When I (Nakamura) first arrived in the U.S. for a postdoctoral fellowship, the anxiety of speaking English struck the first moment I put my feet in the immigration hall at Miami International Airport.

The experiment was simple; so too, you may have thought, was the task. Students of literature at two American universities were given the first paragraphs of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens and asked ...

Chris Stanislawski didn’t read much in his middle school English classes, but it never felt necessary. Students were given detailed chapter summaries for every novel they discussed, and teachers ...