Reading strategies that work for adult learners

Sarah Gleason, Dorcas Place

My goal

I was concerned about the impact of new time limits on adult learners' opportunities for education, and I hoped to impart strategies to allow them to continue to make reading progress on their own.

How I started

I began teaching conventional reading comprehension activities: pre-reading dicussion about titles, identifying main ideas, and focusing on the paragraph structure of short passages. Using a variety of texts, I modeled strategies with the whole class, then provided individual practice.

I also began observing students' reading habits more closely, jotting down quick notes when possible. I began to notice the reoccurrence of certain phonetic and word structure problems, and also the reading difficulties of individual students.

What I did next

I discovered that in smaller, more informal settings, using texts written by adult learners, students began to respond more personally to the material as we read together.

As a group, we focused informally on word structure difficulties encountered both by individuals or by the class in general; and we began to generate lists of words with common structural elements.

I gave each student a small notebook in which to record words they noticed, or other reading experiences outside of class.

From time to time we discussed students' goals for reading. This focused attention on their own literacy behaviors, and those of thier classmates, and gave me better opportunity to support their individual goals.

My conclusions

This project strengthened my appreciation for the social basis of learning to read. Students learn better when the material has meaning for them, and when they can interact around it. For those particular adult learners, at least, imparting conscious awareness of strategies to enhance conprehension was not a realisitic goal.

project narrative

I began this project, Reading Strategies That Work for Adult Learners, in expectation that I could help students become more consciously aware of reading strategies that could help them, individually, comprehend more fully. I was motivated to do this for two principal reasons: because the most common complaint of adult learners seems to be "I can't remember what I just read!" and secondly, because welfare changes force us all to deal with the fact that our learners have limited time to become competent readers. My hope was to give them skills they could utilize beyond the classroom. I end with a humbler view of what it was possible to accomplish, but with a broader appreciation for the complexities of learning to read.
The learners with whom I worked were in my Intermediate Class at Dorcas Place, approximately ten women whose TABE 1 reading scores when they entered were 2d to 5th grade level. Several had some degree of dyslexia, and five were non- native speakers of English. I began, as I had earlier in the year, by presenting and providing practice with different reading strategies. But in addition, because of this project, I also observed more closely my students' reading behaviors and kept notes on their responses. I began to follow clues about what worked best for them individually; and it was through this that my own learning really began.

I started with conventional strategies for identifying the subject of paragraphs and short passages. For this I gave students their own copies of passages I also projected on the wall with an overhead projector. 2 I read the passage aloud ("The Big Snap," about crocodiles), we discussed what the subject probably was, then circled the nouns that turned up most frequently to confirm this. We completed this strategy by returning to the title and connecting this with the subject matter. We read a second passage, this time discussing the title before we began (this one, "A Strange Bird," was simpler and less evocative than "The Big Snap"), and students taking on more responsibility for identifying the most frequent nouns and pronouns, Subsequently, students repeated this procedure on their own with other passages, and were pleased with their success.

I extended this activity by using the McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading.2 Although the content of these passages, as the previous ones, is more suitable for elementary school ages, these self-scored quizzes have proven popular with adult learners I have taught--I assume because they impart a feeling of control over the process of reading, and give measurable evidence of progress. Each passage is followed by eight multiple-choice questions, including one about the main idea. Other questions concern facts found in the passage, and, occasionally, one about implied information. Some students in the group had used these quizzes previously, but now I re-introduced them as a group activity with overhead transparencies. With the passage projected on our white board, students took turns reading and identifying the main idea sentence of each paragraph. We looked at the supporting sentences that followed, discussed how they served to give more information about main idea, and students color-coded the sentence parts as we had done previously with paragraph writing (green for the main idea sentence, yellow for supporting sentences, and, when there was a concluding sentence, red). As we went through a couple of samples together, I also drew simple pictures on the board that illustrated the content, and encouraged students to do their own visualizing, either on paper, in conversation, or in their heads.

Periodically, I set aside time for students to continue using these quizzes on their own, although I did not repeat the group lesson. A change I made in my own practice, however, was to insist that students review their incorrect answers with me before going on to the next passage(previously I had only urged that they do this). I took this further step because, now more consciously wishing my students to become more consciously aware of their reading practices, I hoped to counteract their tendency simply to move on to the next quiz and make the same kinds of errors again and again.

The third set of structured lessons that I introduced with the overhead projector was Six-Way Paragraphs,3 titled passages a few paragraphs long, followed by six questions of consistent format (concerning the main idea, subject matter, supporting details, conclusions, clarifying devices,and vocabulary in context). As before, we had pre-reading discussion about titles, and I wrote students' ideas on the board. This time, however, I introduced a new strategy, a version of Reciprocal Questioning which I modeled as we read through the passage, asking questions about what we had just read. As students practiced formulating questions based on the text, they became more comfortable with this process, and enjoyed calling upon each other for answers. This was fun, and also gave practice with the often difficult task of turning statements into questions. Some students were able to go beyond the text itself, asking questions about ideas implied in the material.

This seems a suitable point to mention the scarcity of reading comprehension materials written specifically for adult learners. I probably should have searched harder, but at this point the only passages easily available for the level of my students were written for elementary level students. An exception was a recently-produced collection of "Our Stories," written by adult learners at the nearby Genesis Center, a program for recent immigrants. "Our Stories," short passages about personal experiences of the writers, were followed by questions about meaning, and other activities such as the reordering of "mixed-up sentences." Although the level was too simple to be challenging for my students, nonetheless they enjoyed reading and talking about the stories and connecting them with their own lives. The idea of adult learners creating their own materials to practice reading strategies is an excellent one, and I hope other examples will follow.

Other texts I found more appropriate include the New Writers' Voices series published by Literacy Volunteers of New York City;4 "Hopes and Dreams: Stories of the Immigration Experience," written by Tana Reiff and published by Fearon/Janus/Quercus;5 and Just Enough: The Journal of Ordinary Thought produced by adult learners and the Neighborhood Writing Alliance in Chicago.6 In addition to offering themes and language that are familiar and comfortable, these texts are appealingly formatted, usually with a combination of large type, photographs, and ample space on the pages. Of these, only the "Hopes and Dreams" series included thought-provoking questions after each chapter--a happy substitute, I felt, for the more traditional multiple-choice questions that accompanied the passages I had used earlier. I appreciated these questions particularly because they prevented the frustration presented by right-or-wrong answers--and I began to wonder if reading for pleasure was not a more fruitful road to better comprehension than the more conventional approach. Increasingly, I tried to search out more relevant reading materials as the semester progressed.

The first shift in my teaching came when, because of a pre-employment course that some of my students started taking once a week, I was able to work with a smaller group, of four to five students. On the first such occasion, almost by chance I took with me several copies of My Native Land, An Anthology by New Writers 7, mainly because multiple copies were available. Reviewing the notes I jotted later that day, I remark that this session was "successful beyond my dreams." Everything worked well, starting with our seating arrangement, around a table, allowing much more interaction than in our regular classroom arrangement. To get us started, I read through the Table of Contents, and students chose selections that caught their interest. Working around the table, each woman decided how much her selection she would read aloud, and if she didn't want to read the whole piece, passed the task on to the next person. High interest in the material, plus the relaxed nature of session, also stimulated conversation about students own experiences connected to what they read, such as a Puerto Rican grandfather or a Caribbean hurricane.

These stories also provided excellent opportunities for word study. As students encountered long words that were hard to read, I wrote down each syllable in turn, urging them to use skills I knew they had for decoding shorter words; and I encouraged them to continue using this approach on their own. In addition, I identified the root, or base word, on which each longer word was built. As we went along, each student compiled her own list of words she wanted to remember, either for spelling or vocabulary; and at least one student later typed up her list on the computer. As a final step, because so many words ending in -ies had been troublesome to the group, I typed up a list of the base words we had encountered that followed the "change-the-'y' to-'i'-and-add -'es'" rule we had encountered in our reading [e.g., reply/replies, community/communities]. I brought this to the whole class later that morning, and suggested for homework that they add at least three more such words they encountered outside of school. I end my journal entry for that day with "They were ENTHUSIASTIC!" Even better, the following morning students did bring in "-ies" words--a total of 29, which we compiled into a classroom list. (See appendix.)

This success led me to introduce other word study activities. Soon after we had a spelling lesson in our workbook, Spellwell,8 that focused on consonant blend endings; and I prepared pages with the headings "-ust," "-ent" and "-ast," asking students to work in small groups to generate "word family" lists from these. After initial brainstorming, we worked more systematically by referring to a magnetic alphabet on the board, and came up with six to eight words for each ending.(See appendix.) Once again, learning about words had become a social activity, and each student could "tap in" at her own level of understanding. I was especially pleased with this opportunity for working on sound/symbol correspondence, because one dyslexic bilingual student, Emily, at age 29 had still not had the opportunity to master the basic phonetic sounds--and she may have benefitted from this most of all. I posted the lists on the wall, and students referred to them from time-to-time when words on the lists appeared in our reading.

Next, because Emily had repeatedly struggled with the -ee- dipthong in "street" and similar words, I suggested we start an "-ee-" list. Everyone participated, and we came up with twenty-five examples. On another day, feeling that prefixes deserved attention, I taught a brief lesson using "do" and "undo" to illustrate how the prefix "un-" creates an opposite meaning; and students proceded to generate their own list of "un-" words (including "unsatisfaction"). Yet another list arose from general difficulty with the suffix "-tion," troublesome for low-level readers because it is so unphonetic, and turns up so frequently. Once the "-tion, /shun/" list got started, students added to it on their own initiative over several days. That list grew to 29 words, plus a separate list for "-sion, /shun/" words. One woman who has always struggled with reading even came up with "dictionary."

I was pleased with these activities for several reasons. In addition to connecting decoding and spelling so directly, the approach was fully multi-sensory. That is, students had opportunity to read, write, hear and discuss the words on the various lists, certainly more than they could have with more traditional lessons. Further, each student connected with the material from her own experience and at her own pace. Even more satisfying was the social aspect of the activity, as students used the opportunity to interact and to support each others' learning. As we continued compiling these lists, students took on different roles, some writing down the words others volunteered, or adding their own contribution at a later time.

This led me to a final activity near the end of the school year, an idea which arose from a discussion in which one woman described how her son had read aloud to her signs he'd noticed during a shopping trip; and she shared with us some of these words. Following up on this, I gave to each student a small spiral notebook, and urged them all to jot down words that puzzled or otherwise interested them that they encountered outside of class. My hope was this device might serve as an incentive to pay more attention to the language activities taking place in their lives, and that they would bring observations back to share with the class. On a couple of subsequent Mondays we discussed briefly their language experiences over the weekend; and although I don't believe anyone actually used their notebooks for the purpose I had intended, students did use them in class for copying down classroom word lists, or occasionally writing down a new word and its definition from the dictionary. Another year, I would introduce such notebooks early-on, and be more systematic in my efforts to make them more meaningful to my students.

As I reflect on the evolution of this project, I draw several conclusions. The first concerns my original intention, supporting adult learners in recognizing reading strategies that could help them with their reading comprehension. It is evident that I did not succeed in this goal, an outcome I readily acknowledge. One obvious reason for this result is that students with this low reading level have not mastered decoding adequately for comprehension strategies to have much impact. For students reading more fluently, perhaps the results would be different.

More positively, I have ended with a much deeper appreciation for the social nature of reading, and of language development in general. This reality is much more observable as small children begin to speak, but the process of learning to read, because it is usually done alone and in silence, is more mysterious. The word study activities I undertook with my students during this project gave me insight into the degree to which reading, too, is socially constructed. That is, these adults were learning to read, not when I presented them with "lessons," but when they began to construct and decode words for themselves. Emily underlined this for me one day when, while reading aloud, she pronounced the word "relationship" without difficulty. When I congratulated her on this seemingly effortless accomplishment she replied, "but relationships are something I know about!" Of course!

These reflections have been reinforced on a theoretical level by an article I discovered in my research, "A Dialogic Approach to Adult Literacy Instruction," written by Dianne Fallon. 9 Fallon is a teacher who hoped to make journal-writing a more vital experience for her students. The title refers to the essential importance of social dialogue in language acquisition; and Fallon discovered that her students' journal-writing became strikingly more fluent when they corresponded with other adult learners over issues of personal importance (such as the difficulties of finding work in a changing economy). The term dialogic is drawn specifically from the work of Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin, who has been recognized belatedly as a major literary critic of the 20th century. Bakhtin viewed language as always occuring within the context of a "social dialogue;" and that further, meanings are never fixed, but shift for each person and with each situation. "Expropriating [a word], forcing it to submit to one's own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process," he wrote. "To acquire a word, making it one's own, requires a dialogic context for communicating the word, for endowing it with one's own intentions." This insight has given me much greater appreciation for my own students' struggles with reading, as it did for Fallon regarding her students' writing.

Especially pertinent to my work is Fallon's observation that "A dialogic approach to literacy instruction recognizes that language development is not a step-by-step process, that there is no formula by which to teach written language skills, and that learning always happens in a social context. Thus the practice of dialogic literacy attempts to open and expand a dialogue in which students are dialoguing not only with their teacher but with other speaking subjects as well, whether through text or in conversation."
I will end with a few reminders to myself. Two essential aspects of the reading process are learning to decode, and reading for meaning. Adult learners with histories of reading failure need to progress on both fronts simultaneously: that is, while trying to unlock the mysteries of print, they must also discover positive reasons for wanting to read and write. I feel that through this project I had begun to address both of these prongs simultaneously, not only through the use of high interest texts, but by creating a more communal environment for learning, where students could support each others' learning needs. Were I beginning a new school year, I would continue in this direction. By more systematically making the literacy experiences of my students and their families, at home as well as in school, the primary focus of my teaching, I hope I could more fully support the autonomy of my students in school as well as in life.

footnotes

1 Tests of Adult Basic Reading, published by CTB Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, 20 Ryan Ranch Road, Monterey, CA 93940-5703.

2 McCall-Crabbs Standard Test Lessons in Reading. New York: Teachers College Press, 1979.

3 Six-Way Paragraphs, Middle Level. Providence, R.I.: Jamestown Publishers, Inc., 1983.

4 New Writers' Voices. New York: Literacy Volunteers of New York City.

5 "Hopes and Dreams: Stories of the Immigration Experience," Tana Reiff. Belmont, CA: Fearon/Janus/Quercus, 1989. Especially pertinent were Boat People (about Vietnamese immigration in the 1970s) and Nobody Knows (about migration of black Americans from the South to the North in the first half of the century).

6 "Just Enough: The Journal of Ordinary Thought," April 1997, Issue #20. Chicago: Neighborhood Writing Alliance.

7 My Native Land, An Anthology by New Writers. New York: Literacy Volunteers of New York City, Inc., 1992.

8 Spellwell, Book C, by Nancy Hall.Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Service.

9 "Making Dialogue Dialogic: A Dialogic Approach to Adult Literacy Instruction," Diane Fallon. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, v. 39 n2, pp. 138-147.

words that use the Y - IES rule:

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