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 【M1】________

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【M2】________

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 【M3】________

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 【M4】________

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 【M5】________

this holds true to the average student, not the person who is a 【M6】________

subject for special medical treatment.) He can follow a simple

piece of fiction and enjoy it. But put him up a closely 【M7】________

written exposition, an economical stated argument, or a passage 【M8】________

required critical consideration, and he is at a loss. It has been shown, 【M9】________

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. In all intents and 【M10】________

purposes he remains a sixth-grade reader till well along in college.

【M9】