Submitted by ghostsniper via Comments; extracted from “American English Doctor” at americanenglishdoctor dot com/four-levels-of-literacy/

DT: Ghost is right – this is scary. What’s scarier is that as time goes by, more of the adult population in positions of authority will have increasingly lower literacy scores and will be resentful of those more literate.

“Do you think you’re better than me?“
“Yes, of course – but I dare not suggest it“

The goal of free public education is to educate children of all economic classes to a level of Basic Literacy. Most children are capable of achieving a level of Basic Literacy by the age of thirteen. Three of every ten children who begin first grade will drop out before completing high school. For this reason, every effort should be made to see that children achieve a level of Basic Literacy by the time they have completed the Eighth Grade.

The American English Doctor site provides free information and guidelines for achieving Basic Literacy and above. The intended audience for this information is parents, teachers, and English learners of every age. Nominally priced printed materials will become available as I develop the site.

L-1 Functional Literacy
A person who has achieved a level of Functional Literacy is able to read such texts as these:

At the very minimum, people who have reached a level of functional literacy will be able to do the following:

• Sign their names to a document.
• Read street signs, maps, and posted directions.
• Use a directory such as a telephone book or online site to find contact information.
• Complete standard forms for employment, school enrollment, public library use, etc.
• Open a checking account and write a check.
• Use a calculator to figure sums.
• Read label information on food, medications, cleaning preparations, etc.
• Pronounce words clearly enough to be understood by clerks, teachers, and others who may be unfamiliar with their speech patterns.
• Know where they can go for help with transactions that require a higher level of literacy.
• Read simple picture books to their children.

National literacy statistics for the United States indicate that as many as 23 percent of adult Americans–44 million men and women–have not reached this level of literacy.

L-2 Basic Literacy
A person who has achieved a level of Basic Literacy—about eighth-grade level— has the ability to read such texts as these:

English speakers who have achieved basic literacy demonstrate the following skills and characteristics:

• Can write a handwritten note that the recipient can read without struggling to decipher the letters or the meaning.
• Can spell everyday vocabulary such as definite and calendar correctly without digital help.
• Are not intimidated by “big words” because they know how to use a dictionary to check the spelling, meaning, and pronunciation of an unfamiliar word.
• Know how to speak more than one dialect of English and when to speak which.
• Know the most basic grammatical rules of standard American English.
• Know how to find information in the old technology called “books.”
• Sometimes prefer reading to TV.
• Have a general notion of US history and the United States form of government.
• Have a general acquaintance with significant English works of literature.
• Have a general notion of world geography, history, religion, and literature.
• Can think critically about statements made in such different contexts as advertising, entertainment, news reporting, and books written in an earlier century.

US literacy statistics indicate that 50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level.

L-3 Proficient Literacy
A person who has achieved a level of Proficient Literacy has the ability to read texts such as these:

• Sufficient general knowledge and reading fluency to be able to read and understand (without the help of a teacher) texts written for a general reader since 1900.
• The ability to spell all the words in one’s speaking vocabulary.
• The ability to write legibly and in complete sentences.
• The ability to write a structured, well supported, carefully revised and edited essay suitable for beginning college work.
• The habit of reading for enjoyment.
• A basic knowledge of US history and government.
• A general idea of the development of English language and literature.
• A basic knowledge of world history and world literature in translation.
• The ability to speak and write a standard form of English when appropriate.
• One or two years of foreign language study.
• The ability to consider differing points of view without becoming angry or defensive.

Surveys show that the average reading level of the top 40 books read by US teens in grades 9-12 is 5.3, barely above the fifth grade level. High school graduates who plan to pursue post-secondary education should reach a level of Proficiency Literacy. The only way to do this is to read widely outside of school assignments.

L-4 Advanced Literacy
A person who has achieved a level of Advanced Literacy has the ability to read texts such as these:

Any high school graduate who expects to go on to university should have reached this level.

Generally speaking, the person who is at a stage of advanced literacy demonstrates some or all of the following characteristics, in addition to those of proficient literacy:

• Reads widely on many different topics.
• Reads deeply on subjects of special interest.
• Is curious about words and understands that usage is not static.
• Takes care to model standard speech to children and to ESL learners.
• Adjusts usage and idiom according to whether the context is formal or informal.
• Speaks a foreign language well enough to communicate with a native speaker of it.
• Often seeks to verify the truth of information reported as fact in the media.
• Understands how language is used to persuade.
• Thinks critically, interpreting speech and writing in context.

A comparatively few individuals will read at this level. Not everybody wants to, and that’s all right. The ability to function at a level of Basic Literacy is sufficient for most human needs and occupations in 21st century society. The appalling fact about the literacy landscape in the United States is that so many Americans have been exposed to 6-8 years of formal education without achieving the level of Basic Literacy.

Prompted by this thing over at Vox’s place.

voxday dot net/2025/05/23/mpai-even-worse-than-you-think/

If you can read, understand, and write an essay on the following you are capable of level 4 reading, and therefore in the 5% of the literate American population.

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A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge’s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate. There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the “parsimony of the public,” which guilty public, it appeared, had been until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed—I believe by Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.

This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt quotation from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets:

“My nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!”

But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of—a parsimonious public.

There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona, otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the appearances observed in Mr. Krook’s case. The next most famous instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts, and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences are usually received.

Preface to “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens
www dot gutenberg dot org/files/1023/1023-h/1023-h.htm