For many years, the General Educational Development (GED) credential has been viewed as the high school dropout's safety net. Though not as well regarded as the high school diploma, the GED has opened up educational and economic opportunity for millions of young people and adults who did not finish high school. Nearly 680,000 people take the full…

This collection of stories is the result of a publishing project conducted with adult learners in the Reach One Program. The first page describes the steps that led to the finished product: providing a catalyst to stress the value of maintaining a family history; providing activities to stimulate memories of family stories; encouraging prewriting…

This report gives updated information on two literacy programs sponsored by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The report is in two sections. The first section briefly summarizes findings from studies around the United States of "Writing to Read," (WTR), the K-1 reading/writing program developed by John Henry Martin.…

This monograph presents what illiterate and formerly illiterate adults have said regarding what it is like to be unable to read in a world that presumes everyone is literate, and of experiences they have had while acquiring the ability to read and write. In later chapters the authors, who were involved in the Vermont Adult Basic Education (ABE)…

A study evaluated the IBM Principles of Adult Literacy (PALS) program in 1988-89. Three adult education centers in Georgia (two with PALS and one without) were studied to determine whether, for adult nonreaders, the PALS program produced gains in reading equal to or greater than those produced by a traditional noncomputerized program. In addition…

The Memphis-Project Literacy U.S. (M-PLUS) coalition tried the reading immersion concept with a defined target audience in the workplace. Fifty-six employees of the Defense Depot and the City of Memphis (Tennessee) were admitted to the program based on test scores of between 2.0 and 7.0 grade levels on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test. The…

The LEX [language experience] Process for English Reading Instruction, a pilot project of the Guadalupe Educational Programs, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah, during 1980-81, is presented in this 300-page manual that describes how the LEX Process model may be replicated by educational agencies seeking to provide survival and functional English as a…

This manual provides Florida language arts curriculum frameworks for grades 9-12 and for adult basic education. Subject areas include: reading, semantics and logic, literature, journalism, mass media, speech, debate, writing, business English, and English as a second language. Each framework contains a header and four sections: (1) major…

Ten papers address areas of concern regarding improvement in serving the needs of limited English proficient (LEP) adults. The first paper (by D. Terdy) overviews the background and skills LEP adults bring to adult education programs as well as their language needs and educational goals. The second paper (by S. Smith) describes changes in adult…

This book contains 13 papers on situated literacies and reading and writing in context. The following papers are included: "Foreword" (Denny Taylor); "Introduction: Exploring Situated Literacies"; "Literacy Practices" (David Barton, Mary Hamilton); "Expanding the New Literacy Studies: Using Photographs To Explore…