| >Lots of literary fiction is perfectly readable for normal humans. Lots of what isn’t accessible is just not that enjoyable to anybody. The PIAAC surveys, while imperfect, indirectly address what percentage of adults can read and appreciate "literary fiction." The first part of the definition of level 3: >Adults at Level 3 are able to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. They can identify, interpret or evaluate one or more pieces of information, often employing varying levels of inferencing. The first part for Level 4: >At level 4, adults can read long and dense texts presented on multiple pages in order to complete tasks that involve access, understanding, evaluation and reflection about the text(s) contents and sources across multiple processing cycles. Adults at this level can infer what the task is asking based on complex or implicit statements. Successful task completion often requires the production of knowledge-based inferences. The full definitions can be found here: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/measure.asp Based on the full definitions, understanding the use of metaphor in a longer text probably sits in Level 4. A simple metaphor might sit in Level 3. Based on the recent survey results, only half of US adults read at Level 3 or above. Around 15% read at Level 4 or above. I invite you to look at this PowerPoint of sample questions for each level: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjJ... Based on that, what level of literacy do you think indicates someone capable of reading and enjoying literary fiction? I think the hypothetical cutoff is somewhere between Level 3 and 4. Based on all of this, let's use Sally Rooney's book "Normal People" as an example. If we're being super charitable, at most 50% of people would be able to read and comprehend that book. If we're being less charitable with our definition of "comprehension," I think we're probably looking at closer to 30% of people really understanding it. |