This study addresses the impact of functional adult literacy on the empowerment of women in the absence of formal schooling. It examines whether the effects of functional literacy are exclusively content specific or whether there are gains going beyond the obvious benefits and extending to other spheres of everyday functioning, such as…

A reading immersion program was conducted for 23 Memphis Defense Logistics Agency employees using the Navy Reading Improvement Program. Participants ranged in age from 30-71 and in schooling from 7 years of formal education to some college. Pretesting with the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests yielded scores ranging from 3.0 to 7.4 with a mean…

The Kansas Volunteer Tutor Utilization (KV-TUTOR) project was undertaken to explore some of the possibilities of using volunteer tutors in adult basic education (ABE) programs. A volunteer structure was developed at 16 local ABE programs throughout the state. KV-TUTOR actively promoted these volunteer systems by contacting (through letters, phone…

A study was conducted to determine if visualization could be used as an organizational tool to help adult education students improve their reading comprehension by helping them to see the structure of what they are reading in a sort of verbal picture of organized ideas. Following a review of research, which identified five areas in which…

An investigation was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of a reading and study skills program for students taking a great number of courses that require quantitative reasoning, as well as other skills. Subjects were 53 freshmen enrolled at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science. All of the subjects had failed one or more courses. A…

A workshop for adult literacy tutors and learners was developed on the basis of the findings of a telephone survey of 45 tutors and presented to a total of 51 tutors and 48 students. The workshop, which was based on an experiential whole-language approach, was structured in a series of three 2-hour sessions. During the first session, tutors and…

A project was conducted to increase the retention of African American men in the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council's literacy program. The project's primary objectives were as follows: develop a program in self-esteem, goal setting, and decision making and use it as a "draw" to bring new students into the literacy program; build…

The first year of the "Operation New Horizons"--Right to Read--Adult Reading Academy Project, sponsored by the Northeast Alabama State Junior College in Rainsville, Alabama, is evaluated in this report. (The objectives of the project, which began on July 1, 1975, centered on (1) developing a reading academy which would help eliminate…

The purpose of the study is to describe the status of literacy training programs in the military services during the summer of 1971 and develop suggestions for more effective training. A prologue provides information on the scope of the general literacy problem. Data were obtained through questionnaires, interviews, record search, and observations…

The Kodak Skills Enhancement program was a workplace literacy project funded through the U.S. Department of Education's National Workplace Literacy Program. The project goals were as follows: (1) establish a positive climate within the Kodak corporate environment to ensure program effectiveness by garnering support at all levels; (2) determine the…

An intergenerational literacy program addresses the needs of adult students enrolled in remedial reading classes at a community college. Their classroom behavior marked by passivity or anxiety, these students are usually able to derive the surface meanings of familiar text, but demonstrate little analytic or reflective thinking about what was…

The 1996-97 school year marked the third year of a 4-year grant from the Texas Education Agency's Division of Adult and Community Education for funding the ASPIRE/Even Start program operated by Communities In Schools-Central Texas Inc. (CIS). The broad purpose of Even Start is to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy in families by…

This ERIC digest examines states' goals of rural literacy programs and the types of programs that have proven effective in the past. It includes several definitions of literacy applied by effective rural literacy programs. It also examines the conditions that support or limit widespread influence of effective programs in rural areas. The level of…

In an effort to determine the effectiveness of Lakeshore Technical Institute's (LTI's) Developmental/Remedial Reading Program, a comparative analysis was made of the grade point averages (GPA's) of 20 students who participated in the program and 24 students identified as having reading skills deficiences who did not participate in the program.…

To determine the effect of attention to affective needs on the success of adult literacy programs, researchers analyzed data from 400 programs nominated by advisors to the National Adult Literacy Project (NALP), and selected a sample of 15 for the field research. The sample programs included three military, three prison, three English as a second…