**From Assessment to Practice: Research-Based Approaches to Teaching
Reading to Adults.**

**September 28, 2007**

**Event ID: 79440**

Sandra Baxter: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us as we discuss
\"Research-based Approaches to Teaching Adults to Read\". My name is
Sandra Baxter and I am the director of the National Institute for
Literacy. The Institute is hosting today\'s web cast and it is being
brought to you live from Washington, D.C. The Institute, a federal
agency, is charged by Congress to provide national leadership on the
issue of literacy across the life span. An important part of our mission
is to serve as the national clearing house for resources on reading
research, reading instruction and adult literacy.

The Institute is pleased to host this forum on \"Research-based
Approaches for Teaching Adults to Read\". Those who are in the literacy
field know that teaching reading is a complex undertaking, especially
when the learner is an adult. When adult students arrive in the
classroom they can be at just about any level in their reading
development, from beginning readers working on the fundamentals to more
advance readers ready to begin study for high school level equivalent
credentials.

During today\'s webcast, we will be discussing reading and its
components, exploring the practical strategies for using research based
principles to teach adults to read and showing how the components of
reading can provide a solid framework for assessment and instruction. We
look forward this afternoon to hearing from our national panel of
experts. Joining me here in the studio are Susan McShane, a reading
initiative specialist at the National Center for Family Literacy. Susan
has more than 20 years of experience in adult education and family
literacy. She is the author of \"Applying Research in Reading
Instruction for Adults: First Steps for Teachers\". She has taught
reading students in an adult education reading program, a private
community‑based organization and a community college developmental
reading program. Welcome, Susan.

We also have Dr. John Kruidenier, a researcher and author and a longtime
consultant to the National Institute for Literacy. Dr. Kruidenier
convenes and manages the Institute\'s Adult Literacy Research Working
Group and he has produced several publications for the Institute,
including a report of the findings of a rigorous review of the
literature on teaching adults to read, a summary of that report for
practitioners and several newsletters on the uses of research and
teaching adults to read. Welcome, John.

We also have with us this afternoon Dr. Rosalind Davidson, also a
reading researcher and author. Dr. Davidson is the principal developer
of Adult Reading Components interactive web site, an online assessment
tool adult educators can use to assess student skills. Welcome, Ros.
Again, welcome to our panelists and to you our online audience. John,
would you get us started with an overview of the reading research?

Dr. John Kruidenier: Sure. Thank you, Sandra. During our presentation
today we hope to lay out a practical and compelling rationale for the
use of research-based principles for adult reading instruction. First of
all, Ros, Susan and I will show you how the four major components of
reading provide a framework for assessing your student\'s reading
ability and how assessment results can lead seamlessly to a program of
instruction to improve your students\' reading.

Because we don\'t have a lot of time today, we\'ll focus on only two of
the four components of reading: word analysis and comprehension. We\'ll
use these as examples to show you how research is directly related to
practice. Second, we want to present a practical definition of reading
that will provide you with an overall framework that you can use for
assessing and teaching reading. Most of our time today will be taken by
Ros and Susan to show how teachers can use this framework to apply
research to practice. They\'ll present some very practical ideas for
reading assessment and instruction that come directly from the research.

All of the information being presented today comes from three resources
that were developed by the Institute and these resources are all listed
on the last PowerPoint slides. After years of research, cognitive
scientists have come to agree that the aspects or components of reading
listed on this slide are essential to reading, no matter what the
situation is or what the purpose for your reading is. We want to show
that these components of reading can provide a very useful framework for
adult reading assessment and instruction.

Alphabetics is the use of written letters to represent spoken words.
English is an alphabetic language and the letters in the alphabet are
used to represent speech sounds. Alphabetics is made up of two
components. Phonemic awareness is knowledge of the individual sounds
used in our language. Word analysis is knowledge of the connection
between these sounds and the letters used to represent them. Word
analysis is more than what is taught with basic phonics instruction. It
also includes, for example, sight word recognition and knowledge of word
parts, like roots, prefixes and suffixes.

Comprehension is called \"constructing meaning\" because we not only
have to get the words off the page when we read, we also have to combine
the ideas we get from the page with what we already have in memory or
what we already know. We like to think of the components of reading as
the strands that make up a rope. All of the individual strands in the
rope, the basic components of reading, are essential for skilled
reading. Alphabetics and fluency go together to make a print-based
strand. These components are mostly concerned with decoding the words in
a text. Vocabulary and comprehension go together to make up a
meaning-based strand. All of these components are needed for skilled
reading, no matter what the situation or the purpose for reading is.

We can talk about these strands separately and we can focus on one or
another strand when we are teaching, but we have to remember that they
are all essentials for skilled reading. Taking away any one of these
strands can lead to problems with reading. In addition to all of the
components that are involved in reading, it\'s important to remember
that reading develops. We were not born reading. We had to learn to read
and it took a considerable amount of time. This has important
implications for reading instruction. Generally, as a student learns to
read, print-based skills are emphasized at first. We need to decode and
become fluent in order to understand what we read and we usually work on
comprehension skills most with more advanced readers, though efficient
decoding is still important.

The framework involved in components that we are using today is one that
was used by the Adult Literacy Research Working Group. The Institute
established this group of researchers and practitioners to identify and
summarize adult reading instruction research and to think of ways to
disseminate this information. The working group looked at two important
aspects of reading: instructional studies that investigate ways to teach
reading and assessment studies that investigate how well adults read.
The group identified emerging principles for adult reading assessment
and instruction based on existing adult reading research. These
principles form the basis for the research-based practices we\'ll be
focusing on today. You will find out shortly that we\'ll also be talking
about K-12 reading instruction research. The working group found that
where the research with adults is thin, it needs to be supplemented with
research done at the K through 12 level.

I\'m going to start a discussion of the research by focusing on an
important emerging principle related to assessing adults reading
ability. This principle is based on assessment profiles research.
Assessment profiles are obtained when researchers measure several
components of reading, not just one component. The research on which
this principle is based clearly shows that assessing all aspects of
reading is important. Good readers typically are good at each aspect of
reading. Adults in literacy programs are not good readers. They can be
at just about any level in each aspect of reading. They might be good at
comprehension, but not at word analysis, for example. So assessing just
one aspect of reading may not give an instructor enough information
about an adult students\' reading ability.

A study conducted by John \[Strucker\] and Rosalind Davidson called the
Adult Reading Component Study or ARCS assessed adult students in several
components of their reading. Here are two simplified profiles that
resulted from this testing showing two student\'s grade level scores on
tests of four components: reading comprehension, word analysis or
decoding, fluency as measured with a test of oral reading accuracy and
oral vocabulary. Both students scored at the sixth grade level, for
example, on a reading comprehension test. If we look at just these
student\'s reading comprehension scores, the students would look the
same. We might conclude from the reading comprehension scores alone that
they have basically the same needs when it comes to reading instruction.
It\'s obvious, however, when you look at the results from tests of the
other components of reading that overall they have different patterns of
strengths and weaknesses and are not at all alike. Each of these
students will need a different program of instruction based on their
individual needs and reading.

Profiles research has some very practical implications for teaching,
which Ros and Susan will talk about in a moment. I mentioned earlier
that today we will be focusing on just two components of reading, word
analysis and comprehension. To introduce our discussion related to word
analysis I\'m going to briefly present a summary of the word analysis
assessment and instruction principles derived from the research.

First of all, a strong line of research clearly demonstrates that adult
non readers and beginning readers have almost no phonemic awareness or
knowledge of the basic sounds in our language. This develops only as
reading develops. Adult beginning readers also have difficulty with
decoding or sounding out words. Looking at both the adult and K-12
research, we can conclude that we should provide a significant amount of
alphabetic instruction to adult beginning readers including explicit
instruction and word analysis. As we will see with the comprehension
instruction as well, teaching all of the components of reading is also
an important part of word analysis instruction. Doing so is more likely
to lead to increased reading achievement. K-12 research has also
identified specific practices that can be used to teach alphabetics. And
now Ros will share some practical information about assessment. Ros?

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: Thank you, John. Before we begin actually on the
assessments, I\'d like to review some basic assessment concepts.
Standardized tests are those that are administered and scored according
to set procedures in order to minimize the effect the differences among
examiners may have on an examinees test performance. The two major
groups of standardized tests differ in purpose. A norm referenced test
compares an examinees score to a large group of others. A criterion
referenced test does not compare an examinees score to others. It
evaluates a person\'s ability to reach stated levels of mastery on a
particular task.

Before distributing a test, developers of norm referenced tests
administer it to a large number, often thousands of people. This is the
reference or norming group for this test. They do this in order to find
the continuum of performance from high to low achievement on the tasks
of the test. An examinees\' performance is compared to those of the
norming group. Roughly speaking, an examinees score that is above
average of the norming group indicates better than average ability on
the tested skill. The Test of Adult Basic Education, the TABE, and the
Adult Basic Learning Examination, the ABLE, are examples of widely used
norm referenced tests.

On criterion referenced tests learners are not compared to any norming
group. A single grade equivalent or percentage correct, the criteria,
needed to indicate mastery is established for all examinees. Most
diagnostic assessments are criterion referenced with graded word lists
and graded comprehensive passages.

Alternative assessments are not standardized. Administration and scoring
is determined by each teacher or literacy center. Interviews that give
information about a learner\'s literacy activities at home or work, self
evaluations of ability and teacher reports all give information about a
learner\'s progress.

Portfolio development and evaluation is another common assessment tool.
Learner\'s work is collected and periodically assessed by the learner,
class members and instructors. Portfolios carefully done can be a strong
motivational tool. Ongoing assessments are informal evaluations that are
made continuously as students participate in class. Listening to a
learner read tells a lot about progress in word identification, rate and
fluency. Ongoing assessments are necessary not only to check on a
learner\'s initial mastery, but later on on retention of what has been
taught. It\'s often necessary to refresh a formerly learned concept
until it\'s thoroughly mastered and the need to circle back can be
indicated with ongoing assessments of the concepts and skills that have
been presented.

All right, John talked a bit about phonemic awareness. What skills
should we assess in order to find the weak links in readers inefficient
word recognition skills? Ability to distinguish the sounds of our
language, phonemic awareness, is prerequisite to mastery of the phonetic
system of an alphabetic language. The national reporting panel cites the
following criterion referenced tests for assessing phonemic awareness.

First is phonemic isolation. It requires recognizing individual sounds
and words. For example, tell me the first sound in \"paste\".

Then there\'s phonemic identity. That requires recognizing the common
sound in different words. For example, tell me the sound that\'s the
same in \"bike\", \"boy, and \"bell\".

Phoneme blending requires listening to a sequence of separately spoken
sounds and combining them to form a recognizable word. For example, what
is \"S\" \"K\" \"OO\" \"L\"?

Phoneme categorization requires recognizing the word with the odd sound
in a sequence of three or four words. For example, which word does not
belong: \"bus\", \"bun\", \"rug\"?

Phoneme deletion is the most difficult of these tasks and the one that
confounds those readers who have phonological problems. This defines a
significant number of adult poor readers. It requires recognizing what
word remains when a specified phoneme is removed. For example, say
\"smile\". Now say it again, but don\'t say \"S\".

In reference to Rosner\'s test of auditory awareness skills to assess
phoneme deletion can be found on the Institute\'s ASRP web site that
would be listed at the end of this web cast; how you can get to that.
Research tells us that adult poor readers who report having had
difficulty learning to read as children show persisting poor phonemic
awareness. Assessment of phonemic awareness of adult readers who are not
progressing is always indicated.

Phonemic awareness and oral language tasks become phonics when in a
written language task when the sounds of spoken language phonemes are
linked to the letters. The two processes, phonemic awareness and
phonics, are tasks of phonological awareness. Memory for the accurate
associations between sounds and letters and memory for the visual form
of words; for that we sort of test site words as well as a reader\'s
vocabulary all play a part in mastering word recognition. To assess word
recognition using graded word lists, you find the highest level on which
there is an effortless accurate word identification. Automaticity on
this task, that is immediate recognition, is what we aim for. In reading
passages, the less attention a reader has to devote to figuring out
individual words, the more concentration he or she can give to
comprehending what is written. After all, that is the main point of
reading.

Word Analysis: The reader has poor word recognition ability. Well, ask
for which elements of words. Use an inventory of word components like
the Sylvia Green\'s informal word analysis inventory. It\'s one of the
downloadable resources on the Institute\'s ASRP web site. The lists of
words are made up of most of the letter combinations that make up our
written language. For example, \"strut\" and \"sprig\" are on this list.
Note that neither word is very commonly seen in print, certainly not
with enough frequency to become a site word. A reader would have to know
how to combined \"STR\" and \"SPR\" in order to read the words. The
letter combinations being assessed by each word on the list are given on
the scoring sheet. In this case, it is the ability to read the three
letter consonant blends. Taking time to administer this kind of
diagnostic measure allows a teacher to find out which combinations to
focus on in planning word recognition instruction for that learner.

Another aspect of word analysis is syllabication. Assess the skill by
asking the reader to decode one word of each of the six syllable types.
Closed by a consonant. Words like \"cot\", \"plan\", that CVC is
consonant-vowel-consonant. That\'s what it stands for.

The next one is open. An open syllable ends in a vowel, as in \"go\".
The vowel is long. Another word is \"radar\". Then there\'s final silent
\"E\". The vowel is long, as in \"face\". Also, give an example of a
multi-syllabic word, such as \"inflate\" or \"windowpane\". Then there
are vowel combinations where two vowels make one sound, as in
\"peacock\" and \"trainer\".

\"R\" controlled. Those are closed by a consonant. That\'s when a vowel
is joined to the \"R\". The sound is changed by the vowel, but it\'s
neither long nor short, as in \"doctor\", \"person\", \"curd\",
\"partner\" or \"bird\".

Then there\'s the final consonant plus \"LE\". The vowel sound is a
\"schwa\", which is the sound like \"uh\", such as in \"bugle\" and
\"people\". There are many sources for lists of words to use for
assessment and instruction. The most commonly used and comprehensive
book is \"The Reading Teachers Book of Lists\" by Fry. And I think now
Susan, we are going to talk about instruction in decoding.

Susan McShane: All right. Sounds good. So, you\'ve done this sort of
assessment and Ros has gone through those with you. It\'s amazing what
you can learn and you\'ve got an idea from what she said what you can
learn. What then do you do with those assessment results? I think there
are probably in general two research-based recommendations. It\'s nice
that there are only two here. It\'s not really that simple, but at least
for the beginners we can say we need to have a structured curriculum.
We\'ll look at what that means in just a minute.

So the real beginners, those very low readers. You do the assessment of
the components including the ones that Ros mentioned where you\'re
looking at word identification, sight word reading, word analysis or
decoding skills and you discover, wow, a real beginning reader. Maybe
you knew that even before. For those very, very beginners then, a
structured curriculum.

For that next group of folks, often called intermediate readers,
there\'s no real definite definition of what an intermediate reader
might be. I don\'t know; somewhere third grade to eighth grade, ninth
grade, somewhere in there. For those intermediate readers, they still
have many gaps quite often when it comes to their decoding skills. Even
they may not be aware of them, but quite often when you do this kind of
assessment you\'ll discover they have gaps. And so what you\'ll do for
them is provide explicit instruction to fill in those gaps. So let\'s
now look at both of those.

First, we\'ll look at what do we mean by that structured phonics
curriculum? The point here, I think, is there are existing programs and
therefore you shouldn\'t try to make it up. There are some good
curriculum out there that have been proven to be effective with adults
and typically what we\'re talking about here is very direct, very
explicit instruction that is direct teaching that includes teacher
modeling, plenty of guided practice where the teacher works with the
student, guided practice. So that before you turn it over to the student
to work independently you\'re sure that that student is ready for it. It
also means that there\'s plenty of review built in; so very direct,
explicit instruction.

Typically these curriculum, because they\'re for beginners, you know
you\'re going to begin at the beginning and you\'re not going to skip
anything. You\'re going to move right through in a very systematic way
beginning with the most basic elements and progressing. These are very
structured approaches. They\'re instructional routines, even sometimes
scripts. So this is a very structured kind of program we\'re talking
about. Also, often multi-sensory activities where the learner, for
instance, is seeing, saying, writing, manipulating letter cards, word
cards; that sort of thing. So very multi-sensory usually as well.

These are very structured programs so it shouldn\'t surprise you to hear
that usually training would be required to use one. This is the sort of
thing we\'ll need for our beginning readers. I don\'t think any of us is
underestimating the potential difficulties for programs and accessing
those kinds of programs, but that\'s what the research says we need with
the beginners.

Now, for those intermediate and that\'s where most of our folks are,
what are you going to do? This is where you can begin to actually just
look at exactly what you learned from those tests. For instance, as an
example here on the slide, you see the kinds of gaps you might have
discovered in decoding skills if you had given one of those tests that
Ros mentioned. For instance, the Sylvia Green word analysis inventory or
the Woodcock word attack test, for instance. This is what you learned.
Here is where the gaps are for this student. Here\'s some examples. The
ones that Ros mentioned a minute ago that those three letter initial
blends. This student doesn\'t really know what to do with that \"STR\",
\"SPR\". Maybe one of those sounds gets dropped off. We\'re not sure.
This student has demonstrated that he doesn\'t know what to do with
those spelling patterns.

Another thing you might learn from the tests is that this person does
not know that sometimes the spelling combination \"OW\" represents the
long \"O\" sound. Maybe he does know that it often sounds like \"ow\",
but he doesn\'t know that sometimes it sounds like \"O\". The other
possible vowel combinations that might be a problem that \"OI\". Maybe
this is a learner who doesn\'t know that \"OI\" sounds like \"oy\" and
that \"OO\" for instance, sometimes sounds like \"oh\", as in \"hood\"
and \"took\". Maybe he knows that it sounds like \"oo\" in \"tool\", but
doesn\'t know that sometimes it sounds like \"oh\". This is person who
has demonstrated that these are difficulties he has because you have
done this kind of diagnostic testing.

He\'s also got problems with those \"R\" controlled vowels. Ros
mentioned those as well. When an \"R\" comes after a vowel, you need to
know that \"AR\" usually sounds like \"ar\"; \"ER\" usually sounds like
\"er\". Those are the things once again you might discover from testing
that this person did not know.

Also didn\'t know about the soft \"G\" sound and the soft \"C\" sound.
We know that \"G\" can have two sounds. Sometimes it sounds like \"G\"
as in \"gorilla\" and \"grade\". Sometimes it sounds like \"J\", like
the sound of the letter \"J\". Same thing with \"C\". Sometimes it
sounds like a \"K\"; \"cat\" and \"come\", but often it sounds like an
\"S\", as in \"civic\" and \"circle\". Okay. But this person doesn\'t
quite know where and when to guess that soft \"C\" or soft \"G\". So
that\'s what you\'ve learned from this assessment that you\'ve done.

You\'ve also learned that the person doesn\'t know what to do with that
\"PH\" sound. Doesn\'t know what \"GH\" represents and, boy oh boy, this
person really falls apart when it comes to those long words. Those
multi-syllabic words and this is a real common thing that you\'ll
discover through both formal and informal assessments with weak graders,
poor readers. What they do when they see this long word is they look at
the first couple of letters or the first syllable and based on that they
make a guess. It may not even make sense, but they make a guess and they
move on. So you\'ve discovered that this is a common one for these
intermediate readers is the problem with the multi-syllabic words.

So, now that means that you are going to have to provide instruction
based on those assessed needs which means you\'re going to really need
to teach words that exemplify those particular spelling sound
correspondences. So for instance with your three letter initial blends
you can see on the slide there several examples of the \"STR\" words;
lots and lots of those. So you\'ll work on those because what you\'re
trying to do here is fill in the gaps in their decoding skills and you
found out that this is a gap. So maybe the three letter initial blends.

On the next slide there are some examples of the \"R\" controlled
vowels. The interesting thing here is that you have to remember ‑ one of
the interesting things is that there are three different ways in English
to spell that \"R\" sound. Sometimes it\'s \"ER\"; sometimes it\'s
\"IR\"; sometimes it\'s \"UR\". All \"er\". When you begin to teach \--
work with those \"R\" controlled vowels, you need to also remember to
use plenty of examples that show that syllable or word part wherever it
might occur in a word: at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a
word, at the end of the word.

So you see there some examples on the slide. The \"AR\" sound at the
beginning of \"army\" and \"argument\". In the middle of a word in
\"part\" or \"market\" and then there\'s that \"ER\" sound. There you
see it in the middle of the word \"allergy\" and \"dangerous\" and at
the end of the word \"seller\". So we\'re careful to show when we\'re
teaching \-- careful to present plenty of examples, lots of practice
examples, where that letter sound combination is provided in different
places in the word wherever it might occur. The same thing you\'re
seeing there with the \"IR\" spelling for \"ER\" in the middle of a
word, but with the \"UR\" spelling you see it at the beginning, in the
middle and at the end: \"urban\", \"burst\" and \"occur\". We want to
make sure that we show examples of those words in any positions in which
they might occur.

Now what about those other things. We talked about the fact that this
person needed work with soft \"G\" and the soft \"C\". The \"G\" sound
or the \"S\" sound. How do you know? Well, you teach one of those rules,
don\'t you? You have to teach that most often when a \"G\" is followed
by an \"E\", an \"I\", or a \"Y\", it sounds like \"G\". So here are
some examples of words where you can see how it\'s working there. We
have \"gem\". We have \"giant\". We have \"vegetable\". We have
\"energy\". Once again, some examples of where those sounds and those
spelling combinations and syllables would occur at the beginning, middle
and end of words. Same kind of thing there with the soft \"C\". \"C\" in
front of an \"E\", in front of an \"I\", in front of a \"Y\". Those are
some examples.

Now, it gets more complicated when we begin to look at those
multi-syllabic words. This is where it gets kind of tough. What do you
have to do to decode a multi-syllabic word? First, you have to know how
to divide it into syllables and then you have to decode the syllables.
So that\'s more complicated. Before we look at the example on the next
slide, I want to do a little bit of definition here. I think we need to
define \"blend\" and \"digraph\". A consonant blend is an example, for
example, would be something like \"BR\", \"ST\", \"SP\", where you do
hear the sounds of both consonants, it\'s just that they\'re blended
quickly together.

A consonant digraph is different. You have two letters: \"SH\", \"CH\",
\"TH\". They represent one sound: \"shh\", \"ch\". Just two letters, one
sound. So those are consonant blends and consonant digraphs. You need to
know that in order to make sense of this slide here.

As I said, what we\'ve got to do first is learn how to divide the word
into syllables. So rules for dividing words. Here\'s an example of one
rule for dividing a word. Yo see as it says on the side, if there are
two consonants between vowels, you will usually divide between the
consonants ‑- remember what we\'re trying to do here is divide the word
into syllables. If there are two consonants between vowels, you divide
between them unless those consonants form a blend or a digraph. There
are some examples there with \"mental\"; \"NT\" you can divide between.
Right? \"Trac-tor\"; you can divide between the \"C\" and the \"T\".

Then you\'ve got F-R-A-G \-- okay \-- M-E-N-T. You can divide between
the \"G\" and the \"M\" there, but look at that next one.
F-R-A-G-R-A-N-T. \"GR\" is one of those consonant blends. We don\'t want
to break that apart, so we\'re going to divide after the \"A\" and put
the \"GR\" in the second syllable. Something similar there with the next
word. \"SH\" is a digraph. We can\'t split a digraph so the syllable is
going to end after the \"H\". Okay. That\'s how we\'re going to divide
it up.

Now then, we have a rule \-- we have to teach the rules for decoding
those syllables and one rule, for example, is that if a syllable or word
with one vowel ends in a consonant, the vowel often has the short sound.
So when you look at those examples, you see some there. T-R-A-C-T-O-R.
Okay. That\'s a syllable with one vowel that ends in a consonant. So my
first guess is going to be short vowel, short \"A\", \"trac\". That\'s
the sort of thing you\'re going to be doing when you are looking at
decoding the multi-syllabic words.

Basically, what you\'re doing is you are providing instruction based on
assessed needs and on the next slide you\'ll see some examples for where
you might get resources. I think you can find rules and word lists in
any number of good reading teacher materials. You can also use the
dictionary. Another very good resource, I think Ros might have mentioned
this, if not she\'s about to; \"The Reading Teacher\'s Book of Lists\".
There\'s a new edition now, the fifth edition by Fry & Kress. A
wonderful tool. Lots of word lists and lots of rules and principles.
Lots of neat collections that you can use to instruct your instruction;
that you can use to do what you\'re trying to do here.

Remember, what we\'re doing, as you see on the next slide, is we are
providing instruction based on assessed needs. We are teaching to fill
in the gaps. That\'s what you\'re doing with those intermediate readers.
You\'re making a structured plan because you\'ve done the assessment and
you know just what the person needs then you\'re going to make a
structured plan to cover the needed skills and knowledge. You\'re going
to teach very explicitly. You\'re going to demonstrate. You\'re going to
model. You\'re to provide guided practice before you let the student
loose for independent practice. Lots of practice and lots of review.

So that\'s the quick story on what we are doing for decoding, word
analysis instruction and I\'m going to turn you over to John now who\'s
going to introduce another of the components.

Dr. John Kruidenier: Thank you, Susan. That was great. Now that we\'ve
talked about word analysis assessment and instruction, we\'ll move on to
the second component of reading that we\'ll be talking about today.
It\'s important to remember that all of the components of reading are
important and we\'re focusing on just two today because we don\'t have
time to cover the others. Today, what we really want to focus on is how
useful research can be for instruction and how you can use the
components of reading as a framework for assessment and instruction.

Assessment research clearly shows that those who qualify for adult
education have difficulty with reading comprehension. Based on results
from two large scale surveys of adult readers that together looked at
the reading comprehension of over 50,000 adults in the United States, we
can conclude that many of those in adult literacy programs have
difficulty reading and understanding information in simple, commonplace
documents such as newspaper articles, food labels and bus schedules.
Just finding information in these texts can be difficult for some adult
literacy students. Virtually all adults in literacy programs have
difficulty reading texts that are longer and more dense or complex.
Summarizing, making inferences and determining cause and effect while
reading are all difficult tasks for the adults we work with.

What does the research say about teaching reading comprehension to
adults? Research does suggest that placement in an adult literacy
program can lead to improved reading comprehension; however, specific
instructional strategies that can be used with adults and that are
supported by the research are only beginning to be identified. Most of
the comprehension research in adult education has focused on program
evaluation where measures of comprehension are used as sort of a
yardstick and not on specific teaching strategies.

One emerging principle related to teaching strategies suggest that
effective approaches provide direct as opposed to incidental
construction in comprehension strategies. It\'s best to directly teach
specific strategies as opposed to simply teaching a strategy as needed
in a more haphazard manner. A trend suggests that we should focus on
more than one component or aspect of reading during instruction, working
on fluency or word analysis, for example, can lead to improved reading
comprehension achievement. Research at the K-12 level provides support
for and extends the adult findings. Teaching multiple components of
reading should be effective.

Alphabetics, fluency and vocabulary instruction can all lead to improved
reading comprehension achievement. Also direct instruction and specific
strategy is supported by the research with children. This research has
identified specific strategies that are effective. The best approach
appears to be one that teaches multiple strategies. Ros and Susan will
present practical applications from the comprehension research,
including more information about these strategies. We\'ll start with
Ros.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: Thanks, John. I do want to stress one thing that
you said, John, that was so important. When we teach \--when we try to
strengthen any one component, and there are many of them, it strengthens
them all. So that we are talking about two, we need to talk about four,
but whichever one you\'re working on, you\'re helping them all.

The Standardized National Reporting System are the assessments required
by the National Reporting System. Both norm referenced tests and
criterion referenced tests have the same basic ways to test
comprehension. They use leveled reading passages followed by multiple
choice questions or closed type statements that require the reader to
fill in the correct word that completes the sentence. Not only do the
passages become more difficult with longer sentences and less familiar
vocabulary, questions also become increasingly sophisticated.

For example, on the diagnostic assessment of reading the third grade
passage titled \"Whales\" there\'s this statement: \"The largest animal
in the world today is the blue whale.\" One of the four multiple choice
questions following the reading is, \"What is the biggest animal in the
world today?\" That\'s with the following choices: A bow head whale, an
elephant, a great white shark, a blue whale. Well, that\'s pretty clear
what that is.

Contrast this level of difficulty to the grade 9/10 about spiders. One
of the comprehension questions is, \"How does the author feel about
spiders?\" It\'s followed by these choices: fascinated, fearful,
overwhelmed, emotionless. A few of the sentences in the text are similar
to this one. Some spiders are amazingly beautiful. The sentences in the
text give evidence to support the correct response, but do not use the
same words or explicitly indicate the answer of \"fascinated\". The
reader infers it from the information given.

The TABE, CASAS, ABLE and Woodcock WRMT are widely used standardized
norm reference tests of reading comprehension. Beyond the ability to
decode words, vocabulary knowledge and background information drive
comprehension. An accomplished reader \-- as accomplished readers we are
often not aware of how much understanding of what we read comes from the
information we have absorbed from extensive reading and experiences. We
bring all of this information to new text. A skilled, fluent reader who
knows a lot about American history, for instance, will have an easier
time understanding a passage about the Civil War then a reader who does
not bring such background knowledge to the reading.

We usually gain much of our background knowledge when we\'re children
and adolescents in school. How can we get some idea of what our adult
readers know about school based subjects? Usually through tests of
subject matter vocabulary. The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test, word
comprehension test, may be evaluated in four areas: general reading,
science and mathematics, social studies and humanities.

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 3 is one of the most respected
specialized norm referenced tests. It\'s a test that gives a measure of
the breadth and depth of a person\'s understanding of words in a range
of those words most frequently seen in print to those items that appear
infrequently and then most often only in sophisticated materials. The
examinee is asked to indicate one of four pictures that best tells about
the words spoken by the examiner. It is an individually administered
wholly oral test and its norm for ages two through 90. The PPVT-III is
often cited in research as a measure of verbal power or the verbal
intelligence that is then available to the examinee.

Independent Reading Inventories may ask the reader to summarize a
passage in addition to answering written or oral multiple choice
questions. Summaries often yield information a reader knows about a
subject in addition, and sometimes instead of, to that given in the
text. Most word meaning vocabulary tests are a written format and they
often require reading beyond the word recognition level of the ABE
learners. Therefore, oral word meaning assessments provide a more
meaningful evaluation of adult learners as they do also of children who
have reading difficulty.

Tests that measure word knowledge by asking what does \"X\" mean, such
as on the diagnostic assessment of reading, allow the learner to explain
the meaning of a word however they can, even in a gesture. Marybeth
Curtis discusses how teachers can assess how well a learner knows a
particular word by evaluating the response according to one of four
stages. If the word knowledge is a stage one, the learner cannot
identify the real word when it\'s presented along with suitor words. For
example, if you want to know the stage of a word \"sorted\", that word
is sorted for an advance reader, you can present it with these nonsense
words: \"stolen\", \"filson\", \"pointster\". Would the learner be able
to discriminate between the real word and the suitor words? You can
present a mixture of many real and suitor words, perhaps ten real
vocabulary words among 30 non-words and have the learners underline the
real words. If Stage Two the learner is not able to say what the word
means, even though they may have seen it before.

If Stage Three, the learner give a particularized word meaning so that
it is restricted to just one context. For example, for the word
\"celebration\", a Stage Three word meaning might be \"my birthday
party\".

Stage Four words, the learner gives a synonym or defines the word so
that its meaning is clear when spoken or written in many particularized
contexts. For example, a celebration is sort of a party when it\'s a
special time or when something especially important has happened. Two
studies showed that only Stage Three knowledge is needed to correctly
identify a word meaning on a multiplication choice test. In isn\'t
necessary to know the word meaning in its broadest Stage Four
application. This is the case when someone is reading. If you know a
word in the Stage Three aspect, then that\'s fine. You can go on to
understand the passage.

This slide could be called \"ask the reader\". What do they do when they
do not understand a sentence or passage? Do they re-read? What else?
What strategies do they know about? Which have they tried? Teachers can
proceed with what they think would probably work with a particular
learner trying out several strategies to find ones that work. It\'s
important to assess the readability of the passages for comprehension
instruction so that you\'re sure that the passage is at the reader\'s
independent or low instructional reading level. There are several
readability formulas on the Web and on the ASRP web site.

Comprehension can be assessed with beginners in a listening format to
find out what level passages they could understand if they could read
the words. Above beginning levels, comprehension is assessed with
passages read silently only. All right. Word comprehension. What now?
Have readers re-read a couple of sentences orally to test their ability
to read the words. Maybe that\'s the problem. Are they familiar with the
sentence structure? This may be a problem with non-native English
speakers, but also with native English poor readers who have not had
enough experience with the more complex sentences of higher than
conversational level text. Are they applying helpful practices they\'ve
learned and found successful in other reading materials? Susan, those
are the questions. What kind of strategies do you have in mind now?

Susan McShane: Wow! There are all kinds. We\'re wealthy, I think. So, I
guess the simplest answer to what do you do at this point when you\'ve
got this initial assessment might be to just review as you\'ll see on
the next slide. What you\'re going to do is first of all, you\'re going
to look at all the components. That\'s the other components to see what
might be contributing to the problem because as we\'ve all said they all
work together so nicely and in such a complex interdependent kind of way
that you want to find out what might be contributing to this
comprehension problem. Then you\'re going to work on those component
skills that are identified by those assessments, but the interesting
thing is that even if all of the other components are in place, you
think they look good, this person appears to be ‑ you still might need
to teach. With many of our students you still might need to teach \--
actively teach comprehensive strategies. That\'s what John was
suggesting that the research has shown and that certainly seems to be
true.

We need to work on ‑ directly work on comprehension strategies. Once
again explicit and direct instruction in comprehension strategies. What
I\'d like to do here first is once again begin with a definition. Let\'s
look at what is strategy instruction before we go any further. Strategy
instruction in general because I think that quite often what we do in
adult education classrooms while wonderful and often is not necessarily
always strategy instruction. We don\'t necessarily approach it that way.

What is strategy instruction? It\'s teaching learning tools. It\'s
giving the reader, the learner, tools that they can use independently to
solve their reading comprehension problems. So you teach principles, you
teach concepts, you teach rules, you teach processes that people can use
when they are having a reading comprehension breakdown of some sort. For
example, for instance, there are different kinds of strategies. There
are strategies for decoding words. There are strategies for figuring out
the meanings of words. You might, for instance, as a decoding strategy,
here\'s an example; you could teach an intermediate reader that there
are common syllables that rhyme. So if you see \"OP\" in the middle of a
word somewhere it might very well rhyme with \"hop\" and \"top\" and
might be \"op\".

Same thing with \"ACK\", \"END\". Those are what we used to call word
patterns which are sometimes also called phonograms. Now we hear a lot
about onsets in rhymes. And so that\'s the rhyme part and the onset is
the consonant or consonants that come before it. Those are handy little
‑ that\'s a quick strategy for teaching decoding. So that\'s one example
of a strategy.

Another kind of strategy would be teaching people directly how to
recognize context clues that give you an idea about what the meaning of
the word might be. So that\'s a vocabulary strategy. What we\'re going
to look at in particular here, though, this afternoon is strategy
instruction related to comprehension. So let\'s look at what the
research says about comprehension strategy instruction. First of all, we
absolutely ‑ I think there\'s plenty of evidence to show that we do need
to teach it directly. What\'s very interesting is that many readers
really don\'t even know when they\'re not getting it. They\'re not aware
of how much they have missed and that\'s an interesting thing. There\'s
research with younger students and older students to show that they
don\'t recognize inconsistencies and even contradictions in text. They
simply don\'t notice it, which means that they are not paying attention
to meaning.

What they don\'t know is that good readers actually work and we don\'t
even know it because we\'ve become \-- we\'re unconscious because it\'s
all happening so quickly. But if we could break down what we do, we are
very active as we read. We are thinking and when we have a problem we
solve it because we expect it to make sense. We read for meaning. We
demand meaning. If poor readers do not do that, which often they don\'t
do and they don\'t know what good readers do, we need to teach them
directly some of the things that could readers do. That\'s what
comprehension strategy instruction is all about.

So, we\'re going to look at what the research says about these. What you
see on the slide there are eight different things. Those are really
fairly broad categories of comprehension instruction. In other words,
there aren\'t eight strategies. There are many, many strategies. Those
are categories. What I\'m going to do is very briefly walk through those
and show you what each one means and then we\'re going to look a little
more specifically at some of the comprehension monitoring strategies.

So first of all, let\'s look at comprehension monitoring. Comprehension
monitoring strategies are processes, ways, tricks that you can teach to
students to keep their attention focused on meaning, focused on
understanding. There are a number of those. So that\'s comprehension
monitoring and we\'ll look at that in more detail a little later.

Graphic organizers: The use of graphic organizers has to do with
teaching people how to use diagrams or charts to visually represent the
relationships between ideas, events, occurrences, information in a text.
So it\'s a visual representation and there\'s plenty of research to show
that that has worked. For instance, things like semantic maps. Some of
you may have used those. For instance, in vocabulary instruction. You
put the term in the middle and then you have this little web with all of
these other aspects of the word around it. Some of you might be familiar
with the use of timelines for history, for instance. Those are visual
representations. That\'s another kind of graphic organizer.

There\'s also plenty of research to show that it helps to teach story
structure. I think sometimes in adult education we don\'t do a lot with
fiction and much of this research, of course, came from the National
Reading Panel and, of course, young children do read lots of stories.
The idea behind story structure is that you can teach the reader to
recognize that stories have a common structure. There\'s a setting.
There are characters. There\'s a problem or a plot. That sort of thing.
So you teach them about that structure so they recognize those elements
and they\'re following it along and they\'re getting from the story.
They\'re understanding.

Question answering: That\'s a whole category of different kinds of
strategies that people have that researchers have tested. It basically
is about teaching students how to answer questions. Remember those
tougher questions that Ros just presented, the difficult ones. It\'s one
thing to answer a question when you have the answer directly in the
passage. It\'s another when you have to think and search a little bit.
It\'s another yet again when you have to bring some of your own
background knowledge to bear to make an inference. Those are the kinds
of things that you may have to directly teach and there is research to
show that teaching students how to answer questions results in better
comprehension.

The question generating category has to do with teaching students how to
ask themselves questions as they read. We in fact do that. It\'s just,
once again, these are the things that we do automatically. Those can be
taught directly to students. Those might be the question that you ask at
the beginning and then what\'s this going to be about and what do I
already know. And then in the middle, what\'s this about? What are the
main points? That sort of thing. We\'re teaching people how to generate
questions as they read.

Then we have summarization which is a very, very ‑ that\'s a tough thing
to do. Summarization is all about teaching readers how to identify the
main and central ideas. Most of the research was done with older
students. It\'s typically done with better readers, but even for lots of
our intermediate readers they\'re asked continuously, \"What\'s the main
idea?\" A main idea, after all, is a mini summary, isn\'t it? It\'s a
one sentence statement of a short passage. So it does apply in many
cases and there are lots of different ways, lots of different specific
ways to teach summarization.

And then I think John mentioned that one of the things that there\'s a
lot of research behind is this multiple strategies instruction. In fact,
we don\'t as readers use one or two. We use lots of strategies all at
the same time, so there\'s plenty of research on specific combinations
of strategies that have been taught; usually taught through interaction
among the teacher and students. One common one which you could find out
more about, do yourself a little search, reciprocal teaching. There\'s
lots of research behind reciprocal teaching. That involves question
generating, summarizing, clarifying and predicting. So, examples.

Then finally, we have cooperative learning which to most of us looks
like an instructional approach rather than a reading strategy, but there
is lots of evidence to show that readers at all ability levels benefit
from learning and working and reading with each other. So, learning
together. So that\'s the eight.

Now we\'re going to take a look at specifically the first one I
mentioned, the comprehension monitoring strategies and just look quickly
at three examples of comprehension monitoring strategies. Let\'s look at
restating as the first one. With restating as you\'ll see on the next
slide, restating is about teaching learner\'s to get in the habit of
stopping periodically. It\'s an interesting thing. Sometimes it looks as
though poor readers might just feel like the goal is just to get to the
end of the page. And so rather than do that, let\'s teach them to stop
periodically, maybe after a paragraph or after a section with a
subheading, and say, \"Can I put it in my own words?\" Because if I
can\'t, I don\'t think I got it and might have to read it again. So
restating one of the comprehension strategies that has some research
backing. Teaching them to stop periodically and check on their
understanding.

The next one we\'re going to look at is thinking aloud. I\'ve always
thought this one has great potential because I think what we are doing
here is we\'re able to ‑- we\'re saying to students that it\'s okay to
do what many of us do when we\'re reading. I sometimes when I\'m reading
the paper or something, come across something and stop and say,
\"What?\" I must have missed something there. Wait a minute. Okay.
Better go back. Now we do most of that silently, but occasionally we do
it aloud and its okay for learner\'s to do that and to teach them to do
that. It once again keeps them focused on the process and you can
demonstrate it as the teacher. You demonstrate it by doing a think
aloud. You actually analyze what you do.

It\'s tough because we do it very quickly, very automatically. You have
to break it down and make the inaudible audible. Get it out there so
that they can hear what you\'re doing. That kind of processing may
involve any of the things on the slide here. It may involve restating
which we already talked about. Noting something that\'s important or
surprising. Stopping and expressing confusion ‑ wait a minute, why would
that be? Did I miss something? Or wait a minute, he said \"it\". What\'s
the \"it\" now? What does the \"it\" stand for? Going back and finding
out the reference for a pronoun. Looking back to clarify something using
context clues; demonstrate for the students out loud. You demonstrate
how you do it and you teach them to think aloud as well as they read. So
that\'s another comprehension monitoring strategy.

A third one has to do with marking text. Usually, this one is called
coding text because it\'s about teaching learners some sort of code.
Many of us when we were studying developed our own codes. If a student
didn\'t develop it on his own, then you might need to suggest one.
Something simple like let\'s put an exclamation point next to anything
we find that we learned that\'s new or surprising. A question mark when
we see something that we\'re not sure about, perhaps a word we don\'t
understand. It\'s once again a way to monitor comprehension, to keep
focus on meeting. Don\'t let yourself go on; pay attention to whether
you\'re getting it.

So once again, comprehension strategy instruction, three different
approaches. We looked at restating, thinking aloud and coding text.
Those are three examples of comprehension monitoring strategies. So
we\'ve tried to quickly go through some of the assessment and
instructional suggestions that we have and so I think I\'m going to turn
it back to John who will summarize and wrap things up for us.

Dr. John Kruidenier: Thank you, Susan and Ros. One of the things I want
to do now to conclude is to go over some of the main points we wanted to
emphasize in today\'s presentation. We hope we\'ve convinced you that
research provides some very practical and useful approaches to adult
reading instruction. Remember, we looked at only two components of
reading because of time constraints, but all of the components together,
the basic components of reading can provide a framework for assessing
and teaching reading to adults. It\'s important to assess all of the
components to understand your student\'s strengths and weaknesses in
reading, use the assessment results to decide which components to
emphasize and which research-based practices you will use.

Finally, continue to assess your students as you teach in order to
adjust your instruction. On the next slide, you\'ll see everything that
we\'ve talked about today and actually more is contained in three
resources that are available on the Institute\'s website. I believe that
you can download these slides right now on the webcast page if you
wanted to keep those resources. I\'m going to turn it back to Sandra now
for questions.

Sandra Baxter: John, Ros, Susan, thank you so much. That was an awful
lot of information. You have a lot of years of collective experience, so
we\'re lucky to have you here. I think this is a good time to bring our
viewing audience in and let them have an opportunity to ask some
questions because as good as your presentations were, I\'m sure they
have some questions about how to apply what they\'ve heard today.

In fact, we have a question now. Susan, you talked a little bit earlier
about rules for dividing words. One of our participants in the web cast
today wants to know, \"Given that English has so many examples of broken
rules, does it make sense to teach the phonics rules at all?\"

Susan McShane: We hear that, don\'t we? There\'s been all kinds of funny
stuff about our crazy English spelling patterns, but I think the answer
to that is simply that there really are ‑- it is worth teaching them
because an awful lot of our English spelling does follow rules. Many of
us just have good visual memory. Many of us reading came easily to us.
So it wasn\'t a problem. If you have someone who is struggling with
decoding, isn\'t it better to give that person some strategies, some
rules then not to? Isn\'t a rule better than no rule, better than a gas?
Ros?

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: I think many of our \-- most of our words we can
put in rule kinds of categories. Sure, they\'ll lap out all over, but
there\'s also the value of knowing prefixes and affixes that tell us the
derivation of a word so that we can remember that, that it will be
different because perhaps this is a word from Greek or something. We
know it has a \"sis\" or whatever. There are ways of approaching those
that are irregular, but we have to teach the rules as they are because
they certainly do apply most of the time and certainly my feeling would
be that they would apply most of the time to the most frequent kinds of
words. So, yes, I think there\'s great value in teaching it.

Susan McShane: As long as you approach it ‑- as long as you say, okay,
the rule says in most cases this will be a short vowel. Try the short
vowel first. Do you come up with a word that you recognize that\'s a
meaningful word? Okay. Now try. Then if not, then try this. It gives you
a structured, sensible approach rather than a guess.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: It is a predictable system for the most part.

Sandra Baxter: We have a viewer today who says that she ‑ this is from
Ellen ‑ I\'d like to use the reading profile web site, but I want to
know, for example, what are the recommended amounts of time I should be
spending per lesson on a low/intermediate student who needs vocabulary
development, phonics and fluency work? Should I spend more time
initially on vocabulary development since that is going to impact
comprehension most? Also, do you recommend starting instruction by
focusing on one component first or is lesson sequence simply at the
teacher discretion?

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: It also depends what amount of time the teacher
and learner have together. Is this three times a week for three hours?
Is it twice a week for one hour? What is it? As far as what absolutely
to focus on, I think first of all vocabulary takes us very far and we
should always include that in a lesson. Was there an assessment of the
learner?

Sandra Baxter: Apparently, there was. I would say yes because she\'s
identified specific areas here; vocabulary development, phonics and
fluency work.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: Now fluency can have to do with both phonics and
vocabulary. So that it looks to me she doesn\'t talk about comprehension
as much. Then I should think that a major focus should be on fluency,
which would include finding out what words they are having trouble with,
having effortless \-- developing effortless word recognition at higher
and higher levels and being able to understand text to read it fluently
using the rhythm and the prosody and always feeding in vocabulary;
always feeding in vocabulary.

Dr. John Kruidenier: I think not ignoring any of the components.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: Absolutely not.

Dr. John Kruidenier: If the student has a strength in reading
comprehension, it\'s not something you ignore during construction. In
fact, you could probably use that strength as well, but also continue to
work on reading comprehension as well as these others. In terms of the
question related to how much time to spend on each one, maybe you could
spend a little less time than you would normally spend on reading
comprehension if they\'re doing really well and shift some of that time
to fluency instruction.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: I think if you look at the bands of how much word
recognition to teach as different from comprehension, that the very
beginners that band of word recognition is much longer than that of
comprehension and then its shifts as the learner\'s become more
advanced. So that then you\'re finally dealing more with comprehension
then with the word attack.

Sandra Baxter: One of our viewers wants to know whether or not this
method applies to adult students with learning disabilities? That we\'re
talking about today.

Dr. John Kruidenier: I think we can say that the overall method would
apply to any of the students that are in your classroom. Assessing all
components of reading, getting a profile for each of the students that
you have to find out what their strengths and weaknesses are and that
would include students with a learning disability. In that sense, what
we\'ve been saying would apply to students with a learning disability.

A lot of the approaches that you would use with beginning readers who
don\'t have a learning disability, you would also use with those who do.
And in particular, and this is something that Susan can address, but in
particular direct and explicit instruction in alphabetics. It\'s a very
important for a student that has a learning disability in reading. They
may have a lot of difficulty making the connection between speech sounds
and letter combinations. So that would be something you\'d have to focus
on in a really structured way. I think that\'s something you would agree
with.

Susan McShane: That\'s sort of been the approach that I\'ve been sharing
with people is that I think even in situations where on this case, this
apparently is a person who knows that we haven\'t identified specific
learning disability in reading. We don\'t always know that about our
adult learners. In this case, this person knows. I think certainly with
that kind of information you should assume once you have done enough
assessment to discover whether we are looking at a phonological
processing, phonemic awareness kind of problem, which often is the case,
whatever; you still are going to need to focus on that kind of explicit
structured, lots of review. That\'s probably ‑- but again, once again
your abilities are on a continuum even once you got that sort of
definition of a reading disability. How severe? How much prior
instruction have you had? Where are you? So, it\'s not a simple answer,
but ‑-

Sandra Baxter: That\'s actually an interesting segue into another
question that\'s been raised. With so many students in one class who may
be at varying levels, what tips can you offer our viewers on how to deal
with that and how to make the whole classroom instruction so effective?

Dr. John Kruidenier: You want to start, Ros?

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: I think it depends on the range of students that
you have in your group. Supposing they have been grouped according to
their comprehension tests, which most often happens in adult literacy
centers; if they\'re grouped at all. You have people reading within a
range of let\'s say four to six grade, let\'s say. And as John showed
us, they can be all over the map. However, within a range you can group
together for instruction in word attack and in comprehension strategies
in a class as a whole or in particular elements that would be
appropriate for each level when they\'re looking at word attack. So that
you\'re not teaching the total class. You\'re teaching two particular
groups for each one.

It\'s pretty difficult to manage because you\'re going to have somebody
over there doing this and somebody over there doing that. However, a
very seasoned, adept teacher can use different components; people who
are strong in one component to help those develop that component and it
would benefit both of those. They\'re sort of bringing peer teaching
into the mix. John, you had other things you wanted to say I could see.

Dr. John Kruidenier: We\'re assuming, of course, that you go ahead and
you do assess all of the components for each of the students in a
classroom. I think it takes time and it\'s something that people avoid
because it\'s a time‑consuming process. If you have 15 or 20 or whatever
number of students in your class, there are ways to shorten the
assessment process. You don\'t need necessarily to give all of the
assessments to all of the students, but once you have that information
you can begin to group students. But I think you need to be flexible.
You don\'t want to just ‑- you may want to group by \-- one strategy is
to group by component.

You can group those who need instruction of a certain kind and reading
comprehension together. So you have a couple groups. When you\'re
working on word analysis, you wouldn\'t have those same two groups. You
would have a different group if you\'re grouping by level. I think
another suggestion that I could make is that you take a look at applying
research and reading instruction for adults. One of the resources \-- I
think there\'s a chapter in that book that addresses this question
correctly and it\'s one that \-- so you may have some concluding
remarks.

Susan McShane: When I was working with the group of researchers when we
were working on putting that together and I was writing it, I knew that
this was a huge issue. I said what in the world can we say to people so
there is a chapter about working with multilevel groups. Of course, one
of the suggestions was the kind of flexible grouping that John and Ros
were talking about. Flexible groups within that multilevel group.

Another point that I was just going to make because I think this is ‑- I
thought this was interesting and I\'ve been sharing this widely, too.
Given the fact that as we\'ve said most of our folks could probably use
some work in vocabulary and comprehension, especially comprehension
strategies. So sometimes you could do some whole group stuff if you
introduced a strategy and you chose a passage that was at least
mid-range difficult for your group. And you read it aloud so that
everybody can follow along. You can introduce it that way and then they
can practice individually or in pairs with material that that\'s at an
appropriate level. They could practice that strategy with material
that\'s at an appropriate readability level for them. That was one of
the things that one of the researchers suggested and I\'ve been trying
to share that one, too.

Don\'t assume that you can\'t do anything with the whole group, but you
do have to be careful that whatever you use if it\'s going to be ‑- if
it\'s too hard for some of the students, you will have to read it aloud
and then they can practice at their own level. That\'s another
possibility, I think.

Sandra Baxter: If we could shift our attention from native born speakers
for a moment. We\'re getting a number of questions about English
language learners. And to what extent, given what we\'re talking about
today, does the strategies that we\'ve talked about apply to English
language learners. Do you have any other advice for them?

Dr. John Kruidenier: Again, I would say \-- and this sounds like a
broken record, but of course you do the assessment first. You look at
all of the components. With English language learners, you\'ll probably
find with many of them if they truly are not fluent speakers in English
that their vocabulary won\'t be as good as it needs to be so that we\'ll
lead to work on language and language skills. You also will find \-- and
there is some research with children that addresses this, that they may
not have a good grasp of the sounds in the language. It depends on how
close their native language is too late English.

So you may work on \-- may need to work on phonetic awareness and some
of the basic word analysis skills for that reason. I think that there
are probably other strategies that you could use as well, but I think
that those would be ‑

Susan McShane: In the ARCS study, you can get on that ASRP site, some of
those profiles were pretty heavily composed of non-native English
speakers. There might be some help they could get there in terms of how
to work with them, do you think?

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: I think yes. I think there might be. There was
one cluster we had where people who should not have been in ABE yet.
They had such a low vocabulary, they weren\'t going to benefit from ABE
reading instruction; however, they would benefit from reading
instruction within their ESL classes because now we know that people are
learning the language by reading it and going through just as we learn a
foreign language. I don\'t know. I really don\'t know any other ‑-

Dr. John Kruidenier: I think that\'s probably something that needs to be
said and that\'s that there isn\'t enough research with this group of
adults. There needs to be a lot more research on how you teach someone
who\'s not a native speaker of English to read in English.

Susan McShane: There are so many teachers out there who are dealing with
it, though, that I\'ve discovered they are very interested and they\'re
interested, for instance, in trainings I\'ve done, they\'re interested
in talking with me about how this strategy might be used with these
learners. So I think there\'s a lot of thinking going on.

The other thing is that the teacher group worked with me as I was
working on the book. I also had some adult education teachers reviewing
the material and a couple of them were working with ESL students and we
didn\'t make any pretense that this was based on research with adult,
non-native English speakers, but they immediately went right out and
came back and the next time I saw them they said, \"I tried that with my
students.\" So, I wouldn\'t ‑- I think that it is probably \-- for those
whose oral skills are pretty good, my guess is and that\'s what I think
some of the researchers in the group suggested, too, is it probably
wouldn\'t do any harm. It might be worth a try in terms of whether these
instructional strategies would work with those folks.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: I would like to see a large scale research out
there now because the population has changed so drastically. I\'m sure
we\'re up over 50% non-English speakers in our literacy centers and
it\'s time we found out more than we know.

Sandra Baxter: Many adult students come to adult education instruction
with specific goals of their own. Sara wants to know how do you
integrate student center goals and learning in your research-based
approaches?

Dr. John Kruidenier: One of the resources and then throw it over to the
person who has the resource that addresses this. You can correct me if
I\'m wrong, Ros, but you have a question there, I think, that you
recommend that people use. Part of the assessment process. We focus
really on what we call the essential components of reading. We\'ve said
that this isn\'t all that\'s involved in reading. There\'s a context.
Reading takes place in a certain context for a certain purpose and these
are all things that are important. Some context may be more important
for some adults than other contexts. The workplace context, for example,
may be important to an adult, a particular adult and maybe a family
context is maybe more important to a different adult. So finding,
getting that information is important and I think there\'s a great
questionnaire on the website.

Dr. Rosalind Davidson: When I was speaking awhile ago I spoke about
interviews and that they are important to find out about the work place
and about the family practices in language and such. That\'s a great
tool to use. Not only that, the learner then speaks about his or her
goals and then you come to a meeting of terms; just how much the center
can help them with their goals. Which brings me another point that I
think we have to be very clear with our learners when they express their
goals just what our training and what their involvement in our programs;
how that can help them reach their goals and be very honest and such and
not try to candy coat anything because they are adults.

Dr. John Kruidenier: Right. And once you get this information there\'s a
lot you can do with it. A good example, I think, would be some of the
strategies that were suggested today for vocabulary instruction. One of
the things that the research really strongly suggests is that you learn
new vocabulary by experiencing the concepts and the new concepts and new
words many times in different contexts. And in engaging context and if
you know what someone is interested in. If you know they\'re interested
in the family, then you would use that context as part of the teaching
process when you\'re teaching the meanings of various words.

Susan McShane: As Ros was saying, once you\'ve begun this conversation
with the interview, the questionnaire, you\'ve begun the conversation,
you\'ve asked about goals, then with the additional assessment
information you have a sense for where the reading needs are. They
don\'t always know. Very week readers will tell you I have a reading
problem. Intermediate readers quite often are, I guess, not entirely
aware and not aware of how difficult it\'s going to be for them to reach
this goal they have unless they build their reading skills. So it may
take a little bit of a process working with them, but because they are
adults you\'re going to do the best you can to say, okay, if this is one
of your goals let\'s think about where reading fits into that in the
same way that you would say let\'s think about where math fits into that
life goal. Well, where does reading fit into that life goal? What kinds
of things will you need to read? And then maybe eventually you\'re able
to get them to the point where -‑ again, it\'s about relationship
building and working with an adult, but where does reading fit in and
then can you use context-specific materials. Sometimes you can, but even
if it\'s kind of difficult, too difficult, the context that they need,
then maybe vocabulary is one way to sort of get at it.

Sandra Baxter: Good point. Well, we\'ve received many more questions
today then we can answer right now. We will answer those questions,
however, and post the responses on the website, the Institute\'s
website. I also would like to say you\'ve asked whether or not we would
do a session like this, a webcast like this on the issue of fluency. I
think we can convince our experts to come back and do that, so yes. And
yes, as well, this particular webcast will be archived and you can find
it on the Institute\'s website at www.NIFL.gov.

It\'s been a real pleasure John, Ros, Susan. Thank you for all of your
hard work in this area and the expertise that you\'ve shared with our
viewers today. And I want to thank you, our viewing audience, for taking
time out of your busy schedule to join us for this very important
discussion on instruction in reading and reading assessment. Remember,
you can view this webcast again at www.NIFL.gov. It will be archived and
saved on our website.

For the National Institute for Literacy, I am pleased to have been part
of this program. We encourage you to share your questions, your comments
and your ideas with us on the Institute\'s discussion list. Thank you so
much for joining us today. From Washington D.C., this is Sandra Baxter.