Reading
This interesting piece on Radio 4's Today Programme about the teaching of phonics. Although it concerns children's literacy development it does have far reaching implications for the levels of literacy in later life. What do you think these implications might be? Tom Sticht (see separate paper) talks about "life cycles in education" and how poor parent literacy impacts on children's. Are we on a downward spiral with respect to literacy/language skills? Also, do you think that as multilingual communities increase in number and in size that English isn't really the lingua franca for most users and that English isn't being used, therefore developed and aquired, at home? Discuss on the forum please.

 Adult literacy learners difficulty in reading

An exploratory study of adult learners’ difficulties in reading was carried out. The study wasdesigned to investigate areas of reading difficulty in adult literacy learning through focused observation of practice and close study of learners.

Oral reading 
and fluency

This paper reports on a small-scale pilot project on developing oral reading fluency, a teaching strategy rarely seen in any of the 59 adult literacy classes observed for the NRDC Effective Practice Study in reading (Brooks et al. 2007).

Improving 
reading phonics

Right from the inception of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), it has been clear  that the research base for knowing how to improve the teaching of adult literacy is markedly deficient.

Understanding what reading is all about

Reading teachers are often guided by the stages and components of the reading process, but they may not share this information with learners.*By understanding how others become fluent readers, learners can reflect on their own process. 

Effective teaching & learning: Reading

This was the largest study in Britain to date of the strategies used to teach reading in adult literacy classes and the first attempt to correlate that evidence with measures of change in learners’ reading attainment and attitudes to literacy.

Reading
by Rebecca Treimann

Linguists are primarily concerned with the structure and processes of spoken language. In this chapter the focus changes to written language and to review what is known about the processes involved in learning to read.

A balanced approach to reading

There have been, over the years, two general instructional approaches that have governed reading education. They have gone by many names, but today they are generally known as Phonics and Whole Language approaches.

Reading for pleasure: ideas for ESOL

The Vital Link libraries and adult literacy programme, together with the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), have created this series of ideas packs for practitioners working with adults in a range of different settings.