Comment on Anon is Illiterate
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
As you read these comments, remember that 56% of Americans read at a 6th-grade level or above; the rest read below that.
Please be gentle.
I recall reading somewhere that adult literacy was at like 98% in the US. Though that was like 25 years ago, and I suppose a 6th grade level still counts as “literate”? Or did we slide backwards?
If we have to talk about this in terms of “grade levels”, at what point is someone actually considered illiterate?
Measuring two different things. Your number: can read the words, mostly understand the words they read.
6th graders are generally literate. However, they’re not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece, and they likely won’t question the narrator, assuming they’re reliable.
You can imagine how half of adults being that bad at these things has colored political discourse.
However, they’re not necessarily picking up on nuance, or subtleties. And they will often not take into account how the sentence they just read fits into the overall context of the piece
Which explains sooo many internet arguments.
No this is about reading books, not arguing. Are you stupid?
God damn, it does.
There’s different levels of literacy as well. If we take things like math literacy and functional literacy into account (things like doing your taxes or filling out government forms), something like 60% of the adult population is functionally illiterate (below a third grade level) in at least one area.
WHAT? THEY GET ME HOOKED ON THAT SHIT AND JUST STOP DEALING!?
Not all of them did, just those that bought into these right wing grifters’ program. Most that did are reversing it, though, because it has been disastrous.
The way they get that grade level reading comprehension is dubious. If you read the news, non-academic magazines, and most of the NYTs best seller list, you likely have been reading primarily around that level according to these tests.
Also I don’t know if this is true for all of these types of tests but I got literacy test bi-yearly in school because I was in special education and apparently at least for the one I was administered it counted verbal reading speed towards your score. So you could talk at a slightly slower rate than prescribed but explain the full context of what you read and still get a lower rating.
Correct. Also getting beyond 6th grade is generally defined as the the language skills needed to read/write news, most novels, contracts, information pamphlets, etc. The use of specialized language, such as technical lexicons, is where you get into higher grade levels of reading. There isn’t any universal standard as to what determines this, exactly. Many tests also work on being able to make sense of sentences that gradually become more, and more, obtuse. Their length, use of punctuation, tenses, and other technicalities, are increased until the person can no longer explain the sentence correctly. The problem with this is that it may be technically correct, but it is bad writing. If someone where to ace a test on some of this overly complex sentence structure, they would actually do worse for submitting it to a test of the skills on writing a sentence explaining something. So a lot of this lexical grading of reading level is nebulous, and results will vary from each person reviewing them, and exactly how they are performed.
Up until the mid-60s, the US did not have a standard high school educational system. Some cities had high schools, some capped out at elementary or “middle” school. A few people went to college, but the overwhelming majority didn’t.
Early journalistic standards of the era sought to produce written works that could be marketed enjoyed by the largest appreciable volume of people. So the standard for writing was set at the 6th grade level. Everyone from the NYT to Random House targeted articles and books to the 6th grade level, because this was where the maximal market share of reading consumers lived.
Consequently we’ve produced a super-abundance of written material at the 6th grade level. If you’re no longer in school and you’re doing recreational reading, you’re most likely consuming something designed to be read by middle-schoolers. And because this is the de facto standard, and has been for over half a century, we have this enormous backlog of material - classical novels, famous newspaper clips, screenplays, speeches, encyclopedias, commercials - all geared to this level.
People maintain their skills with practice and this is no less true of reading than any other occupation. So when you survey people - many of whom haven’t touched a scientific paper or “advanced” novel in decades - as to their reading level, they consistently reproduce the skills for which the bulk of English written works are produced.
Okay, Canadians are still at a disadvantage compared to the average European. You and I aren’t so different.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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