Trump's English skills ranked worst of all candidates

Washington Examiner ^ | 3/18/16 | Anna Giaritelli

[markomalley]

Donald Trump's use of vocabulary and grammar is more elementary than that of other candidates, according to a new study that compared the candidates' English language skills.

The New York businessman's grammar was comparable to a 5th grader's, lower than the average 6th to 8th grade levels used by Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, as well as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, according to a newly released Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute study.

Sanders scored highest in vocabulary, and was ranked at the level of an 11th grader. Trump was most comparable to a 7th grader, while Clinton, Cruz and Rubio were all ranked between 9th and 10th grade.

"This analysis shows the changes that candidates make in the level of their speech according to the type of speech," wrote report analysts Elliot Schumacher and Maxine Eskenazi. "It also reflects each candidate's combination of personal delivery style and their analysis of the level of the audience they want to address."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich was not included in the survey, and Rubio has since suspended his campaign following a loss in Florida's primary Tuesday.

The in-depth analysis even compared this year's candidates to previous U.S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan both boasted the highest cumulative speaking skills with averages hovering around a 10th grade level.

George W. Bush's grammar was rated worse than Trump's, ranked between 4th and 5th grade. But where Bush faltered in grammar, he made up for in vocabulary, which was at a 10th grade level.

[markomalley]

When I heard this earlier, I recognized on a commercial business perspective, that is actually a high compliment.

From the Plain Language at Work Newsletter:

Literacy and the reading habits are of major importance in communicating with your audience. A document may be "plain" for one set of readers and not for others. Writers often wrongly assume that their audience is of the same class of readers.They are often surprised to learn that very large numbers of readers cannot read what they have written.

The first literacy surveys in the U.S. done in 1935, showed that the average reader was an adult of limited reading ability. At that time, when the average reading level was 7.8, equivalent to readers in the eighth month of the seventh year in school. The reading levels have remained consistently the same over the years, showing slight improvement each year.

The National Adult Literacy Survey in 1992 and 2003 showed the following results:

The results show the average adult reads at the 9th-grade level. This accounts for the fact that the popular blockbuster novels are written at the 7th grade level. People like to read recreationally two grades below their actual reading skill. The average newspaper is written at the 11th-grade level, the tolerable limit for a 9th-grade reader.

And this 2004 study shows:

Adults have different levels of reading skill. The National Adult Literacy Survey shows that the average adult in the U.S. reads at the 7th grade level, with nearly 50 percent below the 6th grade level and over 80 percent below the 10th grade level.

Experts recommend that documents for the general public be written at the 7th-grade level. Documents about health, medicine, or safety should be written at the 5th-grade level. Documents for special groups can be adjusted according to their reading skill and the purpose of the document.

For those of us who have to speak and write to a wide variety of audiences in a business setting, we understand that our speech and writing must be adjusted so that the majority of our audience will easily and comfortably understand us.

So when I heard about this earlier in the day, I actually gave The Donald credit: he seems to understand the above basic communication concept very, very well.

Even though I'm not a Trump fan (I'm not a fan of any of the candidates at all), I have to give credit where due!

[Robert A Cook PE]

Funny. Obola is considered such a verbose, stunning orator. Until he loses his teleprompter.

[mowowie]

oh that’s it then, guess i HAVE to vote hillary now....

[acoulterfan]

I am sick of all the attorney politicians.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

And yet everybody understands him just fine.

It's the parse-speak of other candidates the people are baffled by.

[Secret Agent Man]

Better tham Obama’s.

If he was a democrat they would say its an advantge, he can relate to average people and illegals much better.

[huckfillary]

Better the truth in bad English, than lies with a silver tongue.

[ealgeone]

then he can only use three words...I, uh, um.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

This is it! Trump’s poll numbers will tank now, I tell ya!

[EagleUSA]

“...grammar is more elementary than that of other candidates.”

Good. Maybe the average low-information, low-IQ voter can understand his message better than that of Obama, for example. So far, the delegate count says so.

[PGalt]

Grammar police say Trump is disqualified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U

HOORAY citizen Trump

[gg188]

“Corpse-man”?

[SkyPilot]

Trump Speaking in a Posh British Accent

[altura]

Let not your heart be troubled. The Donald could never pass the bar.

“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” Donald Trump.

[Springman]

Bump for later.

[digger48]

Or they could talk like John Kerry and use 1000 lofty words in perfect prose and still end up saying nothing

[SkyPilot]

Obama's Most Ghetto Moments

[PGalt]

Well-noted, Robert. The stuttering POSOTUS is lost without the machine telling him what to say.

[stocksthatgoup]

No Ebonics?