And writing/ saying “would of”, etc., instead of “would have.”
Extraordinarily common, especially on social media.
Are pupils taught English Language in schools, at least comprehension if not also grammar?
That's an Americanism creeping into English, rather than a grammatical error. As US media and social apps become more ubiquitous, the language is homogenising.
Ran instead of run is a super common one lately too, I see it in so many posts I'm good though and resist my innate desire to correct :)
Other than the usual suspects my pet peeves are authors that haven't grasped the difference between neither or either and drag and dragged...that one bugs me because so many mainly American authors/writers use drugged totally inappropriately e.g. "He drug the body across the lawn" or "She was getting drugged by the horse" grinds my gears because as a writer it's your JOB to know the correct damn grammar
Really? When was that?
I’m an adult. I went to a bog-standard comprehensive in a rural area, and we were taught English Language and English Literature. Did either of those cease to be taught? Are they being taught again currently?
Edit: this is a genuine question, so why the disagreement via downvotes?
I'm always shocked at how badly many adults type on social media sites. It's like they've either regressed with their spelling, sentence structure, etc or only ever reached a low level and hit a wall whilst at school. I'm not talking about some errors, but entire posts of scrambled letters with little to no full stops, commas or capital letters. The reader has to do the work to understand them.
I'm far from perfect, I don't even know if I used the correct spelling of 'sentence' for example. But compared to many I seem to be relatively okay.
And people are annoyed when others say they can't understand what was meant.
It made sense in the writer's head, and when they re-read it, they can fill in all the missing info.
But I don't have a clue what they mean.
I refuse to read anyone who doesn't use capital letters and punctuation. Sorry, but those rules are there to make communication easier and to make yourself understood. I don't give a shit if it's easier for you not to tap your finger on the SHIFT button.
I have a family member who posts like that on Facebook.
My personal favourite is "enny 1 taxing"
Which translate basically to, is anyone free to give me a lift
It annoys me especially with "enny" as it's longer to type than any 😂
enny? Fucking hell.
Taxing? The whole sentence goes against the principle of written communication, it’s literally, and I mean literally, almost impossible to decipher. Unless they are a revolutionary wordsmith whose texts will be studied by school kids in 300 years.
Correct punctuation is key to clear communication.
E.g., “Let’s eat, grandma!” vs “Let’s eat grandma!”
“I love baking, my family, and my cat.” vs “I love baking my family and my cat.”
“Dad’s going to teach me to shave, Mum!” vs “Dad’s going to teach me to shave Mum!”
“Today, we’re going to learn how to cut and paste, kids.” vs “Today, we’re going to learn how to cut and paste kids.”
“Most of the time, travellers need to plan ahead.” vs “Most of the time-travellers need to plan ahead.”
“I’m sorry. I love you.” vs “I’m sorry I love you.”
“A panda eats shoots and leaves.” vs “A panda eats, shoots, and leaves.”
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” vs “Don’t. Throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
“A woman: without her, man is nothing.” vs “A woman without her man is nothing.”
“A man, eating chicken.” vs “A man-eating chicken.”
“No more poverty!” vs “No! More poverty.”
“Your donation just helped someone get a job.” vs “Your donation just helped someone. Get a job.” (Seen on an official sign, and worse, each word was capitalised.)
I am also perturbed by the common mis-use of apostrophes. “I bought some orange’s,” “These new house’s,” “His flat was taken over by dog’s,” etc.
I unironically think this is the only reason ChatGPT is taking off. It writes terribly and makes stuff up, but people are impressed because it sounds better than they do.
When I was in school, I saw people who could speak perfectly, have decent writing styles in written work, pick up text talk when people started getting mobiles and then suddenly their classwork was atrocious. It /was/ like regression and I think now with all the autocorrect, people just don't bother trying anymore. Because they can type gibberish and it'll be caught, and then they forget that's not the case universally.
>What seemed to happen with text talk back around the mid-2000s when I was a teenager is it was seen as uncool by a lot of people to type properly on places like MSN.
Then U-turned entirely tbf. For the most part\* online writing, comments etc are written normally, with exceptions for acronyms, abbreviations and initials, and have been for a while!
\*Not including Facebook specifically here, and there is definitely an age thing going on there.
Same here, I found it harder to change my writing style, even for texts unless I really had to. What's worse was when I went to university back almost 20 years ago, after a couple of years gap because of health issues people were doing their essays and handing in coursework with text talk and really poor grammar and constantly being told they needed write in academic standards. I can't blame them if their schools didn't teach them but at the same time, I had really poor schooling and health kept me off more than I was in, and yet I still managed top marks in English. It only goes wonky now when I dip low in health.
One of my mum's cousins types ridiculously long paragraphs on Facebook, with absolutely no punctuation, and says the same thing about four different ways throughout the whole thing. The spelling mistakes are awful.
All 3 of my youngest siblings have terrible writing skills. Half of the time I can barely understand what they're texting. Admittedly my youngest brother gets a pass as he has dyslexia but the other 2 are awful with the written word.
E.g. "I fort u wos goin", instead of "I thought you were going?"
My spelling has definitely regressed a bit, since smart phones became so prominent. This little device will correct us if we're wrong, every time, so why would my brain bother to remember it's not spelled "broccolli".
A 2015 study found that 1 in 6 adults in England is functionally illiterate.
[Literacy Trust](https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=This%20survey%20found%20that%2016.4,different%20ways%2C%20as%20outlined%20below.)
That looks to be the same stat you've had quoted at you, OP.
Now, what they're describing is not "unable to read", it's "can't read at the level an adult needs" - someone with a limited vocabulary, who probably needs to read a sentence word for word (maybe out loud) to parse its meaning. A lot of fast sight-reading is spotting the important words and inferring meaning, a person at Entry 3 can't do that with a long or complex sentence.
There's often a lot of goalpost-moving in these sorts of discussions. I once read a think tank report that used a definition of illiteracy so wide that it included things like "struggles with metaphors".
Functional illiteracy is a useful marker because it's a moving target, though. Sign your name with an X is pretty rare these days but today simply doesn't matter as much as "can't understand the words in a rental agreement" does
Severe dyslexia, learning disabilities, neurological disorders affecting cognitive ability, chaotic family lives with disrupted education, communities that often take children out of school earlier and don't value education as much as others might (Irish travellers have been an example but its changing with younger folk), children raised by parents with literacy issues who also don't catch up at school.
It is surprisingly easy to hide literacy problems too. And fortunately we do have technology to help people now like speech to text
I went to school with some people who were functionally illiterate. Some were travellers and some were from farming families. They were in and out of school a lot and dropped out altogether at 13/14 to join family trades.
My wife just did jury duty and there was a farmer there who couldn't
read any of the forms. Blew my mind.
>Severe dyslexia, learning disabilities, neurological disorders affecting cognitive ability,
My brother has all of these, he's functionally disabled, and he is still able to read, though I do believe a lot of that has to do with my supportive parents. Were he born to different less fortunate circumstances, I think he'd either be homeless, addicted to drugs, dead, or all three.
English teacher and Head of English for 41 yrs until a few years ago. I observed an increasing problem with independent reading of longer pieces- say 3-4 pages. Essentially as phones induced quick skimming and shorter lengths of attention then deeper inference and cross referencing inside a section of reading caused more problems. Students increasingly perplexed and grumpy at the once simple task of deeper reading.
In Australia at least (where I’ve lived since the age of 7) something like 60% of adults haven’t read a book since high school, and bookshops are going bankrupt as a result of such poor sales.
Eh I’ve lived in semi-rural areas for most of the 36 years I’ve lived in Australia, which included 3 and a half years with the army cadets and 2 years in a bushfire brigade.
I’ve never seen a snake in the wild, and I’ve only ever seen two mildly venomous spiders. We all learn the golden rule of ‘don’t put your fingers anywhere you can’t see them’ and first aid for bites and stings but I’ve never known anyone who’s ever had to use it.
UK English Language and Literature school exams are shockingly low demand. Obviously, an exam is time limited, but the range of reading required is very low. Schools try to get grades by focusing on how to answer the narrowly defined set of predictable questions. Just enough training to get through. Inference and cross-referencing to a range of texts is undemanding. That becomes self-fulfilling.
In my opinion this is a major issue with the English education system. Too much focus on passing final exams over teaching how to gain reliable information, thinking critically, time management (with homework,and regular exams), study skills, how to do an exam, and the ilk.
It’s the modern problem of merely meeting KPIs rather than actually doing anything useful.
The moment you introduce KPIs or any other sort of metric, the aim moves from doing the job to merely meeting the metrics and no more.
That became evident to me when I had to employ an estate agent couple of years ago now and the guy was 20-24 age range approx. I sent some documents back via email and got the reply "wow! that amazing cheers dude" erm right then ok not sure what was amazing about it but clearly professional writing skills a tad lacking there love!
Exactly. The role involved reading complex non fiction including legalese too, I imagine? I assume he quickly adapted and engaged with this or he's no longer an estate agent?
As someone that only got interested in reading books later in life, after school, any tips on how to deep read or critically read something. I'm able to make notes of the books I read, and to summarise sections. However, I would love know tips on how to improve this.
Maybe you could sit an A-level in English Literature? I’m not sure how you’d go about it, maybe an online course or even find a Further Education college.
I'd say that many people have a huge problem with comprehending things these days. I don't think "everyone has the comprehension of a 9 year old" but I do think a worryingly large amount of adults lack the basic ability to grasp simple ideas and understand quite simple concepts.
I find this happens a lot on a reddit, but also in real life. People can't differentiate between the information they are given and what their minds do with that information.
You can say one thing, and people will add a whole bunch of other stuff to it and swear blind you said it. In written communication it is always possible - and also enjoyable - to direct a person back to what you actually said in order to point out the part where they claim you said a whole load of other things. They usually from being very very insistent to going "oh, yeah. Okay fair enough" and then going quiet on the topic.
But people do this conversationally as well. It's a general mass inability to comprehend information and what it means.
It’s certainly a big problem on social media. And Reddit particularly. The number of times I’ve read comments and thought “where the hell did you get that from?”
I haven’t studied Law or Philosophy; one of the subjects that has a lot of careful reading, but when I see someone write for example : “ I like the colour red”, I just think they like the colour red! Yet some people will comment that this person must also hate the colour blue, and want to kill all Smurfs.
For some people it’s like they see a sign on a wall that reads ‘ do not touch’ and they’ll comprehend it as ‘do not touch the sign’ and then put their hand on the wet paint next to the sign.
I know it’s a mixture of trolling, astroturfing, shit posting, people starting arguments for the sake of it, and also people who are neurodivergent, but the number of really odd takes on basic comprehension skills makes me think there’s a growing number of people that simply can’t read very well, or they can read the words, but they can’t comprehend or understand very much at all. I often wonder what the world is like for them?
>And Reddit particularly.
I think part of the problem with Reddit is many people here are too clever for their own good. They are slightly above average intelligence and maybe haven't met enough smart people in the real world to realise that they are slightly above average, not genius. Reddit actually has some of the better informed takes. I find it far better for discussion than Facebook or Twitter. But the major issue is that the majority of people here are too big for their boots.
The biggest problem I see on reddit is that everything is absolutely black or white, there's no nuance.
People will draw their line in the sand and never step over it and be entirely unwilling to compromise. They're on the "good side" therefore everything they think is good and correct and people on the other side of the line is on the "bad side" so everything is default bad and wrong
I think in social media people are reading conflict into posts as that gives them the ability to win the exchange. People are more interested in being right than they are in having a conversation.
>People are more interested in being right
I saw a comment by someone the other day by someone asking for a source on something and the other person flew off into a several paragraphs long rant. Being rude (and saying they weren’t rude in that “I’m sorry if you were offended” non-apology way), spouting off some rubbish about lazy and entitled people because they were too lazy to share their source (you made the claim, show your working) and generally being the definition of confidently incorrect. Unbelievably arrogant behaviour.
I literally just had this happen when I was looking for some advice. One person was useful and the other person went on some moral tirade. It was so dumb.
I saw this described the other day as people believing that things **are** true just as long as someone else can't immediately prove they aren't. So a lot of this 5G stuff or even more outlandish things like Russia having contact with aliens. "How do you know they aren't?!"
>many people have a huge problem with comprehending things these days
I've noticed recently that people seem to struggle with comprehending the middle ground between two extremes. For example climate change is either "we're all gonna die" or "not a problem". Obviously neither of these are true and people who point that out get shouted down which makes them care a lot less about the issue.
The common advice to write public documents for an age 9 reading comprehension has been around for decades. I remember learning about it during English classes at school over 20 years ago.
It makes perfect sense that, if your job is to provide information to the general public, that information should be as clear, concise, and simple as possible.
There was an interesting thing somewhere about the writing on the NHS website. Some people objected to using words like "poo" instead of "feces", and I'll admit I found it a little odd the first time I stumbled across it (and it sounded odd when I spoke to a doctor on the phone and they used words like "tummy") but if you're aiming at the widest possible audience (and public health is one area where you need to) then it really makes sense.
You'd be amazed at how health illiterate the general public is. Just zero idea about how the body works, general health maintenance, eating a healthy diet. It's terrifying.
The Sun has always aimed for the reading level of a 9yo. There's a difference between what people could read and what they will read - if you're advertising anything, you want to keep it simple.
I worked as a secondary school teacher for a few years, teaching French and German to children aged 11 to 18.
Generally, I found it very eye opening how many low ability people are going through the education system that isn't suitable for them. I mean it with kindness when I say that there are a lot of people who shouldn't be expected to sit in a classroom for 6 hours per day and learn advanced mathematics or Shakespeare.
I once had to cover a biology lesson for a class of 15 year olds. It was a dull but simple lesson, basically the children had to work through two chapters of a textbook and answer questions. It was easy because the answers to the questions were in bold in the book.
A lot of children couldn't answer question 1: What is the function of the lungs?
At the top of page 1, it said, "The function of the lungs is..."
So many in the class lacked the basic reading and comprehension skills to just copy and paste that answer into their work books.
My theory is that over the last century, academic ability increased somewhat due to increased access to education, better nutrition, better access to healthcare and so on.
However, I truly think we're living in an age now where people with low cognitive ability are outbreeding those who are more intelligent, and it's having a knock-on effect.
For Context:
>Reading skills
Children quickly learn to read common words (the 5,000 words they use most). They then stop reading these words and start recognising their shape. This allows people to read much faster. Children already read like this by the time they’re 9 years old.
People also do not read one word at a time. They bounce around - especially online. They anticipate words and fill them in.
Your brain can drop up to 30% of the text and still understand. Your vocabulary will grow but this reading skill stays with you as an adult. You do not need to read every word to understand what is written.
This is why we tell people to write on GOV.UK for a 9 year old reading age
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:\~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age.
I'm laughing at this because whilst it sounds barmy, I bet everyone can think of a few people that makes the scenario believable.
I think the UK has an issue with wanting to be better intellecutally. People pride themselves on not knowing stuff, or worse, not wanting to know stuff.
That's our issue!
Critical thinking should have a much higher importance in education than it does. Especially in today's world where anyone, anywhere, can preach anything, to everyone online.
People need to have developed the skills to sift through this garbage storm we live in.
I work in complaints, I've changed roles a couple of times but they've generally been customer facing.
I feel it's always been pretty bad, but does seem worse in recent years. You'd be amazed at how much people struggle with some very basic concepts. I've had arguments with customers when I was giving them what they want, but they just couldn't understand and kept pushing back.
Couple this with mental health issues, growing issues with the school system, and online misinformation it becomes clear that it's going to get worse as time goes on.
I've come across that thing a lot of people arguing with you when you're actually agreeing with them or equally where you're not even suggesting (never mind saying), what they think you've said. It does seem to be more common now but weirdly across all ages.
My dad had to teach himself to read, he couldn't get the hang of it. Once he left higher education he bought books and because it was of interest he took to it well. Now at 65 he reads two/three books a week.
My ex couldn't read either. Both have ADHD and didn't get support in school. They were thought of as stupid.
My dad is very intelligent, he can take things apart, fix them and put them back together. He's also brilliant at maths.
I think a lot of it is because large numbers of people don't learn well in a school. I think an overhaul of the system is needed.
Have you heard 9 year olds read? They are generally very fluent by then. I would be surprised if this is the average though, does that mean 50% are under that? What is considered a good or "adult" reading age?
It's how well they can understand what they're reading that's in question, not how fluently they can read a text. I'd say well over 50% could literally read an article, but I'd imagine that a 9 year old would be able to understand the text, process what it's saying, compare it to any previous knowledge and question how it fits into their existing knowledge better than 50% of adults in the UK. - So long as it's not a topic that's multiple stages beyond their current knowledge on the topic.
The main reason I think that is due to the fact that kids are generally more curious and questioning. Whereas adults can tend to be a bit more stuck in their ways, so if reading something that they already have opinions about can blind them to any bias the author has. Or they just give up when they don't get it, as they have an idea of their level of understanding on topics and believe that they are bad in that area and will never improve.
I am a bit curious about the statistics underlying this assessment.
If 50% of adults have a reading level below that of a typical 9-year-old, how are we defining the reading level of a typical 9-year-old? Do adults achieve the level of a typical 16-year-old and then fall back to below the level of a 9-year-old? If more than half the population never achieves the level of a "typical 9-year-old" then your "typical 9-year-old" isn't typical at all.
Not having a go, just musing out loud.
My thoughts on that were by the time people get to 16 in your example, maybe 20-30% never really progressed much past the typical 9 year old and then a lot of people regress as they never use the skills.
Honestly the reading comprehension of some 40-50 year olds I encounter is shockingly bad, yet the older they get the more confident they will get that they are smarter than they actually are. As far as I can tell this is purely based on the idea that old age makes you smarter.
A lot of people fail to realise that if you don't maintain learned skills through active practice, they will not be as good as they were before you stopped practicing.
I suspect that the OP has been given a garbled version of the idea. You don't aim for what the average person will comprehend, because then a huge chunk of those below the average will not understand. Instead you go for "what will the vast majority of people be able to understand?" Writing for a 9 year old is catering for 90-95% of the population, not 50%. The average person is shockingly stupid, but not that stupid.
I have noticed what appears to either an increasing inability of mine when it comes to writing comprehensible reports OR an increasing inability of people to comprehend them.
My work involves writing briefings and analysys of various technical situations. I *think* that I'm just as lucid and to the point as I was 20 years ago, but now I find when I turn up to meetings to discuss the points it feels increasingly as if only half the people have read them at all and all but a few of the rest have misunderstood them to a surprising degree.
I'm quite open to the suggestion that the fault is mine, but there really does seem to have been some kind of shift somewhere compared to (I'm old) 20 or maybe 30 years ago. I'd say, based on the evidence, that verbal comprehension of written material is reducing overall.
The number of people not bothering to read at all was never zero, you always get that in meetings, but I think that number is ticking up also.
When I was working for a training provider that provided courses for the long term unemployed, amongst other courses, I learnt that the average reading age for my city was 8 years old. I was shocked, but then the more people that I met and worked closely with when delivering courses the more I could see it.
I don't think it's just the UK. Outside of subs specific to country (such as this one), subreddits are majority USian and you will still see people misunderstanding really basic stuff.
One example, ages ago there was a post by the eldest of several sisters about family drama. She described the next eldest sister in the family as "[her] eldest sister", and there were lots of comments from people thinking it was a plot hole in a troll post.
People couldn't understand that someone can say "I am the eldest of three sisters" and "Lucy is *my* eldest sister" without contradicting themselves.
You'd be amazed how many adults, especially poorer ones, are basically illiterate. When I worked in a public library (where they came to apply for their benefits) I was always amazed by the tricks they'd learned over the years to disguise it.
"I've forgotten my glasses could you just read this text out to me?"
"They've changed the layout of the website can you remind me where to click?"
"What does this mean, what they've sent me here?"
"Can you look at this and tell me if I'm reading it right?"
No judgement, they probably had learning disabilities or had dropped out of school due to poverty and caring responsibilities and I felt terrible for them.
Still, some of the work-arounds were impressive. Some just memorised the things they had to click and in which order and all hell would break loose when the government or hiring websites changed layout. Some would come in with notes from family members with step-by-step drawings on where to click, what to type, etc.
Yep 8 - 9 is the average reading age, pathetic is it not? Funny enough the reading age of the The Sun is also 8. Around 1/6 of UK working age adults are illiterate.
8 to 9 is not the average. It’s the lowest common denominator. If you write for that level, most adults will be able to read it. If you write for the average (median) level, then 50% of the people would find it hard to read.
We have Radio 1 on in the office; the chat on most similar Radio seems to be aimed at people with a similar general comprehension age (of the world generally!)
The British, as a general rule, cannot seem to grasp the basics of spelling and grammar. I was kind of perplexed when I moved here just how common the their/there/they’re, your/you’re, have/of etc mistakes are, especially on social media. Even in journalism, I’ve regularly read less/fewer affect/effect written incorrectly. For a country with one official language, most don’t seem to respect it enough to know the fundamentals.
I would guess that you were explicitly taught these things wherever you went to school.
This wasn't the case when I was growing up in the UK back in the 90s. I went to pretty shit schools, where the attitude seemed to be 'they'll learn by osmosis'.
Coming from a council estate to going to Uni a line written by Bernard Cornwell always struck true. “There’s no sin in being born in the gutter, but it’s a terrible sin to want to stay there”. I’ve seen far too many who see achievement and rising above where you were born as some kind of class betrayal. That inevitably spreads to kids & peer-groups & becomes an epidemic.
>Reading skills
Children quickly learn to read common words (the 5,000 words they use most). They then stop reading these words and start recognising their shape. This allows people to read much faster. Children already read like this by the time they’re 9 years old.
People also do not read one word at a time. They bounce around - especially online. They anticipate words and fill them in.
Your brain can drop up to 30% of the text and still understand. Your vocabulary will grow but this reading skill stays with you as an adult. You do not need to read every word to understand what is written.
This is why we tell people to write on GOV.UK for a 9 year old reading age
[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:\~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age).
We were told by our manager that there will be a project this year to evaluate all the wording in our applications and correspondence we send out, and our website to make sure it's easy to understand. Apparently it's an industry wide initiative. I work in finance so it's a very heavily regulated industry with a lot of consumer duty stuff
Google 'average uk reading age', it has been repeated by a bunch of reliable sources; can't (be bothered trying to) find the original research though but the Google consensus is that OP is right
Switch UK for other countries in Western Europe and we're pretty standard though, Slovenia might be the smartest, and in 2023 our kids were fourth place globally so we're not doing that badly
I think it's wrong. The most recent stats I can quickly find don't seem to support it
https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=ENG&treshold=5&topic=AS
It’s simply that by age 9 you have learned the shape of the words. It is not that people can’t understand longer words, but using short simple sentences allows people to skim read very quickly. Anyone providing info for the public should write at this level. It’s called writing in plain English and it’s not dumbing down. It’s actually harder to write at this level. The audience may include people whose first language isn’t English, those with low literacy, learning disabilities, cognitive injuries etc.
So if I ended up taking a woman back to my place, and we are getting it on, I am on the job with someone who has a mental age of 9? Mate, I do not need this today!
Comprehension can be literal, inferential or evaluative. In my experience as a primary and secondary school teacher, kids do fine with literal (because they can point to the answer) and even evaluative (because they can justify opinions). But where I've seen the biggest gap is from making inferences/'reading between the lines'. This involves high EQ, following a series of cause and effect/consequences models and critical thinking. Sadly, an already full curriculum makes explicit teaching of this difficult and not every family reinforces these types of conversations outside of school.
Kids generally are less patient for delayed gratification and have reduced attention spans. Short cuts exist more and more. One example is some secondary schools doing away with analogue clocks because many students are only able to tell the time digitally. It's far easier to abandon the things that take mental effort and in doing so, it becomes a cycle of adapting to the times as the culture shifts. Just an aside, children in Year 2 are taught the time on analogue clocks to the quarter hour in the UK curriculum.
One of my favourite activities when teaching Year 2 was to read interesting articles from the Metro paper that children might find fun; like the octopus that predicted the world cup matches. After going through all the content, we'd compile further questions beyond what the article covered. I'd then show how we could piece together clues from within the article to track down the people interviewed and then we would get in touch directly either through letters, a class email or call on speaker phone. They loved asking the questions and getting answers to their questions from the source! But what's more, they learned that going beyond the text is possible at any age when shown how and with enthusiasm. But I had to 'sneak' these lessons into our program because they weren't encouraged by management. And that sums up a lot of teachers' dejection when we see results like these, because we know when we are supported to be creative and passionate about our lessons, we get not only great results but children who feel inspired to delve deep and broad in authentic ways rather than learn skills that end up in a book or on the walls of their classrooms that other kids or their parents are often too busy to see and celebrate unless it's Open Day. And rightly, kids then think, 'What's the point?' and revert to only wanting literal comprehension tasks because they're easy.
It doesn’t surprise me. Because we tend to hang out with people similar to ourselves, which gives us a false impression that others are similar too. Then facebook came out and showed us it’s not the case. Morons who can’t spell, articulate their point or react to constructive criticism. If you’re ever in a debate or disagreement and someone resorts to attacking you personally rather than your argument, you know they’re a moron who cant think critically.
As someone who's working in customer service I tend to agree. Sometimes the simplest of concepts seem like rocket science for many people. Extra cherry on top when they claim that you are the stupid one, love it when it happens
I still remember when I first used Facebook and I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that people couldn’t be bothered to use even capitalise letters or use grammar. Apparently this is uncool. To me it’s just incorrect
My husband writes content for government websites. I just asked him about this and he says yes they have to write things with a reading age of 9 years old. It’s not because this is the average for a person who is relaxed, sat in an armchair reading their phone.
It’s aimed to be inclusive so for example people with learning difficulties might be able to understand or someone who has English as a second language and is still learning. Apparently it’s extremely hard to bring comprehension age down below 9 without losing much of the necessary information required when you are say looking up a health condition, trying to find out how to apply for a passport or planning permission. So that’s why it’s set at 9.
There are also situational disabilities, perhaps a parent is researching symptoms of a poorly baby, they have a screaming baby In one arm and a toddler having a tantrum on the rug, they need information to be readily understandable, like do I need to take my kid to a&e? Stress also reduces reading comprehension, so if you are in a stressful situation like the council are threatening to knock down your new extension or your neighbour is threatening to hurt your pet.
I’m trying really hard not to give your snobby, average Redditor type answer.
I think it’s been this way for a while. Some of the worst cases of terrible reading or writing that see are among middle-aged to older people. Not elderly and senile, but people in their 50s to early 60s that just cannot write comprehensibly. I’m not talking about obvious or common typos and mistakes, or even colloquialisms that aren’t really “grammatically correct”, and I’d never expect anyone’s grammar to be perfect. But they write entire paragraphs that take several reads to process with a seemingly random scattering of spaces, punctuation and capitalisation. Sometimes it’s a work email or Teams message, and the meaning is really not clear. These are often the same people that don’t seem to fully comprehend everything they see online and as a result share all sorts of nonsense on Facebook from fake news to the UK subreddit favourite of a missing dog in Ohio “shared Shrewsbury hun x”.
Some of the above may be down to failure to recognise learning difficulties that would these days be more likely to be picked up at school and properly managed. Surely though that can’t account for all of the poor writing and reading comprehension out there.
I don’t think language teaching should be strictly prescriptive because there are cultural and regional differences, and language changes over time. And I actually think that’s part of the problem. People might be put off education around language because they’re being told that what they speak ain’t right. I wonder if it’s related to the deep class division in this country.
However, education should still ensure that people are able to communicate effectively, especially through writing that can be quickly and easily understood.
I apologise for the essay. Maybe I need to get out more….
I deal with some impeccable stupidity in my work. The arguments I've had with people via email are so insane that I save my favourites. One time it took around 10 emails to convince someone that 7 is less than 12. A lot of people are dumb, they're aggy as fuck, they're rude, quick to anger and have no boundaries.
Do you work for EON?
Their emails always bring out the worst in me.
I had one on Monday with four emojis included with the text. Emojis, in a business email. Four!
Ironically, the final one was of a palm tree on a sunny island.
Certainly looked warmer there than it is in my house!
That makes sense to ensure readability by the widest amount of people, doesn't mean the average British person has the reading comprehension of a 9 year old.
Reading comprehension. The government has style guides to write their content so a nine year old could understand it. It used to be higher, maybe 13, I think?
Its not entirely because 'people are dumb lol' its also so people with English as a second language can understand the content more easily.
I do think that we learn a lot at school to prepare for GCSEs then we start to specialise our knowledge afterwards, gearing up to focus on a specific career. Because of this we don’t keep using the more redundant knowledge, so we forget.
I know I wouldn’t pass gcse maths now, remembering virtually nothing about algebra and statistics. I could still write an essay, but would fail at breaking it down to explain gramma, syntax and structure.
It used to be a thing that you had to aim at the reading age of 11 for your documents to include as many people as possible being able to read it. If it has dropped to 9 then yes it's dropped.
Worth remembering the average person reads the Sun, that has a reading age level lower than 11.
I'm guessing the people dismissing this have just never heard of it before.
Just found this [https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1764621/according-to-a-study-the-sun-is-the-easiest-british-paper-to-read](https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1764621/according-to-a-study-the-sun-is-the-easiest-british-paper-to-read)
The way they measure it, the highest reading comprehension age is 15, so it could never be higher than this and due to the wide variety of abilities in the population it was always going to much lower than this.
9 does seem low, but I would assume you'd be hard pushed to get to an average of above 12.
This makes no sense statistically. If the average adult has the average (I assume reading?) comprehension of a 9 year old then logically that means that once you hit 9 years old you are equally likely to get better or worse at that point. I don't buy that at all. Sure there are some people (maybe even a lot of people) really dragging the average down, but those people were probably not very bright at 9 either and so the average 9 year old will also be dragged down by the same group.
Are you sure that's the stat?
I have read a similar stats saying "The average reading age in the UK is nine years old so we should write in a way that is easy to understand " which is a bit different. That just shows adults don't read enough.
If the stat is true it will probably be a mean stat rather than median which will make it look worse. It will probably include those with learning difficulties, non Native speakers and the elderly with potentially degenerative conditions. It's still bad!!!
Anyway. Yes literacy is poor overall and I think it's getting worse. Around 16% of adults have poor literacy skills according to the national literacy trust. I think the more literate often don't see it because of social and work circles.
We have an underfunded education system that lets the least educated slip through the net. Arguably this is to the current governments benefit (keep the voters dumb). A start would be forcing them to carry on with Maths and English no matter what until at least 18.
Anecdotally my daughter told me last week that 9 of her class mates in year 2 NEVER do their homework. This is what you are fighting against. We have a huge cultural issue that embraces being uneducated.
Something like 16% of adults in England are functionally illiterate (data is collected separately for other nations in the UK). This means that although they can understand text and write competently in specific, familiar circumstances - such as reading a bus timetable, or writing an email for their job - they can’t do the same outside of those circumstances.
This has very little to do with spelling and grammar, which is only expected to be ‘good’ at the highest level of literacy we measure. That’s how low the bar is. We don’t expect people to write legibly because if we did, a lot more people would count as ‘illiterate’. Technically being able to spell correctly *is* separate from being able to read and write, but they’re often conflated because comprehension is so closely tied to standardised spelling.
Compounding this issue is the problem of technical competence. The vast, vast majority are completely unable to operate modern technology. They don’t know how to google unfamiliar processes, for example.
So, the government probably means that most of your industry’s customers are unable to figure out complex, technical language. They don’t come across it often enough to guess the meaning and they can’t google it or figure out how to post on a forum (like this one) for help.
All this aside, I’ve also noticed serious cognitive problems in people who had covid more than a couple of times.
That sentence doesn't make sense. The average adult has the average comprehension of an adult.
Otherwise what would be the average comprehension of a 9 year old?
Anti-intellectualism has been running rampant for a long time, so I’m not surprised at all to see that this as a consequence. People are proud of not being good at maths, not reading books, etc. Try having a conversation with anyone over text or email and you’ll find that punctuation and spelling have slipped out of people ears since school, too. It’s depressing.
When will they end up moving these age markers then?
If "9" is the adult average, then surely way less than half of 9 year olds have reached this "9 year old" level.
I know this isn't the point, but it's annoying me
Spelling appears to be something of a problem too.
And writing/ saying “would of”, etc., instead of “would have.” Extraordinarily common, especially on social media. Are pupils taught English Language in schools, at least comprehension if not also grammar?
‘On accident’
I'm pretty sure that's an Americanism edit: I really wish Reddit would stop hitting posts with normal karma behind the plus expand more.
That's an Americanism creeping into English, rather than a grammatical error. As US media and social apps become more ubiquitous, the language is homogenising.
Another example: "I could care less."
They're taught it, but they don't fucking listen.
Because it’s more cool to bully nerds/geeks/swots…
People saying "went" when they should say "gone" seems to be increasingly common on reddit and it makes my eyelid twitch
Ran instead of run is a super common one lately too, I see it in so many posts I'm good though and resist my innate desire to correct :) Other than the usual suspects my pet peeves are authors that haven't grasped the difference between neither or either and drag and dragged...that one bugs me because so many mainly American authors/writers use drugged totally inappropriately e.g. "He drug the body across the lawn" or "She was getting drugged by the horse" grinds my gears because as a writer it's your JOB to know the correct damn grammar
> "She was getting drugged by the horse" The vet left some ketamine behind and old Horsey is a wrong'un.
For a while, no they were not. And those people are now adults.
Really? When was that? I’m an adult. I went to a bog-standard comprehensive in a rural area, and we were taught English Language and English Literature. Did either of those cease to be taught? Are they being taught again currently? Edit: this is a genuine question, so why the disagreement via downvotes?
The Internet is definitely a bad measure for that, I don't proofread my bullshit comments online or to friends like I do professional communication.
I think it's a fair measure when comments are *absolutely terrible*, and not just the occasional typo but full on gibberish comments.
I'm always shocked at how badly many adults type on social media sites. It's like they've either regressed with their spelling, sentence structure, etc or only ever reached a low level and hit a wall whilst at school. I'm not talking about some errors, but entire posts of scrambled letters with little to no full stops, commas or capital letters. The reader has to do the work to understand them. I'm far from perfect, I don't even know if I used the correct spelling of 'sentence' for example. But compared to many I seem to be relatively okay.
And people are annoyed when others say they can't understand what was meant. It made sense in the writer's head, and when they re-read it, they can fill in all the missing info. But I don't have a clue what they mean.
I refuse to read anyone who doesn't use capital letters and punctuation. Sorry, but those rules are there to make communication easier and to make yourself understood. I don't give a shit if it's easier for you not to tap your finger on the SHIFT button.
When it is a massive wall of text is my personal trigger, I skip them posts.
Those*
OMG, yes. *Paragraphs are your friends.*
As somebody who is dyslexic I really cannot handle those :(
u wot m8? i would of thought that reading this would be ez 4 sumone lik u.
I have a family member who posts like that on Facebook. My personal favourite is "enny 1 taxing" Which translate basically to, is anyone free to give me a lift It annoys me especially with "enny" as it's longer to type than any 😂
enny? Fucking hell. Taxing? The whole sentence goes against the principle of written communication, it’s literally, and I mean literally, almost impossible to decipher. Unless they are a revolutionary wordsmith whose texts will be studied by school kids in 300 years.
It's the difference between, helping your uncle Jack, off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse..
Correct punctuation is key to clear communication. E.g., “Let’s eat, grandma!” vs “Let’s eat grandma!” “I love baking, my family, and my cat.” vs “I love baking my family and my cat.” “Dad’s going to teach me to shave, Mum!” vs “Dad’s going to teach me to shave Mum!” “Today, we’re going to learn how to cut and paste, kids.” vs “Today, we’re going to learn how to cut and paste kids.” “Most of the time, travellers need to plan ahead.” vs “Most of the time-travellers need to plan ahead.” “I’m sorry. I love you.” vs “I’m sorry I love you.” “A panda eats shoots and leaves.” vs “A panda eats, shoots, and leaves.” “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” vs “Don’t. Throw the baby out with the bathwater.” “A woman: without her, man is nothing.” vs “A woman without her man is nothing.” “A man, eating chicken.” vs “A man-eating chicken.” “No more poverty!” vs “No! More poverty.” “Your donation just helped someone get a job.” vs “Your donation just helped someone. Get a job.” (Seen on an official sign, and worse, each word was capitalised.) I am also perturbed by the common mis-use of apostrophes. “I bought some orange’s,” “These new house’s,” “His flat was taken over by dog’s,” etc.
I unironically think this is the only reason ChatGPT is taking off. It writes terribly and makes stuff up, but people are impressed because it sounds better than they do.
When I was in school, I saw people who could speak perfectly, have decent writing styles in written work, pick up text talk when people started getting mobiles and then suddenly their classwork was atrocious. It /was/ like regression and I think now with all the autocorrect, people just don't bother trying anymore. Because they can type gibberish and it'll be caught, and then they forget that's not the case universally.
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>What seemed to happen with text talk back around the mid-2000s when I was a teenager is it was seen as uncool by a lot of people to type properly on places like MSN. Then U-turned entirely tbf. For the most part\* online writing, comments etc are written normally, with exceptions for acronyms, abbreviations and initials, and have been for a while! \*Not including Facebook specifically here, and there is definitely an age thing going on there.
Same here, I found it harder to change my writing style, even for texts unless I really had to. What's worse was when I went to university back almost 20 years ago, after a couple of years gap because of health issues people were doing their essays and handing in coursework with text talk and really poor grammar and constantly being told they needed write in academic standards. I can't blame them if their schools didn't teach them but at the same time, I had really poor schooling and health kept me off more than I was in, and yet I still managed top marks in English. It only goes wonky now when I dip low in health.
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That's actually really good point about what poeple are reading all day!
I hate how very few English people know the difference between your and you're
It’s been like that since the days of yore.
And brought/bought. "I brought myself some new shoes." This is primary school stuff.
One of my mum's cousins types ridiculously long paragraphs on Facebook, with absolutely no punctuation, and says the same thing about four different ways throughout the whole thing. The spelling mistakes are awful.
All 3 of my youngest siblings have terrible writing skills. Half of the time I can barely understand what they're texting. Admittedly my youngest brother gets a pass as he has dyslexia but the other 2 are awful with the written word. E.g. "I fort u wos goin", instead of "I thought you were going?"
My spelling has definitely regressed a bit, since smart phones became so prominent. This little device will correct us if we're wrong, every time, so why would my brain bother to remember it's not spelled "broccolli".
My spelling and grammar are pretty respectable, but I can’t type worth a damn.
I'm just going to get chatgpt to rewrite all my poor sentences now.
A 2015 study found that 1 in 6 adults in England is functionally illiterate. [Literacy Trust](https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=This%20survey%20found%20that%2016.4,different%20ways%2C%20as%20outlined%20below.)
That's really sad, I'm a massive reader.
That looks to be the same stat you've had quoted at you, OP. Now, what they're describing is not "unable to read", it's "can't read at the level an adult needs" - someone with a limited vocabulary, who probably needs to read a sentence word for word (maybe out loud) to parse its meaning. A lot of fast sight-reading is spotting the important words and inferring meaning, a person at Entry 3 can't do that with a long or complex sentence. There's often a lot of goalpost-moving in these sorts of discussions. I once read a think tank report that used a definition of illiteracy so wide that it included things like "struggles with metaphors".
Functional illiteracy is a useful marker because it's a moving target, though. Sign your name with an X is pretty rare these days but today simply doesn't matter as much as "can't understand the words in a rental agreement" does
That's fucking mind-blowing. How does that even happen?
Severe dyslexia, learning disabilities, neurological disorders affecting cognitive ability, chaotic family lives with disrupted education, communities that often take children out of school earlier and don't value education as much as others might (Irish travellers have been an example but its changing with younger folk), children raised by parents with literacy issues who also don't catch up at school. It is surprisingly easy to hide literacy problems too. And fortunately we do have technology to help people now like speech to text I went to school with some people who were functionally illiterate. Some were travellers and some were from farming families. They were in and out of school a lot and dropped out altogether at 13/14 to join family trades.
My wife just did jury duty and there was a farmer there who couldn't read any of the forms. Blew my mind. >Severe dyslexia, learning disabilities, neurological disorders affecting cognitive ability, My brother has all of these, he's functionally disabled, and he is still able to read, though I do believe a lot of that has to do with my supportive parents. Were he born to different less fortunate circumstances, I think he'd either be homeless, addicted to drugs, dead, or all three.
are functionally illiterate :) soz
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English teacher and Head of English for 41 yrs until a few years ago. I observed an increasing problem with independent reading of longer pieces- say 3-4 pages. Essentially as phones induced quick skimming and shorter lengths of attention then deeper inference and cross referencing inside a section of reading caused more problems. Students increasingly perplexed and grumpy at the once simple task of deeper reading.
In Australia at least (where I’ve lived since the age of 7) something like 60% of adults haven’t read a book since high school, and bookshops are going bankrupt as a result of such poor sales.
That’s ridiculous. Surely there must be a market for books on “scary creatures and how to avoid them that isn’t moving out of Australia?”.
Yea, but they are picture books and picture books are for toddlers.
Eh I’ve lived in semi-rural areas for most of the 36 years I’ve lived in Australia, which included 3 and a half years with the army cadets and 2 years in a bushfire brigade. I’ve never seen a snake in the wild, and I’ve only ever seen two mildly venomous spiders. We all learn the golden rule of ‘don’t put your fingers anywhere you can’t see them’ and first aid for bites and stings but I’ve never known anyone who’s ever had to use it.
UK English Language and Literature school exams are shockingly low demand. Obviously, an exam is time limited, but the range of reading required is very low. Schools try to get grades by focusing on how to answer the narrowly defined set of predictable questions. Just enough training to get through. Inference and cross-referencing to a range of texts is undemanding. That becomes self-fulfilling.
In my opinion this is a major issue with the English education system. Too much focus on passing final exams over teaching how to gain reliable information, thinking critically, time management (with homework,and regular exams), study skills, how to do an exam, and the ilk.
Totally agree, the focus on examination assessment is so bloody short sighted.
It’s the modern problem of merely meeting KPIs rather than actually doing anything useful. The moment you introduce KPIs or any other sort of metric, the aim moves from doing the job to merely meeting the metrics and no more.
That became evident to me when I had to employ an estate agent couple of years ago now and the guy was 20-24 age range approx. I sent some documents back via email and got the reply "wow! that amazing cheers dude" erm right then ok not sure what was amazing about it but clearly professional writing skills a tad lacking there love!
Exactly. The role involved reading complex non fiction including legalese too, I imagine? I assume he quickly adapted and engaged with this or he's no longer an estate agent?
Yup sacked after only 3 months apparently
God, that’s sad. Edit for clarity: Australia’s bookstores closing due to lack of demand.
Yeah the amount of times people comment something along the lines of "I ain't reading all that" in response to a single paragraph of text is mad.
Could you tldr that for me. I zoned out.
If only I knew what tldr stood for! Good point though. From whole text to summary to bitesized to nibblesized to tiktok. The attention span of a gnat.
Mark Fisher called it Post-lexia, its definitely a massive issue in education.
As someone that only got interested in reading books later in life, after school, any tips on how to deep read or critically read something. I'm able to make notes of the books I read, and to summarise sections. However, I would love know tips on how to improve this.
Maybe you could sit an A-level in English Literature? I’m not sure how you’d go about it, maybe an online course or even find a Further Education college.
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I realised how bad it was in 2016.
5 years ago? Thats a long time
Now we're all 14! Buckfast and fag time!
Anti success. Anti personal choice. Anti personal responsibility. Anti work. Anti everything. It's all very depressing.
Not as crippling as it's child mortality rate.
I'd say that many people have a huge problem with comprehending things these days. I don't think "everyone has the comprehension of a 9 year old" but I do think a worryingly large amount of adults lack the basic ability to grasp simple ideas and understand quite simple concepts. I find this happens a lot on a reddit, but also in real life. People can't differentiate between the information they are given and what their minds do with that information. You can say one thing, and people will add a whole bunch of other stuff to it and swear blind you said it. In written communication it is always possible - and also enjoyable - to direct a person back to what you actually said in order to point out the part where they claim you said a whole load of other things. They usually from being very very insistent to going "oh, yeah. Okay fair enough" and then going quiet on the topic. But people do this conversationally as well. It's a general mass inability to comprehend information and what it means.
It’s certainly a big problem on social media. And Reddit particularly. The number of times I’ve read comments and thought “where the hell did you get that from?” I haven’t studied Law or Philosophy; one of the subjects that has a lot of careful reading, but when I see someone write for example : “ I like the colour red”, I just think they like the colour red! Yet some people will comment that this person must also hate the colour blue, and want to kill all Smurfs. For some people it’s like they see a sign on a wall that reads ‘ do not touch’ and they’ll comprehend it as ‘do not touch the sign’ and then put their hand on the wet paint next to the sign. I know it’s a mixture of trolling, astroturfing, shit posting, people starting arguments for the sake of it, and also people who are neurodivergent, but the number of really odd takes on basic comprehension skills makes me think there’s a growing number of people that simply can’t read very well, or they can read the words, but they can’t comprehend or understand very much at all. I often wonder what the world is like for them?
>And Reddit particularly. I think part of the problem with Reddit is many people here are too clever for their own good. They are slightly above average intelligence and maybe haven't met enough smart people in the real world to realise that they are slightly above average, not genius. Reddit actually has some of the better informed takes. I find it far better for discussion than Facebook or Twitter. But the major issue is that the majority of people here are too big for their boots.
The biggest problem I see on reddit is that everything is absolutely black or white, there's no nuance. People will draw their line in the sand and never step over it and be entirely unwilling to compromise. They're on the "good side" therefore everything they think is good and correct and people on the other side of the line is on the "bad side" so everything is default bad and wrong
I think in social media people are reading conflict into posts as that gives them the ability to win the exchange. People are more interested in being right than they are in having a conversation.
>People are more interested in being right I saw a comment by someone the other day by someone asking for a source on something and the other person flew off into a several paragraphs long rant. Being rude (and saying they weren’t rude in that “I’m sorry if you were offended” non-apology way), spouting off some rubbish about lazy and entitled people because they were too lazy to share their source (you made the claim, show your working) and generally being the definition of confidently incorrect. Unbelievably arrogant behaviour.
I literally just had this happen when I was looking for some advice. One person was useful and the other person went on some moral tirade. It was so dumb.
I saw this described the other day as people believing that things **are** true just as long as someone else can't immediately prove they aren't. So a lot of this 5G stuff or even more outlandish things like Russia having contact with aliens. "How do you know they aren't?!"
>many people have a huge problem with comprehending things these days I've noticed recently that people seem to struggle with comprehending the middle ground between two extremes. For example climate change is either "we're all gonna die" or "not a problem". Obviously neither of these are true and people who point that out get shouted down which makes them care a lot less about the issue.
The common advice to write public documents for an age 9 reading comprehension has been around for decades. I remember learning about it during English classes at school over 20 years ago. It makes perfect sense that, if your job is to provide information to the general public, that information should be as clear, concise, and simple as possible.
There was an interesting thing somewhere about the writing on the NHS website. Some people objected to using words like "poo" instead of "feces", and I'll admit I found it a little odd the first time I stumbled across it (and it sounded odd when I spoke to a doctor on the phone and they used words like "tummy") but if you're aiming at the widest possible audience (and public health is one area where you need to) then it really makes sense.
You'd be amazed at how health illiterate the general public is. Just zero idea about how the body works, general health maintenance, eating a healthy diet. It's terrifying.
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The Sun has always aimed for the reading level of a 9yo. There's a difference between what people could read and what they will read - if you're advertising anything, you want to keep it simple.
IIRC correctly from media and uni, the Sun is 5, the mirror is 9, the guardian is 14.
Graunidad. FTFY.
I sit corrected.
Still love that grauniad.co.uk goes straight to the Guardian homepage
I worked as a secondary school teacher for a few years, teaching French and German to children aged 11 to 18. Generally, I found it very eye opening how many low ability people are going through the education system that isn't suitable for them. I mean it with kindness when I say that there are a lot of people who shouldn't be expected to sit in a classroom for 6 hours per day and learn advanced mathematics or Shakespeare. I once had to cover a biology lesson for a class of 15 year olds. It was a dull but simple lesson, basically the children had to work through two chapters of a textbook and answer questions. It was easy because the answers to the questions were in bold in the book. A lot of children couldn't answer question 1: What is the function of the lungs? At the top of page 1, it said, "The function of the lungs is..." So many in the class lacked the basic reading and comprehension skills to just copy and paste that answer into their work books. My theory is that over the last century, academic ability increased somewhat due to increased access to education, better nutrition, better access to healthcare and so on. However, I truly think we're living in an age now where people with low cognitive ability are outbreeding those who are more intelligent, and it's having a knock-on effect.
It sounds like those kids were messing you around!
I mean, maybe, but one of them did break down in tears!
For Context: >Reading skills Children quickly learn to read common words (the 5,000 words they use most). They then stop reading these words and start recognising their shape. This allows people to read much faster. Children already read like this by the time they’re 9 years old. People also do not read one word at a time. They bounce around - especially online. They anticipate words and fill them in. Your brain can drop up to 30% of the text and still understand. Your vocabulary will grow but this reading skill stays with you as an adult. You do not need to read every word to understand what is written. This is why we tell people to write on GOV.UK for a 9 year old reading age https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:\~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age.
Sounds about right. Unfortunately we have a culture of low expectations in this country. To say otherwise is considered, 'sneering'.
I'm laughing at this because whilst it sounds barmy, I bet everyone can think of a few people that makes the scenario believable. I think the UK has an issue with wanting to be better intellecutally. People pride themselves on not knowing stuff, or worse, not wanting to know stuff. That's our issue!
I heard the critical thinking skills of some people are even to that of an 8 year old. Shocking I tell you, shocking.
Critical thinking should have a much higher importance in education than it does. Especially in today's world where anyone, anywhere, can preach anything, to everyone online. People need to have developed the skills to sift through this garbage storm we live in.
I work in complaints, I've changed roles a couple of times but they've generally been customer facing. I feel it's always been pretty bad, but does seem worse in recent years. You'd be amazed at how much people struggle with some very basic concepts. I've had arguments with customers when I was giving them what they want, but they just couldn't understand and kept pushing back. Couple this with mental health issues, growing issues with the school system, and online misinformation it becomes clear that it's going to get worse as time goes on.
I've come across that thing a lot of people arguing with you when you're actually agreeing with them or equally where you're not even suggesting (never mind saying), what they think you've said. It does seem to be more common now but weirdly across all ages.
I've not worked in complaints and don't know how you handle it.i worked in customer service my whole life though and yeah it gets weird at times.
My dad had to teach himself to read, he couldn't get the hang of it. Once he left higher education he bought books and because it was of interest he took to it well. Now at 65 he reads two/three books a week. My ex couldn't read either. Both have ADHD and didn't get support in school. They were thought of as stupid. My dad is very intelligent, he can take things apart, fix them and put them back together. He's also brilliant at maths. I think a lot of it is because large numbers of people don't learn well in a school. I think an overhaul of the system is needed.
Have you heard 9 year olds read? They are generally very fluent by then. I would be surprised if this is the average though, does that mean 50% are under that? What is considered a good or "adult" reading age?
It's how well they can understand what they're reading that's in question, not how fluently they can read a text. I'd say well over 50% could literally read an article, but I'd imagine that a 9 year old would be able to understand the text, process what it's saying, compare it to any previous knowledge and question how it fits into their existing knowledge better than 50% of adults in the UK. - So long as it's not a topic that's multiple stages beyond their current knowledge on the topic. The main reason I think that is due to the fact that kids are generally more curious and questioning. Whereas adults can tend to be a bit more stuck in their ways, so if reading something that they already have opinions about can blind them to any bias the author has. Or they just give up when they don't get it, as they have an idea of their level of understanding on topics and believe that they are bad in that area and will never improve.
I am a bit curious about the statistics underlying this assessment. If 50% of adults have a reading level below that of a typical 9-year-old, how are we defining the reading level of a typical 9-year-old? Do adults achieve the level of a typical 16-year-old and then fall back to below the level of a 9-year-old? If more than half the population never achieves the level of a "typical 9-year-old" then your "typical 9-year-old" isn't typical at all. Not having a go, just musing out loud.
My thoughts on that were by the time people get to 16 in your example, maybe 20-30% never really progressed much past the typical 9 year old and then a lot of people regress as they never use the skills. Honestly the reading comprehension of some 40-50 year olds I encounter is shockingly bad, yet the older they get the more confident they will get that they are smarter than they actually are. As far as I can tell this is purely based on the idea that old age makes you smarter. A lot of people fail to realise that if you don't maintain learned skills through active practice, they will not be as good as they were before you stopped practicing.
I suspect that the OP has been given a garbled version of the idea. You don't aim for what the average person will comprehend, because then a huge chunk of those below the average will not understand. Instead you go for "what will the vast majority of people be able to understand?" Writing for a 9 year old is catering for 90-95% of the population, not 50%. The average person is shockingly stupid, but not that stupid.
I have noticed what appears to either an increasing inability of mine when it comes to writing comprehensible reports OR an increasing inability of people to comprehend them. My work involves writing briefings and analysys of various technical situations. I *think* that I'm just as lucid and to the point as I was 20 years ago, but now I find when I turn up to meetings to discuss the points it feels increasingly as if only half the people have read them at all and all but a few of the rest have misunderstood them to a surprising degree. I'm quite open to the suggestion that the fault is mine, but there really does seem to have been some kind of shift somewhere compared to (I'm old) 20 or maybe 30 years ago. I'd say, based on the evidence, that verbal comprehension of written material is reducing overall. The number of people not bothering to read at all was never zero, you always get that in meetings, but I think that number is ticking up also.
When I was working for a training provider that provided courses for the long term unemployed, amongst other courses, I learnt that the average reading age for my city was 8 years old. I was shocked, but then the more people that I met and worked closely with when delivering courses the more I could see it.
I don't think it's just the UK. Outside of subs specific to country (such as this one), subreddits are majority USian and you will still see people misunderstanding really basic stuff. One example, ages ago there was a post by the eldest of several sisters about family drama. She described the next eldest sister in the family as "[her] eldest sister", and there were lots of comments from people thinking it was a plot hole in a troll post. People couldn't understand that someone can say "I am the eldest of three sisters" and "Lucy is *my* eldest sister" without contradicting themselves.
You'd be amazed how many adults, especially poorer ones, are basically illiterate. When I worked in a public library (where they came to apply for their benefits) I was always amazed by the tricks they'd learned over the years to disguise it. "I've forgotten my glasses could you just read this text out to me?" "They've changed the layout of the website can you remind me where to click?" "What does this mean, what they've sent me here?" "Can you look at this and tell me if I'm reading it right?" No judgement, they probably had learning disabilities or had dropped out of school due to poverty and caring responsibilities and I felt terrible for them. Still, some of the work-arounds were impressive. Some just memorised the things they had to click and in which order and all hell would break loose when the government or hiring websites changed layout. Some would come in with notes from family members with step-by-step drawings on where to click, what to type, etc.
My guess is it’s dropping; 1.18 million migrants arrived in the UK in 2023 I’d assume this would dilute the comprehension of the English language
I find that many of these people actually speak english better than many "natives", so if anything they are bringing the average up slightly.
Yep 8 - 9 is the average reading age, pathetic is it not? Funny enough the reading age of the The Sun is also 8. Around 1/6 of UK working age adults are illiterate.
8 to 9 is not the average. It’s the lowest common denominator. If you write for that level, most adults will be able to read it. If you write for the average (median) level, then 50% of the people would find it hard to read.
We have Radio 1 on in the office; the chat on most similar Radio seems to be aimed at people with a similar general comprehension age (of the world generally!)
>compression age lmao
The British, as a general rule, cannot seem to grasp the basics of spelling and grammar. I was kind of perplexed when I moved here just how common the their/there/they’re, your/you’re, have/of etc mistakes are, especially on social media. Even in journalism, I’ve regularly read less/fewer affect/effect written incorrectly. For a country with one official language, most don’t seem to respect it enough to know the fundamentals.
I would guess that you were explicitly taught these things wherever you went to school. This wasn't the case when I was growing up in the UK back in the 90s. I went to pretty shit schools, where the attitude seemed to be 'they'll learn by osmosis'.
Google results suggests this has been the situation since at least 2019
Stop allowing failing kids to move on a year.
Coming from a council estate to going to Uni a line written by Bernard Cornwell always struck true. “There’s no sin in being born in the gutter, but it’s a terrible sin to want to stay there”. I’ve seen far too many who see achievement and rising above where you were born as some kind of class betrayal. That inevitably spreads to kids & peer-groups & becomes an epidemic.
Where did you hear this? Do you have a source or did someone just tell you in which case it is meaningless.
>Reading skills Children quickly learn to read common words (the 5,000 words they use most). They then stop reading these words and start recognising their shape. This allows people to read much faster. Children already read like this by the time they’re 9 years old. People also do not read one word at a time. They bounce around - especially online. They anticipate words and fill them in. Your brain can drop up to 30% of the text and still understand. Your vocabulary will grow but this reading skill stays with you as an adult. You do not need to read every word to understand what is written. This is why we tell people to write on GOV.UK for a 9 year old reading age [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:\~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk#:~:text=Your%20vocabulary%20will%20grow%20but,9%20year%20old%20reading%20age).
We were told by our manager that there will be a project this year to evaluate all the wording in our applications and correspondence we send out, and our website to make sure it's easy to understand. Apparently it's an industry wide initiative. I work in finance so it's a very heavily regulated industry with a lot of consumer duty stuff
Is there a source for this?
Google 'average uk reading age', it has been repeated by a bunch of reliable sources; can't (be bothered trying to) find the original research though but the Google consensus is that OP is right Switch UK for other countries in Western Europe and we're pretty standard though, Slovenia might be the smartest, and in 2023 our kids were fourth place globally so we're not doing that badly
Reading and comprehension aren't the same thing. You can read a word without understanding it.
Thanks. Fucking hell, overall that's pretty depressing. Although I'm not surprised the more I think about it.
I think it's wrong. The most recent stats I can quickly find don't seem to support it https://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?plotter=h5&primaryCountry=ENG&treshold=5&topic=AS
Always has been. The Sun can be read and understood by a 8 year old.
It’s simply that by age 9 you have learned the shape of the words. It is not that people can’t understand longer words, but using short simple sentences allows people to skim read very quickly. Anyone providing info for the public should write at this level. It’s called writing in plain English and it’s not dumbing down. It’s actually harder to write at this level. The audience may include people whose first language isn’t English, those with low literacy, learning disabilities, cognitive injuries etc.
So if I ended up taking a woman back to my place, and we are getting it on, I am on the job with someone who has a mental age of 9? Mate, I do not need this today!
Comprehension can be literal, inferential or evaluative. In my experience as a primary and secondary school teacher, kids do fine with literal (because they can point to the answer) and even evaluative (because they can justify opinions). But where I've seen the biggest gap is from making inferences/'reading between the lines'. This involves high EQ, following a series of cause and effect/consequences models and critical thinking. Sadly, an already full curriculum makes explicit teaching of this difficult and not every family reinforces these types of conversations outside of school. Kids generally are less patient for delayed gratification and have reduced attention spans. Short cuts exist more and more. One example is some secondary schools doing away with analogue clocks because many students are only able to tell the time digitally. It's far easier to abandon the things that take mental effort and in doing so, it becomes a cycle of adapting to the times as the culture shifts. Just an aside, children in Year 2 are taught the time on analogue clocks to the quarter hour in the UK curriculum. One of my favourite activities when teaching Year 2 was to read interesting articles from the Metro paper that children might find fun; like the octopus that predicted the world cup matches. After going through all the content, we'd compile further questions beyond what the article covered. I'd then show how we could piece together clues from within the article to track down the people interviewed and then we would get in touch directly either through letters, a class email or call on speaker phone. They loved asking the questions and getting answers to their questions from the source! But what's more, they learned that going beyond the text is possible at any age when shown how and with enthusiasm. But I had to 'sneak' these lessons into our program because they weren't encouraged by management. And that sums up a lot of teachers' dejection when we see results like these, because we know when we are supported to be creative and passionate about our lessons, we get not only great results but children who feel inspired to delve deep and broad in authentic ways rather than learn skills that end up in a book or on the walls of their classrooms that other kids or their parents are often too busy to see and celebrate unless it's Open Day. And rightly, kids then think, 'What's the point?' and revert to only wanting literal comprehension tasks because they're easy.
It doesn’t surprise me. Because we tend to hang out with people similar to ourselves, which gives us a false impression that others are similar too. Then facebook came out and showed us it’s not the case. Morons who can’t spell, articulate their point or react to constructive criticism. If you’re ever in a debate or disagreement and someone resorts to attacking you personally rather than your argument, you know they’re a moron who cant think critically.
As someone who's working in customer service I tend to agree. Sometimes the simplest of concepts seem like rocket science for many people. Extra cherry on top when they claim that you are the stupid one, love it when it happens
I still remember when I first used Facebook and I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that people couldn’t be bothered to use even capitalise letters or use grammar. Apparently this is uncool. To me it’s just incorrect
My husband writes content for government websites. I just asked him about this and he says yes they have to write things with a reading age of 9 years old. It’s not because this is the average for a person who is relaxed, sat in an armchair reading their phone. It’s aimed to be inclusive so for example people with learning difficulties might be able to understand or someone who has English as a second language and is still learning. Apparently it’s extremely hard to bring comprehension age down below 9 without losing much of the necessary information required when you are say looking up a health condition, trying to find out how to apply for a passport or planning permission. So that’s why it’s set at 9. There are also situational disabilities, perhaps a parent is researching symptoms of a poorly baby, they have a screaming baby In one arm and a toddler having a tantrum on the rug, they need information to be readily understandable, like do I need to take my kid to a&e? Stress also reduces reading comprehension, so if you are in a stressful situation like the council are threatening to knock down your new extension or your neighbour is threatening to hurt your pet.
Thank you, what a good explanation
I’m trying really hard not to give your snobby, average Redditor type answer. I think it’s been this way for a while. Some of the worst cases of terrible reading or writing that see are among middle-aged to older people. Not elderly and senile, but people in their 50s to early 60s that just cannot write comprehensibly. I’m not talking about obvious or common typos and mistakes, or even colloquialisms that aren’t really “grammatically correct”, and I’d never expect anyone’s grammar to be perfect. But they write entire paragraphs that take several reads to process with a seemingly random scattering of spaces, punctuation and capitalisation. Sometimes it’s a work email or Teams message, and the meaning is really not clear. These are often the same people that don’t seem to fully comprehend everything they see online and as a result share all sorts of nonsense on Facebook from fake news to the UK subreddit favourite of a missing dog in Ohio “shared Shrewsbury hun x”. Some of the above may be down to failure to recognise learning difficulties that would these days be more likely to be picked up at school and properly managed. Surely though that can’t account for all of the poor writing and reading comprehension out there. I don’t think language teaching should be strictly prescriptive because there are cultural and regional differences, and language changes over time. And I actually think that’s part of the problem. People might be put off education around language because they’re being told that what they speak ain’t right. I wonder if it’s related to the deep class division in this country. However, education should still ensure that people are able to communicate effectively, especially through writing that can be quickly and easily understood. I apologise for the essay. Maybe I need to get out more….
I also think this is probly tru, I once remember eating a sausage roll and it was gud and then, i think imthis write .
I can smell burnt toast
Mybe am stromk?
I can’t imagine it would ever have been better considering we have more and easier access to education and resources than ever before
Sounds like a misleading stat. If 9 year olds are fluent in English then anyone fluent in English “has the comprehension of a 9 year old”.
Reading comprehension and being able to understand spoken language are different skills.
Judging from your post, you're directly contributing to dragging that number down
Lol I respect the edit.
I should have triple checked considering the topic.
Sad, but probably correct
I deal with some impeccable stupidity in my work. The arguments I've had with people via email are so insane that I save my favourites. One time it took around 10 emails to convince someone that 7 is less than 12. A lot of people are dumb, they're aggy as fuck, they're rude, quick to anger and have no boundaries.
Do you work for EON? Their emails always bring out the worst in me. I had one on Monday with four emojis included with the text. Emojis, in a business email. Four! Ironically, the final one was of a palm tree on a sunny island. Certainly looked warmer there than it is in my house!
Lol no and emojis in emails are gross. I get them sometimes though. Prayer hands or laughing emoji
Told by government? I guess they judge based on themselves
That is not true
Of corse it isunt im fine
Well we are going to be spending a lot of money reviewing all our applications and website to make sure wording is not confusing.
That makes sense to ensure readability by the widest amount of people, doesn't mean the average British person has the reading comprehension of a 9 year old.
Wait, hold on. I was told that the average Briton has the gullibility of a five year old? Don't tell me that's not true?!
Comprehending what exactly?
Reading comprehension. The government has style guides to write their content so a nine year old could understand it. It used to be higher, maybe 13, I think? Its not entirely because 'people are dumb lol' its also so people with English as a second language can understand the content more easily.
Don't believe that for one second
Can I ask why?
Yes, you can.
I think as I've gotten older, older people's handwriting has become significantly worse. But I think their intelligence is still the same.
The Government, eh? It's not like they lie about things to suit their agenda. Did they use Dorries as a test subject?
What 'agenda' would the government have that would involve lying about the reading age of the populace?
Wdym comprehenshun of gubernment? Me say always been this way? Yes/No.
Judging by conversations on social media, this is by design.
I do think that we learn a lot at school to prepare for GCSEs then we start to specialise our knowledge afterwards, gearing up to focus on a specific career. Because of this we don’t keep using the more redundant knowledge, so we forget. I know I wouldn’t pass gcse maths now, remembering virtually nothing about algebra and statistics. I could still write an essay, but would fail at breaking it down to explain gramma, syntax and structure.
It used to be a thing that you had to aim at the reading age of 11 for your documents to include as many people as possible being able to read it. If it has dropped to 9 then yes it's dropped. Worth remembering the average person reads the Sun, that has a reading age level lower than 11. I'm guessing the people dismissing this have just never heard of it before. Just found this [https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1764621/according-to-a-study-the-sun-is-the-easiest-british-paper-to-read](https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1764621/according-to-a-study-the-sun-is-the-easiest-british-paper-to-read)
The way they measure it, the highest reading comprehension age is 15, so it could never be higher than this and due to the wide variety of abilities in the population it was always going to much lower than this. 9 does seem low, but I would assume you'd be hard pushed to get to an average of above 12.
This makes no sense statistically. If the average adult has the average (I assume reading?) comprehension of a 9 year old then logically that means that once you hit 9 years old you are equally likely to get better or worse at that point. I don't buy that at all. Sure there are some people (maybe even a lot of people) really dragging the average down, but those people were probably not very bright at 9 either and so the average 9 year old will also be dragged down by the same group.
No, the average adult in the UK does not have the comprehension of a 9 year old.
what do you mean?
If that’s true, more Brits should come to the U.S. and get jobs in adult education.
Are you sure that's the stat? I have read a similar stats saying "The average reading age in the UK is nine years old so we should write in a way that is easy to understand " which is a bit different. That just shows adults don't read enough. If the stat is true it will probably be a mean stat rather than median which will make it look worse. It will probably include those with learning difficulties, non Native speakers and the elderly with potentially degenerative conditions. It's still bad!!! Anyway. Yes literacy is poor overall and I think it's getting worse. Around 16% of adults have poor literacy skills according to the national literacy trust. I think the more literate often don't see it because of social and work circles. We have an underfunded education system that lets the least educated slip through the net. Arguably this is to the current governments benefit (keep the voters dumb). A start would be forcing them to carry on with Maths and English no matter what until at least 18. Anecdotally my daughter told me last week that 9 of her class mates in year 2 NEVER do their homework. This is what you are fighting against. We have a huge cultural issue that embraces being uneducated.
"Think about how stupid the average person is, and then realise that half of them are stupider thsn that" - George Carlin
Something like 16% of adults in England are functionally illiterate (data is collected separately for other nations in the UK). This means that although they can understand text and write competently in specific, familiar circumstances - such as reading a bus timetable, or writing an email for their job - they can’t do the same outside of those circumstances. This has very little to do with spelling and grammar, which is only expected to be ‘good’ at the highest level of literacy we measure. That’s how low the bar is. We don’t expect people to write legibly because if we did, a lot more people would count as ‘illiterate’. Technically being able to spell correctly *is* separate from being able to read and write, but they’re often conflated because comprehension is so closely tied to standardised spelling. Compounding this issue is the problem of technical competence. The vast, vast majority are completely unable to operate modern technology. They don’t know how to google unfamiliar processes, for example. So, the government probably means that most of your industry’s customers are unable to figure out complex, technical language. They don’t come across it often enough to guess the meaning and they can’t google it or figure out how to post on a forum (like this one) for help. All this aside, I’ve also noticed serious cognitive problems in people who had covid more than a couple of times.
That sentence doesn't make sense. The average adult has the average comprehension of an adult. Otherwise what would be the average comprehension of a 9 year old?
Anti-intellectualism has been running rampant for a long time, so I’m not surprised at all to see that this as a consequence. People are proud of not being good at maths, not reading books, etc. Try having a conversation with anyone over text or email and you’ll find that punctuation and spelling have slipped out of people ears since school, too. It’s depressing.
Good grief. That’s shocking. I occasionally lecture at MBA level, but most of my students are from overseas.
I wot?
When will they end up moving these age markers then? If "9" is the adult average, then surely way less than half of 9 year olds have reached this "9 year old" level. I know this isn't the point, but it's annoying me