All Info About Reading

 All of the advice in the world about how to determine your student’s reading level and starting points for literacy instruction won’t do one bit of good if the person you are trying to help steadfastly refuses your assistance.  It’s important to understand that adults who shy away from literacy assistance do so for very good reasons. Most have tried and failed to learn to read in other settings.  Many have been labeled as stupid or lazy.  Some have been told that reading is simply beyond their capabilities.  These sorts of experiences are emotionally scarring, to say the least.  The mere mention of anything that seems like a “test” will send your student running in the opposite direction.  No one likes to experience continual failure, and most of us will avoid it at all costs.  Even when friends and loved ones around the individual are convinced that literacy is vital to success in adult life, many illiterate persons are resigned to their situation and feel that is an unchangeable fact of their existence.  The best intentions will not help this person until he or she is ready to accept the help you are offering. 

Tread gently, however, and you will be able to gather bits and pieces of information so that you are ready with help when your friend is ready to accept it.  You can learn a lot about a person’s reading level and skills through covert activities.  You can even learn enough to get started with literacy help without using formal tests.  The trick is to play the watching and waiting game.  Don’t try to hurry the process until reading becomes a goal for your student.  Gather your information from conversational clues and behavior and actions that you can observe, then when the time is right, present just one little piece of a skill that will give your friend an instant feeling of success or will show that he or she already has more reading skills than previously thought.

Observation will be your most valuable tool for covert evaluation.  How secretive is this person about his or her literacy problems?  This answer will give you a clue about how sensitive the topic is for them.  That information will tell you how much and when you can ask direct questions about skills.  Watch to see what your student does with text.  Does he or she avoid it entirely, or does he or she attempt to read simple messages?  Are letters recognized?  If words are attempted, do any of the sounds match with the letters in the word?  If so, there are likely to be rudimentary phonics skills.  Does your student appear to recognize common sight words, like the, is or were?  That’s a positive skill, because nearly 60% of common text is made up of sight words like these.  You can build on these skills and help your student to draw encouragement from them. 

There are some simple activities that you can do with insecure students, too.  Try choral reading.  This is where you read in unison while one of you points to the words.  Be sure to stress that mistakes are unimportant.  The important part of the process is your student hearing the words while seeing the printed text.  Smoothness and fluency may well be improved if you can try this activity several days a week.  You can also substitute a simple algorithm for syllabication.  Teach your student to break longer words into three or four letter blocks.  This works well for many long words, but of course will not decode all of them.  It is, however, easier and a whole lot less intimidating than setting out to teach the true rules of syllabication with all of their exceptions and caveats, and it will get your student by until he or she is ready for more formal learning.

Playing games is often a good way to practice skills, even for adults.  Games are non-threatening and can have an element of fun.  It’s usually far more acceptable to make a mistake while playing than while working on something.  Keep the tone light and stop the game long before your student has a chance to become frustrated.  You’ll also want to make sure the game is adult-appropriate.  Don’t expect your student to work with children’s games, but rather devise something with a bit of strategy or luck involved.  The idea is to make learning fun and nonthreatening.

Whatever activities you choose to do with this person, keep them low key and highly likely to be successful.  Offer enough support that your student cannot fail.  Be extra encouraging and positive, and you will find that confidence can be built over time.   That’s the main key: building confidence.  Once the confidence is in place, more formal reading instruction can be effective.

Apologies, but these links have not been restored yet.  You can find the articles in the site map.

Click here for more information about Getting Ready to Help An Adult Student.

Click here for more information about Evaluating Decoding Skills.

Click here for more information about Evaluating Comprehension Skills.

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© 2007 Sandra Fleming