When assessing the functional literacy of university graduates in Kazakhstan, the context in which the tasks are placed plays an important role. This context is due to the very importance of the development of functional literacy as the basis for the development of human capital. In this article, the issue of contexts is studied in detail by analyzing methodological documents of authoritative international comparative studies in the field of functional literacy assessment, a thematic analysis of tasks of standardized studies that are in open access with using machine learning algorithms (thematic modeling based on the Dirichlet latent placement method) is carried out. When analyzing methodological documents and reports of international comparative studies in the field of assessing the functional literacy of the adult population in context, technically, the names of thematic areas of contexts, although slightly changed, the main semantic core of contexts in all considered international comparative studies are similar. The main major thematic areas of contexts in the field of assessing functional literacy of adults are: “society and communities”, “work”, “education and training” and everyday situations. Thematic analysis of databases of tasks is in the public domain from the perspective of determining the context by the method of thematic modeling. In addition, as a general conclusion, it can be concluded that the contexts of tasks are closely related to the main goal of the development of functional literacy: the effective functioning of a person in society. It follows from this that when assessing the functional literacy of university graduates in Kazakhstan, tasks should be placed in such contexts that are associated with the effective functioning of graduates in society.
