[rahimnathwani]

You're missing the point. They were given excerpts to read and, even with access to their phones to look up unfamiliar words, they were not able to understand what was written.

No one forced them to read full novels or even full pages.

No one expected them to know what 'Lord Chancellor' was. They could look it up.

"The most productive way to invite a student to begin parsing this, in spite of their education, is to have someone - one who understands the passage, and can render the correct inflections and emphasis - read this to the class."

The purpose of the study was to test reading comprehension. If you replace the 'reading' part with listening, you're not testing reading comprehension.