Findings and recommendations of the New York State Senate Committee on Investigations and Taxes are provided from an examination of adult illiteracy in New York State to estimate its extent and cost, to evaluate existing efforts, and to develop new approaches to reduce it. Findings show that there are approximately 2,040,000 functionally…

Guidelines are provided for incorporating a new component into the San Francisco Community College District's English as a Second Language (ESL) Master Plan: "Beginning ESL for Non-Literate Students." Introductory sections give an overview of the curriculum; describe how to use the guide; discuss classroom techniques; describe objectives related…

The biological need to speak a language is joined today with the social necessity to read and write. Literacy may not be in the genes, but it has come to be central to the processes of cultural transformation in all societies--developed or developing. When viewed collectively within an evolutionary perspective, those who are literate are better…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has acted to provide a new perspective with its 1985 survey of the literacy skills of young Americans aged 21-25. In the Spring of 1985, NAEP began screening 40,000 households to identify a nationally representative sample of between 3,600 and 5,000 young adults aged 21-25 and several hundred…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has acted to provide a new perspective with its 1985 survey of the literacy skills of young Americans aged 21-25. In the spring of 1985, NAEP began screening 40,000 households to identify a nationally representative sample of between 3,600 and 5,000 young adults aged 21-25 and several hundred…

The articles in this issue are mainly concerned with how to reach the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of the population and how best to help once contact has been made. "Nijera Kori in Retrospect: In Search of an Organization of the Rural Poor" (Mohiuddin Ahmad) provides extracts from an evaluation of this grassroots,…

This paper critically examines the goals, processes, resources, and effectiveness of Ethiopia's efforts to teach its people to read. Of the estimated 27 million people living in Ethiopia, only ten percent are literate. In recognition of this, and with the hypothesis that literacy skills are prerequisites for building a just and egalitarian…

In response to implications raised by earlier research in the field, a study investigated the learning projects (as defined by Allen Tough, 1971) of a group of nonliterate and semiliterate adults in a small community. Brown's Town, Jamaica, was chosen as the area of the study because Jamaica is a Third World nation that has recently initiated a…

In practically all countries, the governing bodies seem to be conscious of the important role the ability to read well plays in all educational activities. But the tremendous demand for education has far outpaced the supply. Since World War II, many new self-governing countries have been established of which most are illiterate. Since democracy in…

Three studies were conducted to determine the validity of the idea that adult literacy students have greater reading potential (and thus can learn in much shorter periods of time) than school children who score at comparable levels to the adults on standardized reading tests, and that adults are more efficient learners than such children. The…

A study was conducted to discover what adult literacy students in Northern Ireland felt about a series of booklets that had been developed especially for such students and to find out the students' levels of comprehension of the materials--specifically to determine if comprehension depended on the subject's reading age. Twenty-one male students…

The fourth of eight related documents, this booklet is part of a series of papers presented at the 1978 National Right to Read Conference examining issues and problems in literacy. In an examination of the role of private business in efforts to increase literacy, each of the three papers in this booklet discusses a specific program sponsored and…

A case study is described in which an application of Goodman's Psycholinguistic Guessing Game model of reading was attempted with an elderly illiterate woman. Instructional materials were devised consistent with the theory of the game, and a tutorial was conducted. Researcher observations were recorded with respect to the subject's…

A study investigated the relationship of learning to problems that occur in the lives of adults. Of special interest were the dynamics of learning in natural/nonformal settings and the role of literacy in learning. Examination of research in reasoning and problem solving revealed two trends: increasing realization that much of what people do is…

The variable nature of literacy is discussed in chapter one of this paper, including problems of arbitrary standards, instruments, and criteria. In the second chapter, some of the historical roots of the concept of literacy are traced both to show how the concept of literacy evolved and to show how literacy has always been closely tied to the…