Only 7 countries studied achieve basic literacy rates On average, adults tested in the latest worldwide literacy study can read a few paragraphs and locate a single piece of information in them. But they struggle to find information that requires drawing even low-level conclusions from what they've read. Or so says the 2013 Program for the International Assessment of Adult … [Read more...] about World of words
illiteracy
Write for the world
How to reach readers in the face of global illiteracy How can you write for adults who can barely read? That's what two Chicago academics — William S. Gray and Bernice Leary — set out to learn in 1935. To discover what makes prose readable for adults with low literacy rates, the University of Chicago's Gray and St. Xavier College's Leary studied 48 passages of about … [Read more...] about Write for the world
We are the world
And we're not very literate, according to an OECD study A "severe literacy deficit" haunts the world's most developed countries. Between one-quarter and three-quarters of the world's adults don't have a "suitable minimum skill level" for coping with the demands of modern life and work. That's according to the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), a large-scale … [Read more...] about We are the world