A new study reveals low literacy level in Germany: recent progress and improvement

living with low literacyA study by the University of Hamburg has been recently presented in Berlin, "LEO: Leben mit geringer Literalit" (LEO: living with a low level of literacy), which aims to assess the reading and writing skills of the German-speaking population aged 18-64, in order to quantify the seriousness of the problem of the low level of literacy.

The study certainly brought noteworthy results for the language sector, which is why we talk about it briefly in this article.

 

 

First, the study presents the three levels of "low literacy": the lowest level, very rare in Germany, is when someone is able to read only single letters; the second level corresponds to literacy at the word level, so without the ability to understand entire sentences; and finally the third level corresponds to literacy at the sentence level, without the ability to understand short texts.

According to the LEO study, 12.1% of the adult population in Germany has a low level of literacy skills, but this is still an improvement compared to the same study presented in 2010, when the figure was 14%. There are currently 6.2 million adults with a low level of literacy in the country, compared to the 7.5 million in 2010. Undoubtedly, for the German education system it is a small success: today there are 1.3 million fewer people with a low level of literacy than in 2010.

Looking deeper into the study published by the University of Hamburg, other interesting data can be seen: men have poorer reading and writing skills than women; the largest portion of people with a low level of literacy is adults over 45; more than half of the people have German as their mother tongue (52%); the rest are immigrants who are not native German speakers and 78% of them are able to read and write fluently in their native language; and, finally, two-thirds of the adults studied have a job, another growing number compared to the 2010 study. 

Social exclusion, for example when it comes to politics, voting and information, is often linked to the low level of literacy. The study presents some interesting data on this subject: only 23.6% of adults said they read the newspaper everyday (compared to 41.9% of the total population of Germany) and also only 34.6% of adults with a low literacy level talk about politics at home one or more times a week. Talking specifically about the vote, the study found an alarming fact: adults with poor literacy skills make less frequent use of their voting rights: only 62.2% of them vote regularly, compared to 87.3% of the whole German population. It is not just about having opinions about the political representatives: the problem is reading and filling out the voting card correctly.

Finally, the last aspect taken into account by the LEO study is the one of health: even figuring out the medication package inserts is a challenge for people with a low level of literacy, and often a doctor or pharmacist have to give instructions on medication.

Undoubtedly, literacy increases self-confidence and improves the quality of life. Society must realize that it is a huge problem for the country when people are not sufficiently literate: in the first place it is a personal drama for 6.2 millions of people, as well as a sociomedical issue and it must be solved by the institutions. Of course, it is essential to give voice to the phenomenon and to publicize it in order to raise awareness of the political class, but it is not enough: if there are not enough funds, the problem of low literacy is bound to worsen.

 

The full results presented by the study" LEO: living with lowliteracy " (PDF in English) and " Leo:leben mit geringer Literalit "(PDF in German).

 


Powered by CrossLang

Author: Margherita Pancaldi

Machine translation: SDL Machine Translation (previously SDL BeGlobal)

Post-editing: Margherita Pancaldi

Source language: italiano (it)


Additional information