[Reading-hall-of-fame] Helping Sub-Standard Adult Literates

[tsticht at znet.com]

October 29, 2005

Helping Sub-Standard Adult Literates: New Research Shows That
Vocabulary and Word Recognition are Important in Adult Reading!

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

I recently received a report from the National Center for Adult Learning and
Literacy (NCSALL) with information about how to go about improving the
teaching of reading to adults. The report takes its place alongside other
NCSALL reports that aim to improve adult literacy education.

For instance, from NCSALL there are reports about Adult Multiple
Intelligences (AMI) research. This research identifies eight
"intelligences": linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial-visual,
bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist.
The report I looked at says, "MI validates good practice and expands the
capacity of teachers to bring out the best in their students." While I
couldn't find any  direct evidence to support these claims, this has not
detracted from the efforts of NCSALL to widely disseminate the findings.

Another NCSALL report aimed at helping practitioners benefit from research
says it has a new developmental dimension  of adult learning and
meaning-making, and that "practitioners can also benefit by remaining alert
to the ways that learners' meaning systems might also transform over the
course of a program." That is, teachers need to be aware of adult's "ways
of knowing" as they change from Instrumental, to Socializing to
Self-Authoring ways of knowing and meaning making. Again, I looked for
evidence that practitioners actually can benefit from knowing about this
research but I probably didn't look long enough because I didn't find any.
Nonetheless the information is
there for the taking, too.

Now, the latest report I have received, entitled "The Relationship of the
Component Skills of Reading to Performance on the International Adult
Literacy Survey (IALS)" has arrived from NCSALL, in partnership with test
developers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). This report states
that the results of extensive research by NCSALL and ETS indicates that
"well known basic reading skills like word recognition and vocabulary play
critical roles in real-life literacy performances, much as they do in more
traditional academic, school-based literacy assessments." The performance
of reading tasks of increasing difficulty of all sorts, "real-life" versus
"academic" (?), improves as readers vocabulary and word recognition
abilities increase! Importantly, the researchers inform practitioners that
this is good news because vocabulary and word recognition skills "are
readily teachable by ABE practitioners."!!

I, too, have recently completed important studies showing that those who
argue that "reading is only incidentally visual" are wrong. I have
demonstrated that people cannot read in the dark!

Armed with these various research studies, practitioners are now able to
face the arduous task of helping adults with sub-standard literacy skills
proceed from Level 1 of the IALS to Level 3, the standard NCSALL and ETS
has set in its report. Importantly, you need to definitely remember to keep
the lights on when your learners are trying to learn to read!

(Note: The new NCSALL/ETS report also shows a positive relationship of
short-term working memory for repeating number sequences as they are heard
or in reverse manner to the performance of IALS tasks across the range from
Level 1 to above Level 3. These working memory items were taken from the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IIIR. What this implies for teaching
literacy is not discussed in the research brief that I received, though it
may be discussed in the full report.)

(Also Note:  A National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council panel
has recently reported that that the claim that Level 3 on the IALS is the
standard for adequate literacy is an unsubstantiated claim and that the
methodology used in establishing the difficulty levels of the IALS, which
is the same as that used in the earlier National Adult Literacy Survey
(NALS) is faulty, over states the adult literacy problem,  and should be
changed.)


Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net