What Grade is Your Content Comprehension?

[Spacelord]

The trouble with having a certain level of comprehension is that most of the time you're not aware of your talents when you don't encounter any limits. In other words: if you've never had any problems with reading comprehension it's hard to imagine what the 'levels' are. Of course you'll probably be able to make the distinction between Police Academy and... um... let's say 2001 A Space Odyssey [small](which is a masterpiece and I hereby cordially invite anyone who disagrees with me to a round of fisticuffs)[/small] but I personally can't for the life of me predict what kind of language would be considered 'too advanced' for an audience to comprehend.

This is an interesting question to me because of personal academic experience. That is, whenever I focus all my energies on an essay and construct every sentence with the utmost care until I feel genuinely satisfied with my work, I get a barely passing grade and feedback usually along the lines of "obtuse language" or "vague". On the other side I have on many occasions felt ashamed for essays because I felt they were so terrible. On those occasions I've frequently gotten excellent results [small](though not consistently; don't use my anecdote as an excuse to slack off kids! Get off this forum and get to fucking work!)[/small]

That said: any ideas on where to find a ratings system for content level? Maybe like a program so I can run my papers through it before I submit 'em?

 

[Archon]

Hey guys - there a ton of free content rating systems available online - just google "flesch readability" or "gunning fog" and you'll have a bunch to choose from. Each method gives slightly different scores but usually within a point or two of each other.

 

[Spacelord]

Cheers

 

[Jiki]

Well, what a funny ending to quite an interesting article - I meant the question for the reader, of course, the one about grading oneself as a smartie or not-so-smartie. To me it seems like a quite vital ending to an article which might otherwise be considered as too snobbish itself and even offending to some of the audience here at the escapist (despite which, as I've noticed, often likes to glare about "how intelligent all our readers are"). So, a quick turn of tone was in order as to not be too cruel for the more simple-minded (as, to be honest, I think are we all).

I also think that the first few posts nicely show what kinds of posts were to be expected. Nobody wants to be a fool, yet everybody wants to shine.

Edit: oh, nice, just after posting I notice the date of the article. Typical.