Monday, June 4, 2012

Dumb U.S. Congress Needs to Graduate from High School




Members of Congress speak at a 10th-grade level - down almost a full grade since 2005 - raising the question of whether they are embracing a more effective communication strategy or dumbing down their messages, a new report says.

The findings published by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government transparency group in Washington, found that California representatives use more complex words - speaking at about the 12th-grade level.

The foundation analyzed floor speeches as reported in the Congressional Record, using the Flesch-Kincaid scale, which rates speeches based on the complexity, length and difficulty of words and sentences. Congress speaks at roughly the same level as the typical American, who speaks between the ninth- and 10th-grade levels.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/01/MNTQ1OPAQ7.DTL#ixzz1wrGS1VlF


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