This manual provides reading materials and exercises to teach reading and corollary academic skills. It also exemplifies a method of creating learner-centered materials relevant to the adult student. Teacher materials found at the beginning of the manual include a curriculum guide for obtaining oral histories; the guide is an effective vehicle for…

In order to determine whether lessons addressed to the expressed personal interest of functionally illiterate adult students would improve their reading skills, 40 such students attending an urban adult education center were divided into two reading classes. All were tested on a silent reading subtest of the Adult Basic Learning Examination and…

The articles in this publication look at how tests can be used to improve the quality of reading instruction and more generally at what excellence in a reading program means. Among the topics are: changes in the reading assessment prepared by the National Assessment of Educational Progress; a discussion of the limitations and possibilities of…

One hundred seventy-nine research reports on college and adult reading are reviewed under five major headings: (1) programs; (2) reading, study, and related habits, traits and skills; (3) influence of reading, study, and related habits and skills; (4) factors influencing reading and other study habits and skills; and (5) testing, readability,…

The title of this volume was the theme of the sixth annual meeting of the Southwest Reading Conference for Colleges and Universities, held in December 1956. Authors of the eleven reports on successful college and adult reading programs focused on various aspects of the programs, including academic performance, program evaluation, faculty, public…

The book contains 15 papers focusing on adult illiteracy in Great Britain in the context of the community, but excluding the prison population, trainees at Adult Training Centres, patients in mental hospitals, or literacy education in the armed forces. The papers are presented in three sections. Part 1 on students contains six papers: "The…

This topical paper discusses briefly the status of research in junior college reading/study skills programs. Specific gaps in research and the fundamental reasons for them are examined. Several areas in critical need of immediate and long-range study are identified. Tests, materials and their selection, programs and approaches, and student…

A college reading improvement program (CRIP) at the University of South Florida was examined to determine if it was of benefit to the participating students. Sixty-five freshmen took part in the 15-week program which used individually planned programs and different methods and materials. Pretesting had shown these 65 students to be significantly…

The purpose of this investigation was to study the effects of a multimedia program of vocabulary development on the reading achievement of adults. An experimental and a control group were randomly chosen from Air Force personnel enrolled in the Prep remedial reading program. The instruments used in this study were: The United States Armed Service…

A reading program designed for adults in business, industry, or self-directing professions must focus on specific reading skills which are different from other adult reading programs. Professionals generally have good-to-excellent reading skills which they developed in school and college and are thus primarily concerned with developing (1)…

The first of two volumes of proceedings for the 19th annual National Reading Conference contains 41 addresses generally concerned with the reading process. In most cases these are descriptions of research studies examining facets of the reading process. A few others are position papers describing models of reading. Among the topics considered are…

The British Broadcasting Corporation's Adult Literacy Project is believed to be the first attempt to use broadcasting on a massive scale to discover the extent of the illiteracy problem in an industrialized society and to contribute to its alleviation. While television or radio cannot, on its own, achieve a great deal, this project supplements the…

This article describes the successful effort to reduce illiteracy in Cuba by sending young student teachers into the rural areas to teach reading to workers in isolated spots throughout the country. (JD)

Presents the results of a study on how adult illiterates process text, which showed that adults engaged in a greater degree of meaning-related processing and more graphemic and graphophonic processing in expository text. Adults were more successful with narrative text. (JC)

Provides information on how to use newspaper comic strips with reluctant, older disabled readers because the visual nature of the comics helps reading comprehension. Activity types include: (1) categorizing; (2) finding main ideas; (3) comparing; (4) determining cause-effect relationships; and (5) predicting outcomes. (SKC)