In response to:


> Question 3: How do the programs in the countries you are familiar with

> integrate "real life" learning opportunities for participants?

> Our national curriculum for adults is supposed to do so, but I haven't

> found  it very effective in this. Just putting pictures of people at work

> to  illustrate limited language practice doesn't even attract students'

> interest.


Since the 1950s, student needs -- such as earning a living, raising 
children, or participating in community development --  have been used as 
the content of literacy materials. This approach was promoted by UNESCO as 
functional literacy. UNESCO's own evaluation of its functional literacy 
programs showed they were not very effective. The problem wasn't the 
functional content but poor materials design. As you said, pictures of 
people at work are not particularly interesting.

In Brazil, Paulo Freire used what he called generative themes, the issues 
of critical importance to students, as the focus of his materials. These 
materials also had work related pictures, but Freire employed a group 
discussion, a culture circle, that helped the picture come alive as a topic 
of interest, and often strong emotions. Then, the word the picture 
represented was learned as a sight word, which was then broken down into 
it's component syllables and letters, and those letters and syllables were 
used to learn to read new words. For example, in his first literacy program 
he used a picture of a brick, but the discussion focused on who makes 
bricks and who lives in brick houses, why are these two different classes 
of people, and is there anything we could do about this. The UNESCO 
materials were more likely to teach the student how to make a brick, which 
would be interesting to a few students but not most. So a workplace program 
in a brick factory might be a good use of functional literacy, but Freire's 
approach might be better for poor, disadvantaged people, whether they were 
involved in making bricks or not.

In Nepal and Indonesia, these generative themes and functional content were 
turned into stories. As students learn to read, these stories became the 
application of their reading. The stories are often open-ended critical 
incidents that require students to discuss the many ways that the story 
could end. We all learned to read through stories, both because they were 
entertaining but also because they often made us think in new ways.


John Comings, Director
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy
Harvard Graduate School of Education
7 Appian Way
Cambridge MA 02138
(617) 496-0516, voice
(617) 495-4811, fax
(617) 335-9839, mobile
john_comings at harvard.edu
http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu