sfuqua wrote:I always wonder about those vocabulary level things.
If most writing for adults is at the 8th grade level, doesn't that mean what we call 8th grade is the adult level?
Where do these grade level things come from?
I guess there is a target listed somewhere, but if we are going to evaluate people on arbitrary standards that some professor, who does not teach language learners, sets, why not pick another one that sounds better.
I'm a middle school teacher in the US, and I get grey hair from arbitrary standards set by people who do not teach, which define students as below average, and the teachers who teach them as failures.
Sorry; I just hate "grade level standards". The glass is half full. I insist that it is.
Now I'll probably go back to talking about "grade level standards" just like everybody else.
edited to add a couple of words.
"Grade level" in the US, in the context of reading material, is determined by a computer algorithm. I don't know the exact details of the algorithm, but it is mostly or entirely driven by the length of individual words and the length of sentences. You can take Microsoft Word (if it has the Fleischman reading level tool in it ... they seem to have removed it in recent versions of word). If the text comes out as 12th grade level, just go through and break a few sentences in two. Run it again and the level will drop to 11.4. Replace all occurrences of "authoritarian" with "bossy" and it will drop to 10.8.
I don't see anything arbitrary about it and it's enormously helpful for teachers at the elementary school level, who don't personally have to read hundreds of books of children's literature and try to design some progression that will appeal to each and every student. Instead they can say "You tested at 3.7. Go to that shelf there and pick any book with a red sticker." And the red sticker (or whatever) will be books with a reading level between 4.0 and 4.9, a very nice n+1 experience for the kid.
It's the opposite of arbitrary, actually. It's a hundred percent objective. The algorithm doesn't carry if it's Harry Potter, the Bible, or the Necronomicon.