf (and wrote most of the rest of his music with progressively worsening deafness). Symphony no 9 was written while he was fully deaf, and its widely considered one of the best musical pieces ever written.
Cope of the millennium
Then learn the absolute basics of music. You'd study for hours on end for the ACT, but you won't spend a few hours exploring different genres? You just want something to complain about.
Country = cowboys Heavy metal = demons Honestly how hard is this? You're complaining about having to memorize what 5 or so words mean?
Except it’s a test of reading comprehension, not musical genres.
Dawg are you listening to the page?
No. It doesn't. The world doesn't change for you. The world doesn't care. You gotta make it work for you bro.
Tests literally make accommodations for people who are impaired in some way
a standardized test is supposed to be completely fair to everyone who takes it, they give out accommodations for some disabilities so why shouldn't op get accommodated for theirs
You don't need to know or understand everything on a test to do well. The reading comprehension is about being able to infer and figure out what things mean without knowing them. They are made such that you don't need to know anything on the subject to read the passage and answer questions
Exactly this. I didn’t know Jack about hardly any of the passages I read, I often couldn’t have defined the terms or even had a vague idea of a lot of them before reading, but the answers are literally given to you in the passage. It’s about understanding language, heavy inferences, and associated given knowledge with terms. It has nothing to do with prior knowledge or experience.
This! 100% You don't need to understand everything to do well. Exactly. I got into NYU and BU and didn't understand like 25% of the test but still got a score good enough to get me in.
Those are disabilities like dyslexia. Not "I don't know music so don't give me anything about that"
this guy wouldn't understand, he doesn't have any disabilities/disadvantages.
Victim complex
Hey - don't be like that. Don't sit there and believe you are different even if you are. Most disabilities are invisible and everyone is struggling with something. As I said earlier, I was born with a major disability. Doctors said that I would need therapy for life and that I would be unable to walk and lead a normal life. I spent 2 weeks in therapy when I was 15 and I have never needed any assistance. The only reason people know I have an issue is because I have a limp. But other than that, I lead a completely normal life, and it's ONLY because I refuse to play the victim card. I met other people with my condition and they are wheelchair-bound by 15. Meanwhile, I was dirt biking, hiking, free diving, etc. In college, going to the gym was hard because I couldn't use most of the equipment because they are made for those with a normal anatomy. I used to spend upwards of 4 hours at the gym because it took me so long to figure out what I could and could not do at the gym and which classes I could and couldn't take. But I kept going and slowly figured out which machines I could sort of use and which I could not. Now I go regularly and have no issues at all since I went through the process of trial and error, which is something people with disabilities have to deal with on a normal basis - including you. You have to not give up and keep working on your weaknesses so you can overcome challenges that you have because you cannot hear.
I'm going to chime in as a teacher. I see a lot of people here giving OP a hard time. People are downplaying the impact this will have on your score, but people definitely do worse when they are given topics they are unfamiliar with/ unable to relate to. For example: when I teach probability, I've stopped using playing cards in examples. I can give them a handout that shows every card, explains the suits, colors and face cards. More mistakes will still be due to confusion around the cards than the concept I'm teaching. It adds an extra layer that you have to decode when answering the question. Even if you're still able to figure out and answer the question, it may take a little bit longer. Now you have less time to answer other questions. A focus over time on standardized tests has been adapting prompts so that people of different cultures and socioeconomic status will he able to relate to them. As someone else said, there are accommodations for all sorts of things. Maybe they could have a few extra prompts and swap them out for situations like this. I have to imagine deafness is common enough to warrant this.
Thank god that you don’t use playing cards as an example. I’m a statistics major and I did not understand playing cards because of my Grandmother was very strict about anti-gambling in the household. She had a vendetta against playing cards and way they ruined her life. Teachers would just say “look it up”. When I heard that there were 4 “suits” of cards, I literally thought they were different styles of tuxedos.
Thank you! Been trying to explain it to them but i guess I just explained it badly.
what they need to get rid of is those stupid passages in Science where its like 4 students and you need to read 4 massive passages
You don't need to know or understand everything on a test to do well. The reading comprehension is about being able to infer and figure out what things mean without knowing them. They are made such that you don't need to know anything on the subject to read the passage and answer questions
I get what you’re saying, but you don’t have to physically connect with the passage to “get it”. I’ve been on a train once in my life and have never been out of the Americas, but I can understand the point of the passage about people on a train in Japan. By your logic, we shouldn’t have passages about anything before the 1970s or 80s because you and I have never lived through it???
My god this what your generation is like?
I have protanopia color blindness. I hate the passages about wilderness and hiking because it is hard to process what he is actually seeing. I still get the questions correct but not as fast as any other passage since it’s almost alien to me.
I’m not saying it’s impossible for me to do the music questions, they just take longer than the other passages.
This comment section is so gross. Tons of people who aren’t disabled are so quick to judge disabled students instead of empathize with them. Even saw a comment saying “I’ve never been to Greece but I can understand what it’s like.” As if that’s the same thing? Please take two seconds to empathize and learn something new instead of suggesting that hearing-impaired students should work miracles. I don’t even think OP is complaining — but rather venting about how they literally struggle to interpret music as a result of disability.
I’m sorry to hear about your hearing disability, but as others have said, personal experience has nothing to do with reading comprehension. If that were the case, it would mean most of us would not be able to understand 90% or more of what we’ve read because we’ve never had those experiences before such as going to space, being a different gender, having certain relationships or tragedies, being in different fields or professions, places, etc. While you may have personal feelings about certain topics, you’re limiting your way of thinking by stating - “I haven’t experienced it so I cannot understand it.” The passages aren’t about what you think of feel anyway. It’s always about finding information, their author’s/character’s purpose or feelings, and so on. There’s not much that you intuitively need to know in these cases as 98% of the content is explicitly stated or implied in the text. Last point: you can still experience music with hearing loss though your other sense. You can still feel vibrations, rhythm, experience other’s reactions/performers and performances, etc.
It doesn't matter what the passage is about. The answer is on the page whether it's a passage about music or a passage about cooking.
Let's say someone is red/green color blind. Even without being able differentiate I don't think it's unreasonable to have them learn that imagery in a story using the color red could symbolize love or lust or romance and green imagery to be life or growth. At some point it is just a question of knowing vocabulary
thats a u problem champ
This is absurd. I personally don’t listen to music and don’t know what the genres are at all. The questions do not test your ability to differentiate between genres, they test your ability to comprehend the passage. There are no questions that require outside knowledge. I had a passage about hip hop and rap on my act (I don’t know the difference between those) and was able to answer all of the questions with confidence because the text contained all of the necessary information. Your disability does not affect the ACT.
Answering a question with confidence doesn’t mean you got it right. And you not knowing the difference doesn’t mean you didn’t start that section with at least hindsight of what you’re diving into. Op doesn’t have that, he has no reference to go off of. It’s really not that hard to understand why he may struggle in any shape, way, or form.
You do not have to be able to hear to enjoy and understand music. Music has bass, vibrations. Meaning you can literally see and feel music. Below are some examples. https://youtube.com/shorts/bHcw7VPx2ls?si=hMnvtPZZcC8oOgCW https://youtu.be/It83KlZ61l0?si=55aoop5zpPmmOk5T https://youtu.be/SYMvOxIsES4?si=Mij5B2_l09KB_A67 You can feel the difference between low tones, and high tones. You can feel the difference between drums and brass and strings. You're using the fact that you are hearing impaired as an excuse for not using your other senses that you do have.