The U. S. and the NAAL

 

The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), released in December 2005, estimates the current level of literacy skills among individuals in the U.S. aged 16 and older. This report is the first update of the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The NAAL surveyed a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 adults in residences and correctional facilities, testing their English reading and comprehension abilities in prose, document, and quantitative literacy. The tasks represented reading activities that individuals are likely to encounter during their daily activities: reading and understanding newspaper articles and informational pamphlets, reviewing television program viewing guides and bus schedules, and completing simple mathematics calculations. Based on their scores or their inability to be tested because they could not understand enough English to be assessed, individuals were placed into one of five level of literacy.

 

Nonliterate in English – these individuals could not understand enough English to take part in the assessment.

 

Below Basic – Adults in this level range from being nonliterate in English to having the ability to find easily identifiable information in short text or a form and to follow written directions to complete that simple form. For example, when asked to read a 12-paragraph article about the Se Habla Espanol expo, a trade show about how to sell products to Hispanics, adults with below basic skills could not answer the question, “What is the purpose of the Se Habla Espanol expo?”

 

Basic – Adults who have basic literacy skills are able to complete simple, everyday literacy tasks, such as reading and understanding information in short, commonplace texts and simple documents. But when given a chart showing how parents and elementary, junior high, and high school teachers evaluate parental involvement at their school, just four percent of adults with basic skills could read the chart to correctly answer the question, “Seventy-eight percent of what specific group agree that their school does a good job of encouraging parental involvement in educational areas?”

 

Intermediate – Individuals at the intermediate level can complete moderately challenging literacy tasks – consulting reference materials to find foods that contain a specific vitamin or finding a certain location on a map, for example. Given a bill for fuel oil that stated price per gallon, number of gallons delivered, total amount, and the amount of a deduction per gallon given for paying within 10 days, intermediate-skilled adults would have little difficulty computing the amount of the deduction they would receive by paying within the time limit. Just one percent of the adults categorized as “below basic”, however, answered this question correctly.

 

Proficient – These adults can read long sections of complex and abstract text and then integrate that information and make references from it. In a pamphlet about the damages of high blood pressure that refers to the disease as “the silent killer”, individuals in the proficient level easily answered the question, “According to the brochure, why is it difficult for people to know if they have high blood pressure?”

 

The NAAL results demonstrate that an estimated 11 million adults in the U.S. are “nonliterate in English”. While 30 million – 14 percent of the total adult population in the U.S. – are at the “below basic” level. Another 63 million are considered to have “Basic” literacy skills (29 percent of the adult population). Ninety-five million adults – 44 percent of the U.S. adult population – have literacy skills in the intermediate category, while 28 million, just 13 percent of this country’s adults, have English reading and comprehension skills considered to be “proficient”.*