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54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

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Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#61

Post by robbrown451 »

There's a strange circularity to the title.

It's almost like saying "90% of Americans have below median literacy skills." In that one it is obviously false, since we define median as being at 50-percentile.

But this is not a lot different. To me "6th grade reading level" should mean "the reading skills of a 50-percentile 6th grader." But then the statement can't be true, unless you accept that the typical 6th grader is just as good at reading as a typical adult.

So.... how do you define "6th-grade reading level"? It seems that you are left with defining it as what you might wish it were. Which is going to vary widely.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#62

Post by gjs278 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #28
sambroner wrote: post #9

It's hard to tell from Wikipedia what the 6th-grade reading level is and how its measured. Google points me to Flesch Reading Ease. Not a very precise formula... If I remember correctly, the NYTimes is written for the 8th-grade level. Similarly, many hospitals/healthcare facilities don't allow writing above the 8th-grade level. So, expressive, detailed, and stylized writing are all easily possible at the 8th-grade le…

I believe that, when we're talking about the reading level publications target, that's typically evaluated using a linear combination of the average words per sentence, and the average syllables per word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readabi... If so, then the difference between 8th and 6th grade level works out to about 0.17 syllables per word, or about 5 words per sentence, or some blend of…

No post body was provided.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#63

Post by netizen-936824 »

mrfusion wrote: post #43
BrissyCoder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in reading for pleasure?

Mostly writing emails and being shocked no one read them. I’m now a two bullet point max kind of emailer.

Same here.

Now if I need to ask someone about something over email I only include a single question per email

Because you can be sure that only one will get answered and the rest are just ignored.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#64

Post by chrisseaton »

robbrown451 wrote: post #61

There's a strange circularity to the title. It's almost like saying "90% of Americans have below median literacy skills." In that one it is obviously false, since we define median as being at 50-percentile. But this is not a lot different. To me "6th grade reading level" should mean "the reading skills of a 50-percentile 6th grader." But then the statement can't be true, unless you accept that the typical 6th grader…

> So.... how do you define "6th-grade reading level"?

The standard required to pass the 6th grade, I guess? Possibly people are reading at that level but then forget how to do it later in life? That's definitely the case with for example knowledge of maths.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#66

Post by jakear »

jeffbee wrote: post #27
woodruffw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the key observation: these surveys aim to determine the general English literacy of the American workforce. You don't have to be a US citizen or a voter, or even an English speaker to work in this country. A more accurate metric would be "prose literacy in the individual's at-home spoken language," which would probably yield a significantly less drastic picture. Perhaps not the best one, but nowhere near as e…

Still, it is interesting to look at questions that most people failed. Apparently in the 2003 round of evaluations only 16% of participants could answer the question "What is the purpose of the Se Habla Espanol expo?" after reading this short magazine article. https://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/sample_imgtxtequiv.asp?Imageid=164

I love that the article I presume you got that from [1] states:

> Acceptable answers include statement such as:

> To enable people to better serve and sell to the Hispanic community; to improve marketing strategies to the Hispanic community; and to enable people to establish contacts to serve the Hispanic community.

Which is not only grammatically incorrect, but grammatically incorrect to the point of message-shattering ambiguity. Is the triplet of statements required for an acceptable answer, or would any individual statement from that list suffice? If all three would be required I doubt I'd have been marked correct - I would have just listed the most important one then moved on to the next question.

[1] https://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you-rea... (first search result for "Se Habla Español Hits Chicago" besides the link you gave)

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#67

Post by OJFord »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #30
sambroner wrote: post #9

It's hard to tell from Wikipedia what the 6th-grade reading level is and how its measured. Google points me to Flesch Reading Ease. Not a very precise formula... If I remember correctly, the NYTimes is written for the 8th-grade level. Similarly, many hospitals/healthcare facilities don't allow writing above the 8th-grade level. So, expressive, detailed, and stylized writing are all easily possible at the 8th-grade le…

>What's the gap between an 8th grade reader and a 6th grade reader? They can both interpret the instructions on the side of an AT4 but the 8th grader will be able to tell you that it did not have any alliterations, foreshadowing, or personification. People always forget that at some point in middle school "getting better at reading" stops being about interpreting the literal meanings of sentences and paragraphs and s…

> is completely superfluous to what it takes to transact business.

Except that it makes you aware of the techniques used on you, and able to use them yourself.

I bet English teachers in the UK loved (the 90s Prime Minister) Blair's 'education, education, education' (as a teaching point, aside from how their colleagues might have)!

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#68

Post by lucb1e »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #30
sambroner wrote: post #9

It's hard to tell from Wikipedia what the 6th-grade reading level is and how its measured. Google points me to Flesch Reading Ease. Not a very precise formula... If I remember correctly, the NYTimes is written for the 8th-grade level. Similarly, many hospitals/healthcare facilities don't allow writing above the 8th-grade level. So, expressive, detailed, and stylized writing are all easily possible at the 8th-grade le…

>What's the gap between an 8th grade reader and a 6th grade reader? They can both interpret the instructions on the side of an AT4 but the 8th grader will be able to tell you that it did not have any alliterations, foreshadowing, or personification. People always forget that at some point in middle school "getting better at reading" stops being about interpreting the literal meanings of sentences and paragraphs and s…

> but the 8th grader will be able to tell you that it did not have any alliterations, foreshadowing, or personification.

I don't know what alliteration and personification means and I miss foreshadowing all the time. TIL I'm a 6th grade reader with a master's degree in a computer field. (Basically I'm reading text off screens for ~14 hours per day, doesn't mean I'm necessarily good at it but it's also not as if I'm likely to be barely average at it.)

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#69

Post by Mistletoe »

maybecrypto wrote: post #21

Well that would certainly explain the meme culture.

And how hard it has been to get people to do common sense things like wear a mask or get a vaccine. A sixth grader's brain in an adult's body can't understand why they need to do anything, nor any data we could give them that explains why.

Re: 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level

#70

Post by rahimnathwani »

mistrial9 wrote: post #57
rahimnathwani wrote: post #35

In California, Many schools in Califonia use an unproven/inferior method/curriculum for teaching literacy, based on the work of F&P.[1] [0] https://caaspp-elpac.cde.ca.gov/caaspp/DashViewReport?ps=tru... [1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2021/11/19/fountas-pinnell-...

many people here have not gone to public school with people who do not learn to read and write at basic levels. Please let me inform you, its not due to "unfair testing" -- lack of adult literacy is very real.

50% of kids meet the standard. Of those, some meet the standard only due to the efforts of their parents: either direct (teaching their kids after school) or indirect (paying for after-school tuition).

So the % of kids that schools are successfully teaching to read is maybe 30% or 40%.

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