cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1006130
This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/Last_Salad_5080 on 2023-10-03 14:21:04.
Ironic that there’s a grammatical error in the headline… 6th-grade levels, surely
77% of Americans write below 9th grade-levels, and hyphens are taught as an elective.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!!!
You’re right, this is a glass-half-full situation.
The great journalism of “Homeless Romantic” has really been in decline.
This is all just a simulation.
That’s what the lizard people want you to think!
If it were a simulation or real what would be the difference? I mean if you could replicate the titanic down to the atom you effectively have the original. Same philosophical “problem” with teleportation of a human being.
The hyphen goes between grade and levels. Confidently incorrect.
How is the feet pics thing working out for you?
Quite a few pictures. Most of them troll pictures.
All that does is make it extremely poorly written because of “sixth” followed by a compound noun instead of the misplaced hyphenation for a compound adjective.
What you basically just said is “it’s not grammatically incorrect in that way, it’s even more grammatically incorrect to the point of being nonsensical in this other, more abstruse way.”
6th-grade levels
It’s not that hard
No shit. I was explaining to the person that thinks it should be “6th grade-levels” that would be even more nonsensical and grammatically incorrect.
For someone that seems to be critical of writing errors, you’re shockingly bad at reading comprehension. All you are doing is quite literally repeating the sentiment of the initial comment in this thread.
It’s not that hard.
You hyphenate the words acting as an adjective, I e. Two-gun kid, not two gun-kid
One might also hyphenate compound nouns. Depending on context, “two gun-kids” could be correct–though it seems unlikely.
Also, in this case you should use e.g. (not i.e.). No big deal though, I knew what you meant.
Read to your kids. Use big words around them.
Yeah, say things like “Oh how droll, your lexicon and command of the English language is quite lamentable. Perchance your parents taught you little and never thought to embiggen your vernacular?”
Also lmao iPhones don’t recognize that embiggen is an actual dictionary word 😂
That’s because it’s from the simpsons.
Actually, no! The Simpsons used the word and was the reason it was actually put into the dictionary, but originally the word was used in a book from some dude in 1884 by the name of C.A. Ward.
As a former child this is nothing new to me. I remember how much I hated when the teacher had people read things out loud in English class. Hell honestly any class. The amount of people who read like every. Word. Had. A. Period. And the people who would read any word longer than 3 syllables like it was hy-phe-na-ted. It was fucking torture.
20 minutes to read one single page.
Yeah, this was torture in grade school. I figured it would get better in middle school.
Then it was torture in middle school and I thought it would get better in high school.
Then it was STILL torture in high school and I thought it would surely, surely get better in college.
Then I got to college and there were still mofos reading. like. this.
I am an engineer who oversees a team. Most of them can’t write more than a coherent sentence. Code and analyze data, sure, but put together a coherent paragraph? Not really.
There’s a weird ongoing thing in the programming world where about half of coders think code should be well-commented and the other half not only think that code shouldn’t contain comments but also think that comments are an indicator of professional incompetence (aka a “code smell”). I’ve long noticed that the anti-commenting crowd are also the ones that can’t write very well.
Almost like they don’t want anyone to figure out how dogshit their code is.
People who dislike code documentation are often overoptimizers, from my experience.
Optimizing like it’s the early 80s and every byte is precious? Or do you mean something else?
Exactly. Using 10 obscure instructions to save 1 clock cycle.
In my experience it is job security.
One way my code improves is by thinking what I need to comment. Then I refactor some and the comments become somewhat redundant.
I don’t think I would agree to work with someone who doesn’t comment their code.
I was basically driven out of my last job by someone who wouldn’t agree to work with someone (me) who did comment their code. Like I said, it’s a really weird dividing line in programming.
I have had to tell software engineers time and time again that is is totally okay to make error strings beyond one sentence or one word. It almost seems to me that they never realized that strings can hold multiple sentences and and don’t have relevant memory constraints.
I was shy-ish and didn’t participate much, but I would often volunteer to read aloud. It was easier for everyone that way, since one of the few things I was exceptional at was reading
I also couldn’t stand reading along with someone who couldn’t. It was too painful
I got in trouble for correcting other kids that didn’t grasp phonics. In first grade. I was a little asshole but I was just trying to help. Also it was painful as hell.
Hooked on phonics worked for me.
… I’m actually not cracking a joke. One of the few memories I have from when I was very young (under maybe 6 or so) was going through hooked on phonics material.
In my college years, while not focused on language or communication (I’m an IT technician, specializing in computer networking) I became obsessed with the English language and it’s been a long term study for me. I’m still learning new things all the time despite English being my only fluent language. The nuances of when to use what terms despite each term being roughly equivalent (such as: what is the difference is between “affect” and “effect”), and other such oddities and specifics. College didn’t really tell me anything new about the language I speak, but dealing with everyone’s terrible use of the language, and being misunderstood many times because of poor structure or word selection caused me to want to step up so I can reduce how many follow ups I have to deal with to clarify myself.
I find most people are almost unnecessarily terse, leaving out important context that they think is obvious and assume that everyone who receives their message will make the same observation, when it’s not an obvious thing at all to many; this assumption is extremely common and often it’s not something that even crosses into the minds of those doing it. Such assumptions often lead to misunderstandings and are the basis of more than a few ha ha funny jokes in sitcoms, all of which I find rather cringe.
As a society, we abuse language severely. By extension, otherwise mundane situations can turn hazardous or even lethal if a misunderstanding happens; and many leave a lot of the context, and a fundamental understanding of context, to the assumptions of the reader/listener. It’s really dumb IMO.
If the literal majority of people are reading at a 6th grade level, the society in which we live should be making efforts to improve that. Bluntly, I shouldn’t need to “read between the lines” to understand what you want me to do.
I ran your comment through a word analyzer, and you will be happy to know your text scored at a 12th grade level!
Unfortunately, that means that most Americans will be unable to comprehend what you wrote. Sort of a catch-22 I suppose, although it may provide a natural filtering device to filter out the idiots, I suppose.
nuances of when to use what terms despite each term being roughly equivalent (such as: what is the difference is between “affect” and “effect”)
Maybe it’s an effect of me having English as a 3rd language, but… what nuance? They’re two different words.
I find most people are almost unnecessarily terse, leaving out important context that they think is obvious and assume that everyone who receives their message will make the same observation
I shouldn’t need to “read between the lines” to understand what you want me to do.
I’ve been told that’s an aspect of being on the autistic spectrum, that “normal people” will have no trouble picking up on the missing context.
Always sounded to me like an excuse for being sloppy, like maybe the lazies are lowering the “autism” bar too low… but who am I to judge anyone, but a simple chap on the spectrum.
I can usually (about 98% of the time) pick up on the assumed context. I recognise that not everyone does, so I try not to make the assumption. For me that goes back to the curse of knowledge problem more than anything. It makes sense to me because I know the context and underlying information about the matter. I try not to make an assumption that everyone will know that when reading my notes/emails/documentation/etc.
Native English speakers use affect and effect fairly interchangeably, so most don’t know the difference because they haven’t opened dictionary.com in a decade or more.
I found this hilarious to read.
Take it from another would-be English major who found a career in IT infrastructure. We are the ones with the problem over-explaining things because we value having a full information set over being concise. The thing is I agree with you that people are overly terse, or maybe more directly people are unable to process long blocks of information. It’s frustrating, because I would rather have it all in one place to reference back to.
But I’ve found the flip side of that is that in my efforts to ensure there is no possible way to misconstrue my communication, I lose everyone in its length. Yes it would be nice if everyone was able to digest what amounts to a technical manual-cum-email so they have a full understanding. But the reality is that the vast majority of people cannot. They simply shut down and stop reading. Therefore it is my responsibility to adjust my delivery to be most effective for the intended audience. This includes fewer words, more direct points, and less supporting details unless asked for more.
I guess my point is, I see myself in your comment. And I wanted to share that I used to feel that way but time has softened my outlook and opened me to the idea that I’m definitely complicit in the overall lack of understanding by failing to account for my audience.
Look at that, there I go rambling again!
I understand. The way I’ve taken to structure my messages is to provide the terse summary up front then elaborate as I go, summarize tersely at the end and re-pose any pressing questions. This way the reader can mostly skip the middle of my email and go from the executive summary at the top and forward themselves to the last few sentences and hit reply. If they want more detail, it’s all there.
I try to keep away from any overly technical jargon, and kind of “dumb it down” aka, use non-technical language as much as I can while still keeping to the point and being accurate. If they want the technical jargon version, they can ask, but they never do.
I find it helps me since I can go back and reference the information if I need it, or point the client to it and go over it with them later if they ask at a later date.
I don’t know if that’s something that’s possible with your work, but it seems to minimize the follow ups and the end user seems to be happy most of the time. There’s always a few that will complain, but I’ve gotten more compliments on my communication style than anything.
I find most people are almost unnecessarily terse
no
I never had patience for that and would just read ahead and ignore the person speaking.
Kids read like that because they know if they make a mistake they will get a lower grade. Better to be slow and correct.
This happened all the way through highschool.
I don’t know in that case.
It looks like there’s at least some bias as they only counted English literacy.
This is basically a map of how many Mexican immigrants each state has. I agree the English bias is not great because not speaking English doesn’t make you dumb.
Not being able to read also doesn’t auromatically equate dumb though. It just highlights a systemic failure of the educations system. And arguably a country experiencing a language divide to this degree is a systemic failure of some kind as well.
are you soft blaming this on the immigrants? Immigrants are more likely to speak, read, and write 2 or more languages fluently than it is that the average american can do any of that for 1
deleted by creator
Its an incredibly large thing to leap to on literally no evidence. Its pure fact that immigrants have far better language skills than the average american, as I said above. They may not know of the racism, but that doesn’t mean its there.
deleted by creator
Pinning the entire problem immediately on immigrants is racist. Immigrants are not a problem, they’re a scapegoat.
deleted by creator
To be clear I wasn’t trying to leap on, “haha Mexican immigrants can’t speak English”. I was pointing out proximity to a primarily Spanish speaking country is going to lead to a greater population whose native language is not English, and therefore less fluent English speakers.
I grew up in an area of the US with tons of immigrants, most of whom learned Spanish before English. Going the other way I learned Spanish after learning English, and as such I probably have a less than 6th grade reading level in Spanish because it’s not the language I learned from birth, nor the one I speak at home.
I also specifically mentioned Mexican immigrants because the other country we border also has a primary language of English, which is why our northern border has better English literacy rates.
It’s a pretty easy correlation to make, and doesn’t require a whole study to identify the trend. Spanish is also the second most spoken language in the country so naturally areas with low English literacy rates are likely to have higher populations speaking the second most spoken language in the country. Hell, if you look at a map of latinos in the US it’s almost identical to the above map.
Considering what article this comment is under I kinda have to ask now: is English your first language?
Because an understanding of the comment above yours should center on the word “bias”, not on the word “immigrant”.
deleted by creator
I want to look at the eyes of a person who set a white colour on the scale to 12% value.
well since america’s literacy is so bad it seems they had to put 12% as the baseline
It’s basically Americas official language, let’s not pretend it isn’t.
That doesn’t mean Spanish speakers are illiterate. They just read Spanish.
True, I totally agree.
However, if one is evaluating “functional literacy” that means determining if one reads well enough to function in society.
So to truly evaluate functional literacy for native Spanish speakers, it seems like one would have to somehow factor in two things.
First, English is the de facto language in the US. Second, Spanish language translations are provided for a number of written things (for example, our school district letters to parents).
One would be more functional being fluent only in English than only in Spanish, sure (and it depends on which part of the country even which part of a city). But one would surely be more function having some knowledge of English and fluency in Spanish.
If you go to school in America, you’re obviously going to learn and be taught in English. There’s a lot of immigrants that don’t know any English. I interact with a lot of them, and they’ll even have their 6 year olds translate for them. It actually impresses me, because the little kids act very mature when they have to translate, since I’m sure they are used to having to navigate their family around at a very young age.
Maybe if we actually paid teachers and gave funding to education this wouldn’t be a problem. Education in the US is god awful.
You know what Education in the US craves? Electrolytes…
It’s not just the teachers, it’s also the teachers of the teachers and the whole American system of teaching reading that’s also in need of dire improvement. A good resource on how bad reading education is in America I can recommend Sold a story, a podcast.
And yet “Terms Of Service” are supposed to be fair. When they’re written at a college level.
Not just college, but by lawyers, so a doctorate level.
That seems a little generous. While I know it’s challenging, I don’t think law school is quite the same thing as a PhD program.
I agree with your statement, but law school (in the US) gives you a literal doctorate. It’s not a PhD but JD stands for juris doctor.
Yes, I am aware of what JD stands for. Glad that we can agree that it’s not really equivalent to a PhD.
A little known fact is that provided one can pass their local bar exam, they’re still a lawyer/officer of the court, regardless of whether they attended law school or not.
It’s not really a thing anymore, but historically a lot of lawyers served a kind of apprenticeship in lieu of law-school.
Abraham Lincoln is a great example, for instance.
It’s not the terms of service’s fault that adults can’t read over a 6th grade level
No, but think about how we structure society.
We give people shit education, and they wind up not being able to read at a 6th grade level.
Then you basically have to navigate an entire world where you are required to pick how to sign away some of your rights/enter deals written beyond their comprehension.
This is a system that breeds suckers as sets them up as suckers, to screw them later.
On the other hand, always targeting the lowest common denominator has negative consequences also. There needs to be a balance, and equity to close the gaps.
The solution to that isn’t to dumb down everything, it’s to lift everyone else up. Mandate that adults be educated and provide remedial classes at community colleges for free. Failure to comply results in losing the ability to hold gainful employment or vote. Anonymize testing and tie test results to social security numbers.
It’s either do that, or allow civilization to collapse while other countries that do force their citizens to be educated flourish.
And many adults choose not to read. It is almost as if they are connected
This is the reason the GOP exists as it does. It is the fucking idiots party.
Which is exactly the goal. They want a large number of poorly educated people who are easy to manipulate. This is why they defund schools and ban reproductive health education as their very first steps when they come to power.
Large number of poorly educated, easily manipulated people? You mean like the illegal immigrants the left is letting in in droves?
I’ve never understood this conspiracy. Illegal immigrants can’t vote. How exactly is the left supposed to benefit?
Yeah, the argument makes literally zero sense, but if you bring it up to them, it opens the door for them to talk about other batshit crazy conspiracies. Like needing tighter controls on who can vote. Which are thinly veiled attempts to limit the opposition from voting.
One time someone made an argument that semi made sense.
“It’s their children! These immigrants come in here and liberals give them jobs and welfare and put their kids in schools and give them scholarships and then the kids grow up to vote for Democrats!”
And I’m like…that’s incredible! You’re really making the Dems sound like good guys here!
None of it makes sense unless you start from a baseline of racism.
The issue is those benefits like free healthcare, scholarships, and such is that they aren’t also given to actual US citizens, we treat illegals better than our own.
Fuck off.
My ancestors and maybe yours too for that matter, were poorly educated, not by choice. They migrated here bc they were desperate and it offered hope. And now many generations later, my parents’ and all subsequent generations in the family have been college educated with many success stories.
You just don’t like brown people. Fuck off.
Our ancestors didn’t drag their children through barbed wire and didn’t demote US citizens to 2nd class by receiving free healthcare and benefits over them. They also didn’t steal to such a degree that the police gave up on enforcing the law.
It might be, but I guarantee you that there’s a not insignificant number of people who align with the left who are dumb as rocks and just happened to fall into that party instead.
If there’s some study proving that uneducated or unintelligent people are only ever exclusively on the right and the left is just full of geniuses, I haven’t seen it.
Yes, in general those who have attained college degrees are more likely to vote Democratic and those who have attained just a high school diploma are more likely to vote Republican. There is a clear divide where the more educated cohort of society leans Democratic.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10659129221079862
Education isn’t 1 to 1 with intelligence, it’s mostly a wealth test in the US. Though I’d argue the phenomenon is more to do with being exposed to different people and wider cultural beliefs than raw intelligence, anyways.
Education also matters because it teaches critical thinking and epistemology. You can be highly intelligent, but if you don’t have any critical thinking skills and an understanding of the rules of evidence, you can still be easily misled and otherwise manipulated.
Orr maybe, you see what you want to see.
Here’s an article with more details about the study: https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy#:~:text=by EMILY SCHMIDT | March 16%2C 2022&text=This means more than half,of a sixth-grade level.
Dr. Iris Feinberg, associate director of the Adult Literacy Research Center at Georgia State University, points to under-served communities with “print deserts,” poorly funded schools, and little internet access as being the places where the people with poor reading skills live. She also called it an inter-generational cycle of low literacy, so it’s not just a recent problem with people not wanting to read.
Why u hurt our brain with thing that not screenshot of headline or tweet
wait yall can read?
What did you say?
Yup. And the map is pretty much what you’d guess, Mississippi is #1. That is, #1 for worst literacy rate in the nation. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/How-Serious-Is-Americas-Literacy-Problem
California and New York being high on the list is a little surprising, however.
large, under-educated and recently arrived immigrant populations do contribute to it for sure
California has more Republicans than fill in state. The Central Valley is just littered with ignorance and po dunk pretend (and real) shit kickers. I know this because my family came from that area.
American’s have been going down the dumbass road for a long time. And you rarely meet someone who is well rounded like you meet in Europe. Not to say there aren’t dumbasses in Europe. There are many. But Americans don’t even seem to try. Not anymore.
I’m American and have lived in Europe for 15 years. I assure you there is every level of educated/not educated (crystalized intelligence) and every level of very bright and pretty slow (fluid intelligence) over here, just as there is in every country in the world. Being educated and being intelligent are not the same thing.
Europe is not one place either, take a random Dane and a random person from Italy or Portugal or Croatia or Scotland and put them side by side and tell me thats one culture, ya know?
To your point, though, I will say that the quality of the foundational education in the US does pale pretty quickly when compared to the majority of public education systems that I’d be aware of here. I’ve been pretty embarassed about how limited my knowledge of geography and history has been at times while talking to some of my Italian, Irish and German friends.
I am friends with a primary (elementary) school teacher (teaching outside of Hamburg) and she expressed that she’s seeing a rapid decline in the students’ interest, work ethic and thus their proficiency in the past few years. She’s genuinely alarmed. We might start seeing articles like this about mainland Europe in a few years.
I wonder that the standard used for 6th-grade reading level is. I know that the 6th grade reading level at the beginning of the century is higher than the 6th grade reading level now.
I remember being extremely disappointed when I was in 6th grade and they had arbitrarily moved a lot of books up a reading level. There were a few in particular that I was looking forward to reading while in 5th grade that were at a 6th grade level. Then in 6th grade, I grabbed one of those books to check out but was told that I could t read it because it was now considered 7th grade and that I had to choose from the 6th grade level (which was largely the previous year’s 5th grade level).
This is infuriating. No one should be denied borrowing a book because they’re not at their “grade level”. That’s the kind of shit that contributes to people losing interest in reading from a young age.
Lol as long as its not porn, we could rent any book
Never heard about age limitation
It wasn’t age locked per se. If you were in Honors English, they assumed you were reading at a higher level and could check out books one grade level higher than you and if you were in on-level English you were not allowed to read above “grade level”.
I can understand keeping a 6th grader from checking out a bunch of 1st grade level books, but discouraging kids from pushing themselves was weird
This honestly blows my mind.
I didn’t have a single teacher or librarian who would discourage a kid from reading a book, unless a 6th grader tried checking out a clearly adult intended book like a harlequin novel or something.
I’m glad you had teachers like that. Not sure why mine were so dead-set on only reading in your grade level. Limiting lower level makes more sense, to encourage students to push themselves more. 6th grade was the last grade in the school, so the only people allowed to read the 7th grade level books were in the 6th grade Honors English class. It’s not like the library would run out of books if all 6th graders were allowed to pick out of that section of the library
I hope you got yourself a library card. The idea of limiting kids who are reading above the average level is insane to me. Why restrict everyone to the mean?
Yeah that seems so unfortunate. I loved my elementary school librarian; she would flip to a random page and make sure you could read and understand it. As long as you could do that, you could check it out.
deleted by creator
Explains a lot
pointedly doesn’t look at the numerous Lemmings he’s seen complain that relatively simple statements are grammatically confusing
I’ve absolutely had someone blow a gasket over asking for clarification when they wrote a few sentences where it was unclear from their statement whether they were progressive or a white power lunatic. I could have assumed but my level of certainty was hovering in the mid-50% range. Sometimes the author is an idiot and the questioner is justified. EDIT: from what I could figure out, the gasket blower has a habit of assuming you know their post history rather than letting each comment stand on its own. Which is not very smart.
We have people who think that ‘e-mail’ gets an s as a noun - ever - when ‘mail’ never has.
They will be confused that the sun keeps rising.
The term e-mail has been “neologized” into its own independent word, which may or may not take an s as a plural.
You must be a hit at parties.
And then this links to a picture of a headline, because who’s actually gonna read the article.
Not 54% of adults in the us, apparently.
This is such a huge percentage that it has to be incorrect, right? Over half of American adults can’t really read? Or am I just vastly underestimating a ‘6th grade level’.
I had to look this up because I was thinking the same thing.
Sixth grade reading entails understanding plot structures, narrative voices, character developments, and the use of language. Students also compare and contrast themes in articles and stories. In the process, your child’s vocabulary should grow by leaps and bounds.
From https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/sixth-grade-reading
I can’t find any definition for 8, 9, or 10th grade reading.
I found this, where the definition comes from, it the definition is based on a score on a test and doesn’t always seem to have a set of criteria we can look at. https://www.justrightreads.com/reading-levels-explained
I can’t find any definition for 8, 9, or 10th grade reading.
Check common core standards. For example, grades 9-10 should be able to
Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme.
and also
Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare).
It makes sense. It makes so much sense.
How can you follow an evolving political situation if you struggle to understand and track how stories develop over time?
If Fauci says one thing about COVID and then, 1 year’s worth of research later, he said something different that is going to completely confuse these people. They are literally incapable of understanding how stories evolve.
That’s hard for me to empathize with because that seems like something fundamental to the human mind. It seems like something that everyone should be able to do. But apparently that’s not true.
I even see it a lot here in comment threads. People can’t connect ideas and context in things that they’re responding to, and totally miss the entire point. I used to think they were just trolls but now I think it’s truly poor reading comprehension.
6th grade is what? 10 years old.
I wouldn’t expect them to be reading War and Peace, but they should be able to easily read The Hobbit or Harry Potter.
They’re not on Spot the Dog, or putting their fingers under the words as they go.
6th grade in the states is 12-13. 10 years old is about 4th grade.
6th grade is 11. Unless you have a weird birthday or got held back High School starts around 13-14 years. Maybe you started late? That benefits a lot of kids but most kids graduate highschool at 17/18 not 20.
Don’t think so, I have a 9 year old who turns 10 in February in the 4th grade in the US. They’ve never been held back, started at the right time etc. That puts us 8 years from graduation, at 18.
edit: I’m tired and didn’t read your comment correctly. You are right. We’ll start 6th grade at 11. Leaving so everyone can point and laugh. Sorry!
Or I misremembered. Sometimes your fellow commenters on Lemmy make mistakes.
Definitely happens.
Oh, I was thinking it would be the same as the UK system.
Even better then. I was reading Lord of the Rings by that age.
Looking up the lexile scores, LOTR is written at a 5th or 6th grade level. Same with most of the Harry Potter series.
deleted by creator
No shade at putting fingers under the words as they go, sometimes with some fonts and especially fine print it can be easy for your eye to jump up or down a line.
6th grade level is not too bad. A lot of people graduate school and don’t continue reading a lot, or just aren’t inclined to be good at reading.
6th grade isn’t bad at all. It is about the same level of reading as a TV sitcom. A person with a 6th grade reading level may be limited in regards to higher education, but reading won’t be an issue in their day to day life or even most career paths. If you aren’t challenging yourself by seeking good media and active reading, it is pretty likely that you will fall to around that level.
I’d wager it’s a solid mix of both. A 6th grade level is probably marginally higher than you’re expecting it to be. However, it gets much, much worse than you’d expect in a large portion of the US.
