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/

I am not always good at reading books with complicated or old fashioned language, I don't have the patience to persist if they are hard work.
And I wasn't really taught parts of speech in school,or university.
However I am constantly frustrated that people on mumsnet have failed to understand what was said in the original post, you could be right that this is due to reading compression skills, but I also suspect that some people look at a post and think what nasty thing can I say to make the OP feel bad.

I've spent large parts of my career doing what is effectively level 5; find and synthesise the information while drawing out extra conclusions. Looking for interesting nuggets basically, though usually with a heavy focus on numbers as well as content. I hired on two separate occasions super smart astro-physicists; after training them to do some stuff and letting them do it for a bit, each one came to me a bit baffled. They found it entertaining, but didn't understand why it was a job, "because anyone at the client could just do this". I was able to explain that "no, it doesn't seem to be the case that anyone can do this", but it was hard to explain why apart from "not everyone's brain works like ours". It isn't as simple as intellect, because not every person of high intelligence can do it. I think that level 5 is logic skills merged with linguistic skills, rather than linguistic ability alone.

@Jaslima , I'm not being awkward here but asking, do you read for pleasure or for information mainly? I read for fun, I actively prefer to read stuff written down.

I love this thread.

No matter how many times I read about levels of literary, I’m still shocked. Words have always given me such pleasure and it makes me sad to think there are people out there who haven’t had the opportunity to explore that.

My mother taught me to read before school (one of the few things she got right) and I’ve always loved books. I write extensively in my day job, I’m also published (fiction and soon to be non-fiction), and I have a degree (First) and soon to be MFA (Distinction so far) in Creative Writing. Hoping to pursue a PhD after.

I sort of know what you mean @DinosaurBaby. I Iearned my living by getting paid for writing, but it has never been about writing on spec. I have only ever written to get paid. I don't do it for fun. I get paid for turning customer's ramblings into intelligent prose. Yes, sometimes I have creative ideas, but I have never been motivated to try and sell them into a market where I don't already have a reputation, even when I think, "that's a good idea". I won't write a word, except for fun here on MN, unless I am getting paid.

Did you spell lexicants right??? 😉

This is me. We weren't taught English grammar at school; I am pretty good at knowing if something is correct or not, but I can't tell you the why.

I'm currently learning Spanish and really struggling with learning the 'rules' of grammar and what they mean. As with English, I'm getting pretty good at telling if something sounds right or wrong, but again I can't tell you why. I think I need to buckle down and really focus on the grammar but most of the time when I try, my brain clangs shut and doesn't want to cooperate

Hi op.

I've only read the first few pages.
This has become a special interest of mine because I learned to read with no effort. One day as my mother was reading me a book the letters made sense.
Then I could read.

One dc also learned by phonics with seemingly no issues and her reading suddenly took off in year 1.

However the next dc seemed to struggle and the school kept saying wait it's fine and tricky trigraphs and double speak.
Well...thank you covid.

Year 3 on level ort 6 stuttering through simple sentences I thought how much longer to have to wait? She can't read, she's bored and she can't access the curriculum.

I did so much research and asked on here and I found my own stragety which was basically, forget phonics.

Flash cards everyday for first 100 hfw.
Peter and Jane books which gave her a huge sense of achievement and were fast!
Reading chest to get level 6 books she enjoyed.

I'm not joking by ditching phonics and using this we got her up to pages with a few paragraphs reading smoothly in a few months...

The question is, why did she need us to step in.
Why can't our school system cope with a flexible approach to learning to read?

We are hobbling our children by this fanatical obsession with phonics.

I'm level 5 in both. My working life consists of data gathering, analysis, comparison and presenting the findings in easy to understand graphical forms, along with interpreting Statutory guidance and instructions/laws into working practise and translating it for others so they understand why particular actions have to be taken.

Unfortunately, my attention span is more in keeping with a bored 7 year old, so I do find myself slowly losing the will to live when I'm at the point of saying 'We have to do it this way because I said so, OK?'.

@MRex can you please send me or post the link that describes the levels of reading (as in level 5 as mentioned in your post)? x x

One day as my mother was reading me a book the letters made sense.
Then I could read. @BornFreeButinChains I suspect your mother was reading WITH you rather than reading TO you? i.e., you were sitting in a place where you could see the pages as she was reading them, and she might even have been pointing to the words or following them with her finger as she read?

This is the best way for all parents to start reading with their children.

The link is in the OP.

I have severely dyslexic children. One however listens to lots of audio books and podcasts and watches lots of documentaries. I am constantly surprised by the depth of his spoken vocabulary.

I know how you feel. I recently restarted learning Finnish and the grammar learning (sooo many different cases which change the words, differently depending on the word type and some word types look the same but conjugate differently and you just need to know which is which) is driving me insane. I can tell if something sounds wrong as well but don't know how to make it sound right. I need to get on a level good enough to read and understand textbooks and complicated instruction manuals by August - not going to happen at this rate!

1 in 15 people have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a lifelong condition that affects all areas of language learning. Quite often people that read (decode) fluently can't fully understand what they have read due to language difficulties.
radld.org/

@JackiePlace yes I could definitely see the words as she read. I was very young when it happened maybe 4 and was then known as an early reader at school.

@Hankunamatata.. Yes there are many ways to tackle it aren't there.

My dd has only read three books and she's 10. However she has a decent vocabulary that we are boosting

😂😂😂

Then I could read. @BornFreeButinChains I suspect your mother was reading WITH you rather than reading TO you? i.e., you were sitting in a place where you could see the pages as she was reading them, and she might even have been pointing to the words or following them with her finger as she read?

This is the best way for all parents to start reading with their children.

I think that happens naturally because early books are picture books so the child looks at the pages with the parent and sees the words beside the pictures. I clearly remember being surprised when my DS aged 3 or so told me off for skipping a bit of the text!

I am a solicitor. A few years ago, I was reading a judgment and I noticed that it had been certified as being intelligible to people with a particular reading level. I recall looking at the scale at the time but I cannot now remember what it was. I think the level was around GCSE. I thought that it was very interesting, and welcome, that efforts were being made to make legal documents comprehensible to the general public. Possibly the one that I read was related to consumer rights or some topic that it was particularly important for the general public to understand.

(I can say from bitter experience that many judgments are extremely complex and leave even experienced lawyers scratching their heads.)

Anyway I can't find any record online of a new policy of requiring clear drafting of judgments, and I have not since seen a judgment with a similar certification, but I did come across this one from 2016: it relates to family proceedings involving a mother who appears to have some degree of learning difficulties, and two children aged 10 and 12. The judge says he has tried to write it in a way which the mother and older children will understand.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2016/9.html

I have a friend who runs literacy programs in prison and secure accommodation. He shocked me years ago when he told me approximately 89 percent of inmates have not passed English GCSE and even more can't read properly and virtually none of them can understand 24 hour clock on railway timetables etc. He says they all seem to understand money though.

I reccently had to 'dumb down' the academic papers I've written for my masters level qualification, because the marker couldn't understand the nuance, or indeed some of the vocabulary I had used. From that, and my degree classification/subject, I'm going to assume I'm at Level 5. And the marker is not.

How did you get to that point? Don't you just get a mark and that's the end of it?

I reccently had to 'dumb down' the academic papers I've written for my masters level qualification, because the marker couldn't understand the nuance, or indeed some of the vocabulary I had used. From that, and my degree classification/subject, I'm going to assume I'm at Level 5. And the marker is not.'

Hmm 🤔 or maybe received unwelcomed critique.

I'm late 60s. As a kid I read a book a day - my mother used to test me to make sure I actually had read them! I had! I had to belong to 3 libraries to feed my addiction.

At school, our English lessons and tests concentrated on Reading, Writing and Comprehension. I scored highly in all 3.

Now, I wouldn't have known a digraph or a fronted adverbial if I'd tripped over them. However, I have a wide vocabulary, excellent punctuation skills (waits to be caught out with that one!) and can write reasonably well. I think today we concentrate too much on the technical terms and not the actual real-life use of them. Also, with the way things are with the internet and all that's available, so few young people read for pleasure. My DGC can all read above their ages (inherited ability I think) but only read because they have to.