Thanks–I know about standards like this. These aren’t what folks mean when they talk about a “sixth grade reading level,” though, if I understand correctly. Digging around a little, I’m finding this study. It doesn’t use “sixth grade,” but instead evaluates literacy on a scale of 1 to 5, with “3” being “fully literate,” and 54% of Americans at 1-2.
Some interesting notes on the study:
This accompanies a map showing that Mexico border states have some of the highest rates of illiteracy–which makes me strongly suspect that they’re talking about English literacy without ever spelling that out. If folks who have immigrated to the US and for whom English is not their first language are not fluent in reading English, I’m not sure I’m going to treat that as an indictment of the US K-12 system.
I’m also really unsure why level 2 is treated as sixth-grade by the news headlines, if level 3 is “fully literate.” Do children finish learning literacy skills in sixth grade? If so, my eighth grader’s ELA teacher has some splainin to do.
The New York English standard I linked to does, though I did not quote it, acknowledge that students may be taking English not as a first language, and that they may demonstrate skills “bilingually or transfer linguistic knowledge across languages”.
The only thing that readily comes to mind is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which does not use terminology like “sixth-grade level”, but instead divides language skills up into A1–A2–B1–B2–C1–C2, where the border B2/C1 might be good enough to begin college-level work but is not necessarily complete mastery. Significantly, there are estimates for the average number of hours of study required to get to a certain level, depending on what language we are talking about, whether it is one’s native language, and, if not, what language you already speak (it could be closely related or from a completely different language family). For example, an English speaker might require 700 hours to reach level C1 in German but 800 hours to get to the same level in French. “Sixth-grade level” may then represent a certain number of hours per semester times 6 years. At least, that is a wild guess.
The cornfield is a selected pool, as you note mostly filled with trolls and crackpots. Probably the best place to find ignorance and carelessness, of writing, and of thought in general.
OTOH there are those here who veer to to other direction. We have an over-representation of pedants, and the hypercorrective.
I for one experience those who post with “could of” and even “octopi” to be very readable. Sometimes phone autocorrect gets in the way. Sometimes trying to get something out in the few minutes one has makes for missed words.
In this sort of venue I find hearing authentic voices to be of more value than I would conformity to standard norms.
Not sure if this is helpful, and there are educators here who know this stuff much better than do, but this page describes in detail the PIAAC literacy proficiency levels. Level 2 does seem to be a fair representation of the expected competency of a well-performing sixth-grader [PDF] – e.g.- drawing inferences, paraphrasing and summarizing, etc.
This page shows how US adults were assessed in terms of these levels.
Sure, for the most part so do I, and no major disagreement here. The mention of some of those specific mistakes was just by way of example of the kind of thing that gets in the way when it’s extremely prevalent and is often combined with other issues like terrible (or non-existent) punctuation and illogical sentence structure. In isolation, such things are relative minutiae that most of us don’t care about. I mentioned them in the absence of some of the really spectacular examples of really bad writing that I recall, like some of the walls of text that were almost completely devoid of punctuation of any kind, let alone paragraph breaks or coherent sentences. But those seem to have mostly been cornfielded.
I will say, though, that someone who consistently writes “could of” and “would of” seems to be exhibiting a disconnect from the most basic rudiments of the English language. I feel like screaming, “dude, what are you thinking?”
It looks like about 8% of the US population does not speak English very well. This is almost certainly do to immigration from Latin American countries where immigrants are fluent in Spanish, and if the literacy assessment does not check literacy in Spanish, it should absolutely explain their lack of level 3 literacy.
Obviously that’s not all of the 54%, but it’s an interesting component. I wonder what explains the remainder?
Well, numeracy is pretty bad, too, to roughly an equivalent extent.
Maybe it’s because, although these skills may be well taught in schools, people don’t value them as life skills that should be retained and enhanced. Or as Dave Barry succinctly put it, we learned that Pythagoras gave us the Pythagorean Theorem, but when we left high school, we gave it back.
And this may capture the practical dividing point in this discussion. To me those are common errors that I read right over not even recognizing them as errors.
If I did notice and pause to wonder why they consistently made the same sort of error my speculation would be short. Assuming the thoughts expressed were otherwise intelligent and cogently expressed I’d assume the poster was one of the many who listens more than reads as an adult. They have fine reading competency but they do not spend much of their time reading. They may listen to NPR and stream science podcasts, they hear a wide variety of vocabulary and word usages, but they see them written much less often. They are simply speeding through, making the short cut writing it as they heard it in proper usage. It doesn’t actually make sense? So what? Lots of commonly used phrases do not make literal sense but they still have the meaning we intend, having induced it by frequent exposure. I understand what “to all intents and purposes” means not by thinking about what the individual words mean but by exposure to the phrase in context on multiple occasions. If I primarily heard it, and first heard it as “to all intensive …” my brain would continue to hear it that way in the future.
To illustrate the process. I read lots as a kid and was exposed, in books, to the word “alcove”. Problem is first time I read it my brain reversed the l and the c. I pronounced it “aclove”. I then kept doing it and spoke it that way to others bemusement for a long time. Was I illiterate? Dumb? Ignorant? Well maybe the last but not out of laziness.
In this sort of venue try to read for content and appreciation that you are possibly captured thoughts more raw and unfiltered than in formal writing contexts.
Adherence to a specific grammar or orthography is not needed for good writing. You (and Pinker) think it does, but you are projecting your own preferences. Look again at the list quoted by @Paxx:
Good writing starts strong. Not with a cliché (“Since the dawn of time”), not with banality (“Recently, scholars have been increasingly concerned with the question of …”), but with a contentful observation that provokes curiosity.
…
Good writing can flip the way the world is perceived, like the silhouette in psychology textbooks which oscillates between a goblet and two faces.
…
Good writing is understood with the mind’s eye.
…
Good writing finishes strong.
These are all about the ideas conveyed with the writing from the writer to the reader.
Take a step back. The language a text is written in is limited by both the writer and the intended readers. And the quality of that writing is independent of the choice made. But the language is not the only choice a writer makes. There’s things like dialect, register, orthography, and grammar. Those are also limited by both the writer and the intended readers. And the quality of that writing is independent of the choices made.
Certainly neither you nor Pinker believe only writing in English can be good. Would you also believe good writing is restricted to a particular dialect? Or, register? And so on. You have preferences in language, dialect, register, orthography, and grammar. We all do. You can decide for yourself what impact a text has on you. We all can. These things are subjective.
For pedagogy, literacy means those who write should learn about how all these choices affect how their writing impacts their readers. It’s not about rigorous adherence to any particular standard, but about their options. Being able to write for particular audiences is a useful skill.
But literacy also means those who read should learn about how all the choices writers make impacts the readers themselves. Being able to read and appreciate writing from non-standard sources is a useful skill as well.
While I’ve read and understood the rationale you offer for this, consider how often “could of / should of / would of” might be followed by “went” – “I should of went …”.
Not surprising, if you think about it. Most of us who would write “I should have …” readily recognize a familiar pattern: even if we aren’t consciously aware that we should write “gone” because the auxiliary verb “have” demands the past participle, we know it does. With the auxiliary verb missing in action, there is neither pattern nor grammatical logic, and “went” is as good as anything else. Which is why I’m skeptical that anyone who writes “I should of went …” will devote any greater degree of care and attention to anything else they write. At some point you do get into problems of readability and comprehension.
I’ve no idea how often it’s followed by “went.” How am I supposed to consider this question?
You’ve certainly not addressed this question with any care and attention, beyond base fact-free speculation. Should your readers be skeptical that anyone who asks a question like this will devote any greater degree of care and attention to anything else they write?
Even if “should of” is often followed by “went”, why on Earth would I care? “Went” functions perfectly well in that sentence. I as audience know exactly what’s meant; and if bourgeoinics changes 50 years from now such that “went” is considered bougie in that context, there’ll be no loss of meaning.
I might care about it now, because it does give me a split second of code-switching to follow the meaning, because I’m super bougie myself. And if I’m teaching my students bourgeonics, I’ll teach them to write “Should’ve gone” instead of “Should of went.”
But I’m sure not going to engage in obnoxious accusations that this linguistic pattern reflects personality failings on the part of the author. That’s the worst sort of prescriptivist elitist nonsense.
Languages have a wide variety of ways to indicate time. Even without considering the huge diversity in other languages, an Irish person might say (in English):
There’s no fundamental absolute reason in a dialect of English that “could’ve” is better/worse or more/less logical than “could of”. And there’s certainly no issue with clarity of meaning. The usage obviously arose because “could’ve” and “could of” are aurally virtually indistinguishable.
Of course, if I were proofreading someone’s resume, I would correct “could of”, because there is a reputational issue for the resume owner seeking a job. But all I would be doing is changing their writing to conform to the arbitrary conventions of the dialect of the hegemony. Leaving it in place would indicate that the person either had not learned these arbitrary conventions because they don’t read much in that dialect, or that they don’t care about conforming - which may not be desirable characteristics for an employer.
So please reflect on why you cannot refrain from paroxysms of sneering denunciation, rather than gentle correction when appropriate for a specific individual. Dude, what are you thinking? My sense is that your ignorance is as great as theirs. I think that you do not understand that all that’s at stake here is a matter of conforming to the entirely arbitrary standards of a specific dialect in a specific social context. I think you have convinced yourself with parochial rationalizations that there is some fundamental absolute linguistic sense in which “could’ve” is better than than “could of”.
If you don’t want to be accused of classism and supremacism, you really need to learn the difference between conforming to an arbitrary convention in a given social context, and what really matters for good writing - the aspects that @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness and others have described above.
All of your weak rationalizations amount to nothing more than the circular supremacist logic: The way we do it is better than the way they do it, because we are better than they are.
Sorry for piling on, but okay, complying with your request I have considered it.
I’ve not noticed it occurring at all.
Not surprising, if you think about it. Most of those who are using that “of” construction have learned it as a mishear in usage followed by “gone”, not “went” and apply it accordingly. Given the love for Pinker here, by applying the words aspect more than the rules.
Again, no one disagrees that at some point problems of readability may arise. Most us just see that point as very far away from the point you do. Again, I enjoy reading a written conversation that flows more as individuals converse in real life, variations, neologisms, errors, and all, than as edited opinion pieces to style book forms.
I still remember my Middle School English teacher, Mrs Ebbs. She was great, but I wish I’d had you as my teacher. Joking aside - it’s clear from your posts in this thread that your students are incredibly lucky.
Well, if you have access to an appropriate text corpus, you could check out the frequency of occurrence. As a first approximation I just checked to see what Google turned up on the internet overall – may not be very meaningful but it was quick and easy:
“should have gone”
38,300,000
“should of gone”
274,000
“should of went”
570,000
Among the “should of” crowd on the internet, the “should of went” form appears to be roughly twice as popular.
First of all, good job focusing on one incidental last line I mentioned in passing rather than the substance of the actual post that preceded it.
But no, I disagree. There is no fundamental reason that you couldn’t invent a language in which “could of” was acceptable according to whatever rules of grammar you chose to to make up. But in the actual English language as presently constituted, the desired expression requires the auxiliary verb “have” followed by a past participle, not a preposition followed by whatever.
You still miss the point. “Of” in this context is a variant spelling of 've. As such, in this context, of is an auxiliary verb. Its function in the sentence isn’t dictated by its spelling. Of, in this context, has multiple definitions and can be a preposition or a verb, similar to like.
This could be the motto of the sort of prescriptivism you champion.
Aw, gosh–thank you for the kind words! Dunno if it’ll be interesting, but here’s the presentation I use when I start teaching grammar and conventions to upper elementary kids. Some of those slides are gonna sound prescriptivist, but I try during the discussion to make sure the kids understand the why of the written conventions.
A bit fanciful, but I grant that this is a valid point.
Maybe instead of mocking my cautious caveat about the validity of Google results as an approximation of usage frequency, you could tell me WHY “should of went” appears to be twice as popular as “should of gone”.
There were three points I made: how do we answer it? Why are you so cavalier with the facts surrounding your own question? And why does the answer matter? For you to give a sloppy cite (couched in a caveat) doesn’t come anywhere near addressing my points, and given the third one, I don’t particularly care to do that work for you.