Article: A Tale of Two Studies.(functional illiteracy measured)

'Lower-Level' Adult Literacy

The following descriptions show what adults scoring at the lowest levels of NALS can do. Some people have taken levels 1 and 2 to indicate "functional illiteracy." This seems unfair, and, given what the people at levels 1 and 2 can do, it is little wonder that few of them report that literacy difficulties cause problems in their lives.

Level 1: Performed simple routine tasks involving brief and uncomplicated texts and documents. For example, they were able to locate the time or place of a meeting on a form and identify a piece of specific information in a brief news article.

Level 2: Located information in texts, ...

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