填空题.Do pupils in school learn to read their mother tongue effectively? Yes and no. Up at the fifth and sixth grade, reading, on the whole is 1 effectively taught and well learned. To that level we find a steady and general improvement, but beyond it the curves flatten out to be a dead level. This is not because a person arrives at his natural limitation of efficiency when 2 he reaches the sixth grade, for it has been shown again and again that with special tuition so much older children, and also adults, can 3 make enormous improvement. Nor does it mean that most sixth-graders read well enough for all practical purpose. A great many pupils do poorly in high school because of sheer inept in getting meaning 4 from the printed page. The average high-school graduate has done a great deal of reading, and if he goes on to college he will do a great deal more, and he is likely to be a poor and incompetent reader. (Note that 5 this holds true for the average student, not the person who is a 6 subject for special medical treatment.) He can follow a simple piece of fiction and enjoy it. But put him up a closely 7 written exposition, an economical stated argument, or a passage 8 required critical consideration, and he is at a loss. It has been shown, 9 for instance, that the average high-school student is amazingly inept at indicating the central thought of a passage, or the levels "of emphasis and Subordination in an argument or exposition. For all intents and 10 purposes he remains a sixth-grade reader till well along in college.