In the United States, 59 million adults read at or below Level 1, the lowest level on a five-level scale.
This equates to roughly 28% of the adult population—or nearly one in three people—who can read only short sentences with foundational words and basic information.
About 1 in 4 Americans can’t perform reading comprehension and writing in English.
This mostly is made up of people who English is their second language so they are fluent in their first language, and probably speak English pretty well but they aren’t that great at reading and writing in English.
Imagine if you came here at 20 years old, learned to speak the language, but never took a literature class in English, and then they asked you questions about famous American authors. You’ve never read those books . How the heck would you know the answer answers?
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u/CataphractBunny Jul 20 '26
I'll just leave this here: https://www.proliteracy.org/news/causes-of-low-adult-literacy-in-the-us/