This report describes a plan that was developed for improving middle school student writing skills and attitudes toward writing. The targeted population consisted of seventh and eighth graders in a low to middle class community located in western Illinois. The problems of weak writing skills, ineffective use of the writing process, and poor…

A survey of 34 professors teaching English as a second language in 20 Japanese universities elicited information about common errors in student writing. In open-ended questions, respondents identified 40 student error types, which were grouped into 18 categories. The most common problem category was sentence development, and other high-frequency…

A practicum addressed the problems of low reading levels, deficient writing skills, and poor attitudes toward reading. The objectives were to increase reading levels, improve writing skills, and improve attitudes toward reading and in this process to improve critical thinking skills. The target group was a sixth-grade language arts class of 23…

A project was designed to upgrade workplace basic skills for the purpose of promoting productivity, retrainability, job retention, and/or job advancement. It created a partnership among Hewlett Packard-Fort Collins Site, Lutheran Family Services, and Colorado State University's Division of Continuing Education. Skills needed for representative…

Nearly 360 million women who live in the countries of Asia and the Pacific are illiterate. In this region, and in much of the world, women have restricted access to education, and are the victims of economic, social, and political marginalization. In recent years, governments have become increasingly aware that the inferior position assigned to…

A partnership between the New York City Central Labor Council and the Center for Advanced Study in Education, City University of New York, New York, planned, conducted, and evaluated a worker literacy program for health care paraprofessionals who prepared for college as a step towards career advancement. The program featured close involvement of…

The views and practices of literacy advocates who focus on workplace literacy foster an impoverished understanding of adult literacy and, ultimately, life itself. They reduce literacy to something that is "functional" in the reductive sense of serving someone else's ends as a functionary. A "functionally literate" person is a consumer of someone…

This report describes a National Workplace Literacy Demonstration project that provided onsite training at participating New Mexico hospitals in job-specific literacy skills necessary for satisfactory job performance. Six courses were offered that integrated language skills with reading, writing, and speaking components--Straight Talk:…

This basic course in writing developed especially for hospital employees is designed to be taught onsite and to complement a hospital's other training and staff development efforts. The topical focus is workplace communication. The course is designed as a 16-hour course, with eight 2-hour sessions. The curriculum guide consists of a list of course…

In a collaborative project between School #74 in Buffalo, New York, and the Graduate School of Education at the State University in Buffalo, predominantly African American sixth graders enhance their writing skills through creative tasks. They also develop their writing voices and gain some exposure to university life. Graduate students in English…

This guide is intended for use in a level 1 course in English as a second language that was developed as a component of a workplace literacy program for persons employed in the manufacturing and service industries. The course is structured so that, upon its completion, students will be able to accomplish the following: ask grammatically correct…

Through a study of six-year-olds who were successfully becoming literate, this book explores literacy and literacy learning among poor Black urban families. The ethnographic approach examines the experiences of four families whose lives and aspirations make it clear that literacy is an integral part of the children's daily lives, and that the…

The workbook, designed for use by adults learning to read, contains a series of brief personal narratives with photo illustrations and related comprehension and extension exercises. The first section's narratives focus on family relationships and description of the personal characteristics of seven individuals. The second section contains stories…

This document provides guidelines for implementing workplace literacy programs. Project leadership selection, characteristics and skills, education and experience, and roles and responsibilities are reviewed. Community and business involvement, partnership development, and the voluntary advisory council components of a marketing workplace literacy…

An intermediate level unit on biography writing focuses on the use of reference skills to help students learn the organizational steps in writing a report about a person's life. Activities include notetaking, citing sources, outlining, writing complete sentences, and writing paragraphs, including introductory and summary paragraphs. The sessions…