Hooked on phonics worked for me.

… I’m actually not cracking a joke. One of the few memories I have from when I was very young (under maybe 6 or so) was going through hooked on phonics material.

In my college years, while not focused on language or communication (I’m an IT technician, specializing in computer networking) I became obsessed with the English language and it’s been a long term study for me. I’m still learning new things all the time despite English being my only fluent language. The nuances of when to use what terms despite each term being roughly equivalent (such as: what is the difference is between “affect” and “effect”), and other such oddities and specifics. College didn’t really tell me anything new about the language I speak, but dealing with everyone’s terrible use of the language, and being misunderstood many times because of poor structure or word selection caused me to want to step up so I can reduce how many follow ups I have to deal with to clarify myself.

I find most people are almost unnecessarily terse, leaving out important context that they think is obvious and assume that everyone who receives their message will make the same observation, when it’s not an obvious thing at all to many; this assumption is extremely common and often it’s not something that even crosses into the minds of those doing it. Such assumptions often lead to misunderstandings and are the basis of more than a few ha ha funny jokes in sitcoms, all of which I find rather cringe.

As a society, we abuse language severely. By extension, otherwise mundane situations can turn hazardous or even lethal if a misunderstanding happens; and many leave a lot of the context, and a fundamental understanding of context, to the assumptions of the reader/listener. It’s really dumb IMO.

If the literal majority of people are reading at a 6th grade level, the society in which we live should be making efforts to improve that. Bluntly, I shouldn’t need to “read between the lines” to understand what you want me to do.