It is so difficult to parse out which of the reading components is most important. Certainly, difficulty with phonemic awareness and decoding prevents fluent reading, which blocks comprehension. Reading involves two separate but intertwined components: sounding out words and deriving meaning from those words. There is little value in pronouncing a word correctly if you do not know what the word means. But if you can’t “get the words off the page,” you can’t read…..or can you? (see the last paragraph in this post)
Most adults who enroll in our Center lack the basic component: decoding. Their scores on the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test average at about 3rd grade on passage comprehension and vocabulary and at or below grade 1.5 on word attack/nonsense word reading. Some adults have acquired a fairly good range of sight word vocabulary. Others have only a very limited bank of sight words. Their vocabulary levels are low because poor reading skills kept them from access to information in social studies, science, literature. Thus, they need to build vocabulary as they build basic word structure skills.
Yes, Darrel, one-to-one Wilson Reading System tutoring and independent online work with Lexia software does build basic word structure knowledge. They also need to begin reading text at their comfort level. This builds fluency and vocabulary.
The only secret we’ve found for keeping adult learners engaged is success. When they find they can learn, they want to stay. However, we can’t eliminate all the “stuff” of life that intervenes and causes them to leave.
I’ll go right out on the limb with David. Technology does remove the barrier to text. It’s not cheating to use text-to-speech. It’s the “ramp” to reading for disabled readers.
A small study published in the May 2014 Journal of Correctional Education “Assessing the Effectiveness of Text-to-Speech Software in Incarcerated Adult Literacy Education”, Y. McCulley, C. Gillespie, A. Murr, found statistically significant improvement in reading comprehension when GED students used text-to-speech when studying for GED. If you can get meaning from text by listening, then isn’t that reading?
Anne Murr, M.S. Adult Literacy Center, Drake University
Comments
Anne,
Thank you for your thoughtful post. Getting to the meaning of the prose certainly is the end goal. As I've read others' posts in this thread and posts related to the poll about reading components, I've wondered a bit if our instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding may be too detached from the gaining meaning goal or practice with connected prose? That is, if the learners are feeling like such instruction in phonemic awareness and decoding seems separate from "reading." I suppose one way to ensure the connection is through explicitly conveying that information to the reader. Then as you suggest, demonstrate their success not only in their progress of phonemic awareness and decoding skill acquisition but also application of those skills to tightly controlled text materials. I agree that the reader needs to be reading and developing that sense of connected prose. Practice helps!
Through weekly timed (1 - minute) repeated readings and collecting their reading rates and correct words, they could graph and see their progress. Even having some audio recordings that are collected would provide evidence of their progress over time. Such a portfolio would build their sense of success.
I hope that the computer based learning opportunities provide a supplement to the in-class instruction in which students work in small groups with teachers and tutors.
Good discussion. Thank you. Does this fit with how reading instruction is organized in your setting?
Regards,
Daryl
Reading and Writing moderator