Prose literacy: Can you read a newspaper article and understand the main points?
Document literacy: Can you fill out a job application or interpret a map?
Quantitative literacy: Can you balance a checkbook or understand a chart with multiple data points?
Someone reading at a 6th-grade level can handle most day-to-day reading tasks. They can read their prescription bottles, follow basic instructions, and understand straightforward news articles.
What they struggle with is synthesizing complex information from multiple sources, drawing inferences from technical documents, or navigating websites with multiple layers of information.