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Edited on Wed Aug-20-08 11:44 PM by Boojatta
total world Vietnamese literacy, total world Mandarin literacy, total world Arabic literacy, total world Hindi literacy, total world Kurdish literacy, and total world Japanese literacy.
Here's the idea. This is a kind of development that is not regional economic development, but it might be worthy of some of the attention that the topic of regional economic development now receives.
Choose one spoken language. Nowadays there is likely to be a writing system associated with the spoken language you have chosen. Now, we can theoretically draw a curve that shows a non-geographical distribution.
A point on the x-axis corresponds to a linear measure of spoken fluency. Focus attention exclusively on people who are legally adults and who claim to have no current intention to undertake future study of the written language associated with the spoken language. Also, check that they have no statistical predisposition to undertake such study. They may get extra practice writing and reading in the course of using their existing literacy skills, but it is presumed that they won't on their own initiative pursue further literacy training in that language.
A point on the y-axis corresponds to the number of such adults who have attained the level of fluency in the specified language that corresponds to the point on the x-axis. The combination of a point on the x-axis and an associated point on the y-axis give us a coordinate in the two-dimensional coordinate system. The set of such points gives us a distribution curve.
For each of the languages listed at the beginning of this message, what is the speaking fluency distribution?
For each of the languages listed at the beginning of this message, what is the literacy distribution?
Finally, why is each distribution as it is and what measures could promote literacy, such as acquisition of literacy by children?
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