To ask what you think your reading level might be?

[2023a]

I think lots of us have had the odd frustrating conversation on here, where the other person just hasn’t seemed to be able to grasp what we’re saying. Apparently, it’s very possible that the posters in question genuinely don’t understand.

A 2011 government survey of adult literacy skills found that 14.9% (or 1 in 7) of adults in England have literacy levels at or below Entry Level 3, which is equivalent to the literacy skills expected of a nine to 11-year-old.

More recently, in 2015, the OECD conducted its Survey of Adult Skills, known as PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies). This survey found that 16.4% (or 1 in 6) of adults in England, and 17.4% (or 1 in 5) adults in Northern Ireland, have literacy levels at or below Level 1, which is considered to be 'very poor literacy skills'.

More info here, if you’re interested: literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/

Thank you very much for your advice @PennyRa and @sashh.

Wow @CrackedLookingGlass that's pretty amazing.
To come from parents who are semi literate and living in what sounds like an area of deprivation and end up with a doctorate and being fluent in 4 languages is a minor miracle. You must have worked incredibly hard. Hats off to you.

Thanks, @DesdamonasHandkerchief (and why don’t more usernames reference key Tragic Props?), that is a very kind thing to say, but I’m deeply ordinary. Stubborn as fuck, and definitely have a sense of generations of family behind me who didn’t have my opportunities.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_(pragmatic)_communication_disorder

Ha ha CrackedGlass I can tell you're well read because you 'get' my user name!

I feel like my reading level is not as high as it used to be, I think I would probably struggle with complicated non-fiction texts these days as most reading I do is novels and online news.

Mine is high. I grew up in a household with no TV, so I read a lot as a child. I've also studied other languages and I know about the subjunctive, although remarkably few people appear to be interested in discussing the subtleties of its use... I was always top in reading tests at school. I've written a lot for work, and as much of the audience doesn't have Englias their first language, I try to use clear wording - although many of my European colleagues have better English than my British ones.

It's fascinating. I recently got tangled up in a conversation with a client because they genuinely didn't understand the difference between 'being' and 'been' e.g. they told me "the product's been manufactured" whereas they actually meant 'the product's being manufactured.' They thought the two words were interchangeable.

Retired editor here. I believe mine is very high. Not surprising, as I entered the school system reading at a year 3 level thanks to my parents' teaching me to read before I was 4 years old.

I recently got tangled up in a conversation with a client because they genuinely didn't understand the difference between 'being' and 'been'

The people who I work with who learnt English as one of their other languages don't tend to get confused with grammar unlike a lot of only English speakers.

Oh and at age 9, like 4 others in my class of about 23, my reading was at the top of the scale. The scale only went up to 15 years old.

I had a reading age of nine when I was about three, so hope it's gone up a bit by now. If I've remained six years in advance, about 53 years old.

😂

The scales only went up to about 15/16.

My point was that it isn't unusual for children to have an advanced reading age.

The issue is those who reading age is so low they can't progress in education.

I would hope mine is pretty decent, as I’ve postgraduate qualifications. However I work in schools and see the effects of poor literacy among kids. There’s also a confusion amongst some kids (and parents!) between reading being the act of decoding a text, and comprehension. I work closely with a child who insists she can read well, and indeed can decode practically anything, but has very limited comprehension or inference skills - so if you ask her a question like ‘why was the gruffalo afraid of the mouse’ she won’t know, despite having been easily able to decide the whole book.

there must be many adults out there with similar levels of literacy - they can decode, but find inference and comprehension hard, to impossible. This can have a huge impact on their life chances.

same goes for maths skills, although as a nation we can be oddly proud of our lack of maths ability - think of the number of people happy to say ‘duh can’t do maths!!’ Who would say ‘duh can’t read well’ I don’t quite understand why there is a big difference between reading and maths in this way.

It was a real eye opener to me when I moved industries, what the standard of literacy and reading comprehension was among the (very large) workforce. Not everyone by all means, but a significant proportion struggle to understand almost anything, no matter how simply explained. When you try and explain things that have some inherent complexity it’s absolutely futile.

its quite worrying to think that this workforce is representative of the UK as a whole.

same goes for maths skills, although as a nation we can be oddly proud of our lack of maths ability - think of the number of people happy to say ‘duh can’t do maths!!’ Who would say ‘duh can’t read well’ I don’t quite understand why there is a big difference between reading and maths in this way.

It depends whether you’re talking about mathematics or numeracy, I would think. Not many people would say ‘duh can’t count’ in the way you describe.

Interesting. I think playfulness with language, puns, wordplay etc also are markers of high literacy. I’m a secondary school English teacher in an academic school. Our department is pretty high flying and everyone loves language based jokes and witticisms. As a child I was obsessed with place names and words and read about 7 books per week. Still read lots but am very concerned about the dumbing down of English teaching, particularly in Academy Schools where it’s all done by PowerPoint. The skills of inference and personal ideas are given little encouragement.

Oh my goodness I am outraged on your behalf!

I love your answer. Totally logical, by a path that's much more interesting than the official one.

Brave New World is frightening when you look at it in the context of today’s society.

Almost every important point has come true, or is on the cusp of becoming true.

from 1958 is amazing - wish this sort of tv still existed

I think you generally surrond yourself with people who are on the same 'level' as you so it can often be shocking when you realise that not everyone else has the same knowledge. Often things that are obvious to me and DH and even our kids are really difficult for other people to know or understand.

I was a very early reader (I'm adopted so I dont know the exact details but it wasnt a household that valued education so I think i pretty much taught my self to read at preschool age). I was always a really big reader as a child and DH has also always been a reader too. DS1 was assessed as reading age 14+ when he was 4 and the other 2 also have much higher reading ages than thier 'real age'.

I found the stat that 1 in 10 people do not have a single book in thier house quite sad. We have possibly 1000's of books scattered around - aoart from the bathrooms there are books in every room including several boxes in the attic.

I think it is interesting how different peoples brains work and I'm not sure if it is nature or nuture! For example at work we were asked to fill a form in with some info that went off to somewhere else. I found out my colleague had no idea why the info was asked for or what was done with it whereas I had asked a load of questions to understand the whole process. So evidently some people are just happy with thier piece of the puzzle whereas others like to understand how thier piece fits with surronding oones and the big overall picture!

I am bi lingual and read in 3 languages- 2 fluent 3rd only short articles.

So I think I should be in the top % in English literacy. I can read/ understand both fiction and academic texts ( in history and Law). I started to learn English was acquired in my mid teens

But then, once in a while I come across something where I draw a complete blank!

Mine is genius level thanks to my dear mum who had me on Fay Weldon by primary six, but I have a colleague who can just barely function.

He does most tasks verbally, including speaking into Microsoft word which tidies it up a bit, then if it's important he asks me to glance over it.

He works in sales and is quite good at it but I do cringe at how he pronounces some words. Such a shame his own parents were unable to give him a better start.

We read 1984 for O Level English, and we read BNW as a comparison. I remember we had a class debate about which scenario we'd prefer to live in, and we all said BNW. Our English teacher was appalled and gave us loads of reasons why we'd be better off in a 1984 world.

These things stick with you don’t they? I still remember one of my 11 plus questions, I think it must have involved some sort of anagram relating to popular sayings, I can’t quite remember the question, but I later learned the answer was ointment.

@MagicCat83 Have you talked to any bots recently?? They make more sense than people, and have better grammar and spelling skills too!!