National Adult Literacy Database

This paper is part of a series of documents that explain, in straightforward language, a number of online research documents from Statistics Canada. It is part of a project carried out by the National Adult Literacy Database (NALD), with funding from the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL).

The paper focuses on the state of French-language literacy in Canada, attempting to fill a gap in the Canadian report on the results of the first International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) in 1996. That study did not provide a detailed analysis of survey respondents’ literacy skills in terms of their sociolinguistic background, the author notes.

The general conclusion drawn from statistical analysis is that francophone literacy in Canada is “vulnerable” in that a large proportion of Francophones have marginal reading and writing skills, and few of them have superior skills. Compared with Anglophones, Francophones are less proficient at reading and writing, read less often and are less likely to include reading and writing as part of their daily activities.

The author notes that although the improvement in education and literacy among young people is encouraging, it is having little impact on the literacy picture as a whole.