How do we know what to teach?
Reading instruction follows a developmental sequence from oral language comprehension to the mastery of Print Skills (Alphabetics)to Silent Reading Comprehension--from the parts to the whole. Ideally, instruction is carried out with methods that research has shown to be effective.Of course, the order of acquisition of component skills is not absolutely linear; components interact and the mastery of one often includes facility with another. For example, having a word in our listening vocabulary (Word Meaning) helps with recognizing that word in print (Word Recognition). Silent Reading Comprehension and Background Knowledge aid Fluency while Oral Reading Rate has an effect on Silent Reading Comprehension.
ABE learners usually receive a Silent Reading Comprehension assessment such as the TABE, ABLE, CASAS, or another test when they first enroll. While such an assessment is necessary for an approximate class placement--whether Beginner, Intermediate, or GED--it tells the teacher little about the learner's instructional needs.
Most often, it is up to classroom teachers to find out more about individual learners in their classes. Assessing learners' mastery of reading components is the first step in planning for their instruction. It just stands to reason that it is difficult to fix something unless you know what part is not functioning well, and you can't figure that out from an assessment of the end product.
Suppose that in giving a Word Analysis Inventory, a teacher finds out that some learners in an Intermediate class have not mastered to automaticity the pronunciation of the vowel combinations oi and au, pronouncing them instead according to the old refrain, "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and says its own name." Here, then, is a lesson all set out for the teacher that will take the learner a step further in mastering Word Analysis--that is, if the lesson has been learned. Enter assessment once more, and so the cycle continues: assess, t-e-a-c-h, assess, t-e-a-c-h, assess... It isn't difficult to pinpoint instructional needs within any of the reading components and then to get evidence that the teaching has been effective.
Adults' reading development is most often uneven. Adults have had literacy experiences and school-based reading instruction; they have coped with the skills they have; they may have gained skill in one component that has allowed them to partially compensate for and mask weaknesses in others. On the following page, Comparison of Three Reading Profiles, you will see how silent reading comprehension scores alone do not give an indication of underlying weaknesses in other components that can be expected to deter further progress.