Chapter 3

List of Emerging Principles, Trends, Ideas, and Comments

Research-based findings for adult basic education (ABE) reading assessment and instruction are listed on the following pages, along with findings from the National Reading Panel (NRP) review of related K-12 research. These findings are taken from the main sections of this report, where each is discussed and citations to relevant research are presented.

In the following list, as in the main section of the report, the findings are presented for each major component of reading instruction: alphabetics (phonemic awareness and word analysis), fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. There is also a list for computer technology. Although each component of instruction has its own list of findings, it is assumed that teachers will address all major components in teaching sessions with students.

Findings from the research are divided into four categories: principles, trends, ideas, and comments. These categories signal the type of research used to support each finding.

Principles, trends, ideas, and comments are grouped together by the reading topics in the lists that begin on the next page. Topics for which there are no principles, trends, ideas, or comments are not listed.

Emerging Principles,Trends, Ideas, and Comments

Reading Assessment Profiles

Principle 1:

When measures of achievement are obtained for each crucial aspect of reading instruction (alphabetics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), instructionally relevant patterns of scores, or profiles of adults' strengths and needs in reading, may be observed. These profiles suggest that ABE readers, including those in ESOL programs and those with a reading disability, are very diverse and that any one measure of reading achievement may not be sufficient to identify strengths and needs for instruction.

Alphabetics

Assessment/Overall

Principle 2:

Adult non-readers have virtually no phonemic awareness ability and are unable to consistently perform, on their own, almost all phonemic awareness tasks.

Principle 3:

Adult beginning readers, like all beginning readers including children, perform poorly on phonemic awareness tasks that require phoneme manipulation. The ability to perform more complex operations with phonemes generally increases (in adults without a reading disability) along with reading ability, until word analysis is established.

Principle 4:

Adult beginning readers, like other beginning readers, have difficulty applying letter-sound knowledge in order to figure out new or unfamiliar words while reading, although they are generally better at recognizing familiar sight words than children who are learning to read.

Trend 1:

On phonemic awareness tasks, adult beginning readers are not as good as reading-matched children (children progressing normally in their reading who are reading at the same level as the adults). Adult beginning readers' phonemic awareness (PA) abilities may be more like those of children who are poor readers.

Trend 2:

The basic PA abilities of adults who learn to read at an older age are not different from adults who learn to read at a younger age.

Assessment/Learning Disability

Trend 3:

While readers will typically develop phonemic awareness as they learn to read, adults with a learning disability in reading, such as dyslexia, may not; dyslexia tends to persist into adulthood and may be related to a functional disruption in the brain.

Instruction/Overall

Principle 5:

Participation in ABE programs may lead to increases in adult beginning readers' word analysis abilities.

Trend 4:

Participation in adult education may lead to increases in adult beginning readers' phonemic awareness.

Principle 6:

Phonemic awareness and/or word analysis instruction may lead to increased achievement in other aspects of reading for adult beginning readers.

Instruction/Goals and Setting

Trend 5:

Instruction/Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Principle 7:

Trend 6:

Ideas for Alphabetics Instruction From K-12 Research

Goals and Setting

Idea 1:

Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Idea 2:

To teach phonemic awareness skills to ABE beginning and intermediate readers, provide focused and explicit instruction on one or two PA skills rather than teaching a combination of three or more skills. Focusing on two skills in particular, blending and segmenting, may be most effective.

Idea 3:

To teach phonemic awareness skills to ABE beginning and intermediate readers, teach students how to manipulate phonemes (e.g., how to blend and segment words) using letters rather than using only oral instruction.

Idea 4:

To improve ABE beginning and intermediate readers' ability to decode regularly spelled words and read familiar sight words, teach phonemic awareness.

Idea 5:

To teach decoding of regularly spelled words and recognition of irregularly spelled sight words to adult beginning and intermediate readers, use systematic as opposed to non-systematic phonics instruction.

Idea 6:

To teach decoding of regularly spelled words and recognition of irregularly spelled sight words to adult beginning and intermediate readers, use systematic programs that focus on individual phonemes or that focus on larger parts of words.

Idea 7:

To teach word recognition, use fluency instruction (repeated readings and guided oral reading, for example) to supplement regular word recognition instruction.

Methods and Material--Instructional Materials

Idea 8:

Computer programs may be useful in teaching PA skills to adult beginning and intermediate readers.

Methods and Material--Intensity and Duration

Idea 9:

To teach adult beginning and intermediate readers PA, individual instruction, small group instruction, and classroom instruction may be used, though small group instruction may be most effective.

Idea 10:

When teaching adult beginning and intermediate readers PA, too much as well as too little PA instruction may be ineffective.

Learner Characteristics--Functional Reading Level

Idea 11:

PA training may be most effective if provided immediately to adult non-readers and those just beginning to learn to read. Special PA training may be needed for adult beginning readers who are a little more advanced in their reading (reading at or above GE 1).

Learner Characteristics--Learning Disability

Idea 12:

Although the same PA training that is useful for non-disabled readers may be effective for disabled readers, special PA training may be needed for adult beginning and intermediate readers who have a reading disability.

Idea 13:

Use systematic phonics programs with reading disabled adult beginning readers, the same programs that are effective with non-disabled readers.

Fluency

Assessment

Principle 8:

Fluency is an issue for adult beginning readers, intermediate readers, and perhaps for those reading at more advanced ABE levels. There are very large differences between adults with good and poor reading fluency, and adult beginning readers' fluency is similar to the fluency of children who are beginning readers.

Instruction/Overall

Principle 9:

Fluency may be taught to ABE students and fluency practice may lead to increases in reading achievement.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Principle 10:

Fluency may be taught using approaches that include the repeated reading of passages of text, words from texts, and other text units.

Ideas for Fluency Instruction From K-12 Research

Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Idea 14:

To improve ABE readers' fluency (as well as word recognition and reading comprehension achievement), use repeated guided oral reading procedures.

Idea 15

Encouraging adults to read independently more often may not lead to improvements in reading achievement without other forms of reading instruction.

Idea 16:

Use systematic phonics instruction (as opposed to non-systematic or incidental phonics instruction) to improve adult beginning readers' reading fluency.

Learner Characteristics--Functional Reading Level

Idea 17:

Most ABE learners receiving reading instruction could be classified as poor readers. Fluency instruction may be especially effective for improving poor readers' reading achievement, regardless of their reading grade equivalent.

Vocabulary

Assessment

Trend 7:

ABE readers' vocabulary growth may be dependent upon reading ability. Although their life experience may give them an advantage on vocabulary knowledge at lower reading levels, this advantage may disappear at higher reading levels.

Instruction/Goals and Setting

Trend 8:

Teaching vocabulary within a family or workplace literacy program may lead to a greater increase in vocabulary achievement than instruction in other settings.

Instruction/Goals and Setting--General Functional Literacy

Trend 9:

Teaching vocabulary within a general functional literacy program may lead to increases in vocabulary knowledge.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Trend 10:

Beginning readers' reading vocabulary may be increased using an approach that combines listening comprehension instruction in a content area, high-interest texts generated from listening compre-hension exercises, and phonics and multi-sensory skills work using the same content-oriented texts.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Intensity and Duration

Trend 11:

Provided that participation in a program produces gains in vocabulary achievement, instruction that is longer in duration may lead to increases in reading vocabulary achievement.

Ideas for Vocabulary Instruction From K-12 Research

Goals and Setting

Comment 1:

To help provide repeated exposure to new vocabulary, teach ABE learners new words that will be useful to them in workplace or family settings.

Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Comment 2:

Encourage activities, such as wide reading, that will expose ABE learners to new vocabulary. Encouraging independent reading, however, assumes that what is read is read fluently (i.e., is at an appropriate reading level).

Comment 3:

Pre-teach vocabulary words that ABE learners will encounter in texts being used for instruction.

Comment 4:

Restructure the texts and procedures used for vocabulary instruction when necessary so that students understand what they need to do when reading and learning new words. Examples of restructuring include substituting easy words for hard ones, explaining what a good definition consists of, working in pairs, and selecting especially relevant words. Restructuring may be most effective with low-achieving students.

Methods and Material--Instructional Materials

Comment 5:

Computer programs may be useful in teaching vocabulary to adults.

Learner Characteristics--Functional Reading Level

Comment 6:

ABE vocabulary instruction should be appropriate for older students and tailored to their ability levels.

Comprehension

Assessment/Overall

Principle 11:

Adults who qualify for ABE have poor functional literacy comprehension achievement. Although theymay be able to perform simple comprehension tasks such as recalling ideas from simple stories and locating a single piece of information in a simple text, they are often unable to combine (integrate and synthesize) information from longer or more complex texts.

Trend 12:

When different assessment instruments are used to measure gain in reading comprehension achievement, or when the same instrument is used at several points over the course of instruction, results related to reading comprehension achievement may be extremely variable. Some comprehension measures may be more reliable than others.

Trend 13:

ABE adults' knowledge about reading, or their meta-comprehension, is more like that of children who are beginning readers. They are less aware than good readers are of strategies that can be used to monitor comprehension, view reading as decoding as opposed to comprehending text, and are less aware of the general structure of paragraphs and stories. They are aware of the influence of motivation, interest, and prior knowledge on reading.

Assessment/ESOL

Principle 12:

ESL adults, on average, tend to have lower functional literacy comprehension achievement in English; the percentage of ESL adults among the ABE target population is greater than the percentage among the general adult population.

Assessment/Learning Disability

Principle 13:

Adults with a learning disability tend, on average, to have lower functional literacy comprehension achievement and are over-represented within the ABE target population.

Instruction/Overall

Principle 14:

Participation in an adult literacy program may lead to an increase in reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 14:

Change in reading comprehension achievement resulting from instruction may be extremely variable and any change observed may depend on the test used to measure achievement.

Instruction/Goals and Setting

Trend 15:

In some situations, participation in a workplace literacy or family literacy program may lead to greater increases in reading achievement than participation in other types of programs.

Instruction/Goals and Setting--Workplace Literacy

Trend 16:

It may be possible to increase reading comprehension in a workplace literacy program.

Instruction/Goals and Setting--Family Literacy

Trend 17:

It may be possible to increase reading comprehension in a family literacy program.

Instruction/Methods and Material--General Functional Literacy

Trend 18:

It may be possible to increase reading comprehension in a general functional literacy program.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Principle 15

Providing explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies may lead to increased reading comprehension achievement.

Principle 16:

Combining comprehension instruction with instruction in various other components of reading may lead to increased reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 19:

The degree to which a literacy program is learner-centered may differentially affect students at different ability levels.

Trend 20:

With adult readers at the intermediate level (reading around GE 6), a meaning-based diagnostic-prescriptive approach to teaching may lead to increased reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 21:

Requiring adults to attend a literacy program in order to receive welfare benefits may not increase reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 22:

In programs where a teacher has assistance in the classroom, students may make greater gains in reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 23:

Dealing briefly but explicitly with issues related to reading self-efficacy and motivation among adult learners in a literacy class may lead to increased reading comprehension achievement.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Instructional Materials

Trend 24:

Integrating adult-oriented, contextually relevant material into literacy programs may lead to increased reading achievement.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Intensity and Duration

Trend 25:

Spending at least 70% of classroom time practicing reading and writing, including the occasional but direct or deliberate discussion of reading strategies, may increase learners' meta-comprehension abilities.

Trend 26:

Reading comprehension achievement may increase as a learner stays longer in a literacy program, although progress may be extremely variable over time.

Instruction/Methods and Material--Teacher Preparation

Trend 27:

Staff with more experience or training may have a better chance at improving reading comprehension achievement.

Learner Characteristics -- Motivation

Trend 28:

The direct or deliberate discussion of learners' literacy beliefs and plans in order to deal with issues of reading self-efficacy and motivation may increase reading comprehension achievement.

Ideas for Comprehension Instruction From K-12 Research

Methods and Material--Teaching Strategies

Idea 18:

To improve ABE learners' reading comprehension, use a balanced or multiple-components approach to instruction in which all aspects of the reading process are addressed, as needed, including phonemic awareness, word analysis, and vocabulary as well as reading comprehension.

Idea 19:

To improve ABE learners' comprehension of specific texts (those ABE learners reading above Grade Equivalent 3), teach them strategies that can be used during the reading process and that enable them to become actively engaged in understanding a text. Eight effective strategies have been identified: comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, graphic organizers, story structure, question answering, question generation, summarization, and multiple strategies (combining the above when appropriate).

Idea 20:

To improve ABE learners' general reading comprehension achievement (those ABE learners reading above Grade Equivalent 3), teach them a repertoire of several strategies that they can use consciously and flexibly as needed while reading and that enable them to become actively engaged in understanding a text. Combinations of the following strategies are suggested by the research: comprehension monitoring, cooperative learning, graphic organizers, story structure, question answering, question generation, and summarization.

Methods and Material--Teacher Preparation

Comment 7:

To improve ABE learners' general reading comprehension achievement, train their teachers to teach the awareness and use of multiple strategies for reading and understanding a text.

Comment 8:

To improve ABE teacher's knowledge of reading comprehension instruction, use both preservice and inservice training, and to improve their students' reading comprehension achievement directly, use inservice training.

Learner Characteristics -- Functional Reading Level

Idea 21:

For intermediate adult readers (Grade Equivalents 3-6), improve comprehension of narrative texts by teaching story structure, or the typical content and organization of stories.

Idea 22:

To improve the general reading comprehension achievement of adult intermediate and advanced readers, teach the flexible use of multiple reading comprehension strategies.

Computer Technology

Instruction/Overall

Principle 17:

In general, computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is at least as effective as non-CAI in increasing reading comprehension achievement.

Instructional Focus

Principle 18:

The use of CAI may lead to increased reading comprehension achievement.

Trend 29:

The use of CAI may lead to increased word recognition achievement.

Instructional Goals

Trend 30:

CAI may be effective for reading instruction in general functional literacy settings.

Trend 31:

CAI may be effective for reading instruction in family literacy settings.

Methods and Material--Functional Reading Level

Trend 32:

CAI may be most effective for adults reading at the pre-secondary level.

Ideas From K-12 Research/ Overall

Comment 9:

It is possible to use computer technology effectively for reading instruction.

Comment 10:

Speech synthesis may be an effective component of computer-assisted instruction.