Anne brings up an interesting point:
  What do literacy students think reading is?  In my 17 years of experience with adults who cannot read, along with the research I have done, here is what I have found:  Really low level readers seem to think of reading as decoding only.  They are often so stressed about not being able to decode, that comprehension is not on their radar screen.  If they could decode every word with ease, yet had no idea what the print meant, they would be satisfied.  I have also known a lot of students who had odd ideas about comprehension.  "I can't remember what I read" some students have said.  But they can tell me what the story is about, who the characters are, etc.  When I probed deeper "remembering what I read" sometimes means "I can't memorize what I have read." Just an example of some students' perhaps unhelpful concept of what reading is.  
   
  Bruce Carmel
  Brooklyn NY
  

Anne Murr <anne.murr at DRAKE.EDU> wrote:
  I'm entering this discussion late and won't be able to respond 
directly to other fine postings. Time is precious when writing 
grants to keep a community-based volunteer adult literacy program 
viable. However, I must share with you from our experience at the 
Drake University Adult Literacy Center over the past 7 1/2 years.

Through a basic skills assessment of all newly-enrolled adults, we 
have discovered that almost all have great difficulty at the level of 
letter-sound correspondence, i.e., phonemic awareness. While often 
able to "read" (sort of) through memorization and guessing, these 
adults feel overwhelmed and deeply inadequate with both reading and 
writing tasks. While most adults are able to comprehend material that 
is read aloud to them, they can't "get the words off the page." 
Also, because they are "print-deprived," they lack vocabulary and 
reading comprehension strategies to successfully derive meaning as 
they do learn to read.

This demonstrates difficulty with print skills, one of 2 reading 
components described by John Strucker at NCSALL. Based on work by 
Chall and others, he describes these 2 reading components as print 
skills and meaning-making skills. Having either one without the other 
will keep our learners from learning to read (or to spell and write) 
successfully. 

For the past 6 years I have trained our volunteer tutors to use the 
Wilson Reading System in order to give our learners basic skill 
instruction in word structure, beginning with a secure foundation in 
how to match letters with sounds, how to segment words first by 
phonemes and then by syllables. Barbara Wilson clearly states that 
basic skills instruction be accompanied by literature based reading 
instruction.

Our program's instruction has focused mostly on the print skills 
component. Adults are making progress and are excited when they are 
able to apply what they are learning in their everyday lives. 
However, as we reflect on the past 6 1/2 years, we are seeing that we 
need to find a better balance with the meaning-making components.

Adult literacy programs MUST carefully assess their learners' basic 
skills, i.e., do they know the short vowel sounds? Do they know when 
and why a vowel is short or long? how to divide a word into 
syllables, etc.? Without instruction in these skills, other 
instruction will not be as successful for our learners and for our 
programs' accountability. 

If you want to read more about our program and about the research in 
dyslexia and reading instruction, visit www.naasln.org (National 
Association for Adults with Special Learning Needs) website, click on 
Newsletters, June 2005, to see my article, Science Informs our Work.

-- 
Anne Murr, M.S., Director
Drake University Adult Literacy Center
1213 25th Street
Des Moines, IA 50311
anne.murr at drake.edu
Tel 515-271-3982
Fax 515-271-4185 

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