This paper reports on findings and implications from a two-year evaluation of the Minnesota STudent Achievement in Reading (STAR) Project. This long-term, job-embedded, professional development activity is provided for Minnesota Adult Basic Education (ABE) practitioners serving intermediate-level adult students reading between 4.0 to 8.9 grade…

Discusses how a program designed to teach children and youth to read was used in two classes for adults. Presents an explanation and description of the implementation, reports of learner progress, and the perceptions of the participants. Concludes that despite poor testing outcomes, the learners, instructors, and administrators believed in the…

A study sought to apply the Navy's Academic Remedial Training (ART) program to illiterate adults by concentrating on intensive reading instruction. Administrators from the City of Memphis selected 16 participants based on employee interest and need. They were primarily middle-aged, black males with four years of education who earned between…

Describes "Reading by Listening," a program developed for students in an Adult Basic Education Program at Cape Fear Community College designed to give students the opportunity to read quality literature. Presents two students' experiences with the program, focusing on how their strategies and attitudes changed over the course of the year. (SG)

Supports the argument that there are differences between the reading strategies of children and adults and suggests that pedagogy can take these into account to make adult basic education programs more effective. (AEA)

A project developed a plan to improve oral reading in 12 mentally handicapped adults by stressing observation of punctuation marks, reading in phrases, using proper volume, and increasing confidence levels. Identifying the parts of a book and identifying new words were also included. The 12 students were reading below their potential, as shown by…

A study evaluated Macomb Reading Partners (MRP), the tutoring program of the Macomb Literacy Project. It researched the effectiveness of literacy training and its impact on the lives of a target group of 30 automotive workers. Data sources were a structured interview, the Word Opposites Test of the Botel Reading Inventory (1962), and participant…

This report briefly describes an intergenerational, interagency project in Lancaster and Lebanon counties of Pennsylvania. The project attempted to show that with training and group bonding, members of different generations reading preschool materials together for 8 weeks could change their attitudes and habits about reading in general and reading…

A project was undertaken to help low-literate Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) members develop the reading and writing skills needed to participate fully in AA/NA programs. A training program consisting of three 1.5-hour-long sessions and accompanying training guidelines were developed and used to train 21 student and 7 tutor…

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…

Noting that the popular press and other media have purveyed much information and misinformation about the status of adult literacy in the United States, this paper focuses upon what is known about literacy levels and gives special attention to changes in literacy demands and to what is currently being done to meet those demands. The first section…

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…

The purpose of this project was to strengthen a volunteer literacy council's ability to offer an innovative curriculum and program monitoring system that meets the total literacy needs of O-4 level students, thus increasing student and tutor motivation and retention. The project designed volunteer staff training seminars to meet these objectives.…

This study was conducted to evaluate the usefulness of the PLATO instructional system to teach adult basic education and general educational development students basic mathematics and reading skills. The study was conducted with a control group of students who had no use of PLATO during an 18-month period, a second group of students who had less…

This study of the effectiveness of the Project Success Summer Program found that the eight-week program improved dyslexic adults' (n=63) reading and spelling scores in five areas. Results indicated that training in phonological skills improved decoding skills and that passage reading rates and individual word reading rates best predicted…