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From: "Catherine King" <cbking@flash.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:192] Re: Response to George and Anne
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To Anne and George:
Anne says:
"Your statement that 'reading is as much caught as a result of
unconscious assimilation through practice over time' is the basis of
whole language instruction."
I'd like to offer a particular experience and a note about
retraining:
When I was 20, I moved away from home when my husband was
drafted for Vietnam. I could read, but had been a very poor student
and I was generally in what I would call a developmental "fog." .
As I had long stretches of time, and because a library happened
to be close by, I visited and began reading the works of Mark
Twain, including his journals--just because they were there.
I wrote many letters back to my mother, and she mentioned
later on in my correspondence that my letters had improved
remarkably over time, and had become "quite funny."
I realized later that just reading Mark Twain had had a profound
effect on not only my sense of humor, not only the patterns in my
writing, but also the very patterns of my thought. I began to
organize my thinking patterns better.
I know my experience is specific, particular, and "anecdotal,"
however, all anecdotes hold broader aspects of the universal,
some more than others. This one, I suggest, is quite suggestive
of what "patterning" can do even at later times--I was 20. We
can't get inside the brain and see the patterns of intelligence;
but we can understand that the process increases conscious
awareness and self-awareness of ordered, patterned
existence.
Also, people who have been blind from birth, and who have had
their cataracts removed, it is known, must go through a tremendous
effort to understand the patterns of intelligence in the world that
we think are just "there" when we see. But what is intelligent and
meaningful about things in the world are not merely seen, but
are also understood--which means the people who had their
sight restored had to encourage their understanding by asking
questions and practicing, even with basic notions of grasping the
distance from one's hands to their shoes, as if they were babies
just opening their eyes.
Learning to re-pattern one's thoughts if one has not learned to
read at an early age is probably just as daunting an experience
as the new-sight people had in relearning sight-related patterns.
Some gave up and rested with the "fog and darks and lights"
that they experienced when they first opened their eyes. But
some worked hard to recondition their understanding of the
meaningful with their new-found sense of seeing.
The point for reading is that it can be done, that it doesn't have
to do with brain electricity but with the meaningful and the
intelligible, and about pressing one's questions to the limit,
that regaining this process can be done, but it is not easy--or
just a matter of opening one's eyes and looking at the letters,
but the meaning that the relationships of the lines and between
the letters is what is important--and patterns and relationships
are not seen, but rather understood--they respond to sight
only on a cursory level, but become more and more
meaningful by virtue of our questions.
The point for racist issues is that racism--or what I am calling
"group bias"--as a general term covering all kinds of race-ethnic-
class-gender-sexual-, etc., biases, whether they are individual
or institutionalized--is a set of intelligent, meaningful patterns that
are so ingrained as to be constitutive of what and who the person
is--and that they won't budge without the person first understanding
that something is deeply wrong, and second, without that person
setting out to re-habitualize their own meaningful patterns over a
long period of time.
We have to reach into our own spontaneous motivations and
predicate structures to change. Teachers help that process along
by raising questions for the student directly. by the way teachers live,
and by issuing subtle prescribed assumptions about what is
anticipated in the student by the teacher.
Catherine King
-- Original Message -----
From: Anne Murr <anne.murr@drake.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov>
Sent: Monday, October 16, 2000 7:17 AM
Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:190] Response to George
>
> --Boundary_(ID_dZGMQYXwXFPZwqM3P8JAiw)
> Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>
> George,
> Thank you for taking the time to clarify your thoughts and questions
> in your response. You are compelling me to return to the literature
> to clarify my information! (However, these time-consuming
> conversations MUST become shorter!!!!)
>
> I am a newcomer to adult literacy (I've been tutoring for 3 years and
> am starting my 3rd year coordinating this Literacy Center.) I have
> just completed coursework toward a masters degree in adult education
> (emphasis adult literacy, or course) and have designed a study that
> asks what is/are effective instruction(s) for adults with low
> literacy skills. At present, I'm waiting for adults to enroll, and
> it's taking time! It will be a year before I have results. So I
> agree with you:
> Effective strategies for teaching reading for adults is not a given.
> I hope to have a more clear picture in due time though.
>
> Keep in mind that researchers do not prove, they suggest, indicate,
> etc. It is lay persons like us who take what we understand from the
> research to try to prove things. I was a debater in my first college
> life, and I must remind myself now, as a novice researcher, that I'm
> not proving things, I am searching for truth. However, I do get
> passionate about what I am learning!
>
> Here's my response to your other "given" - that the causes of reading
> failure are not known and "that phonemic awareness is important , but
> not foundational, or the building block of literacy". The causes of
> reading failure are known. In my lit review I began researching the
> question, why do children fail to learn to read? The evidence from
> researchers is very strong, many say conclusive, that it is a lack of
> phonemic awareness and inability to segment (encode/spell) and blend
> (decode) phonemes which must be in place for reading skills to
> develop (Bradley & Bryant, 1983). Research in Great Britain, New
> Zealand, Sweden, Denmark (Juel, 1988) as well as a large body of
> research in this country, starting with Vellutino, Liberman &
> Shankweiler, Torgesen and expanded by Bruck, Byrne & Ledez, Perfetti
> in adult literacy support this view. (I'll include some references
> at the end of this email.)
>
> You might be interested in Pratt & Brady's 1988 study, "Relation of
> phonological awareness to reading disabiity in children and adults,"
> Journal of Educational Psychology, 3:319-323. They looked at good
> and poor third grade readers and good and poor adult readers (in ABE
> and in Literacy Volunteers tutoring in New Haven, Conn.) and found
> that the low reading 3rd graders and adult poor readers perform
> poorly on phonological processing tasks but not on an auditory
> control task and word length tasks. In fact the adults scored more
> poorly than the third grade poor readers.
>
> Here's the Shaywitz complete reference: Shaywitz, et al. (1998)
> Functional disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in
> dyslexia. Neurobiology, 95, 2636-2641. Their method was quite
> fascinating. Brain activity was measured while 61 adults (29
> dyslexic-DYS and 32 nonimpaired readers - NI) were presented with 5
> tasks. Tasks ranged from 1) matching sets of lines, 2) matching
> series of letters, 3) single letter rhyme, 4) nonword rhyming, and 5)
> categorizing words on the basis of meaning. NI readers showed
> increasing activity in the posterior region (angular gyrus) as
> phonological task (2-4) demands increased. The angular gyrus is
> "considered pivotal in carrying out the cross-modal integrations
> necessary for reading [i.e., mapping the visual precept of the print
> onto the phonologic structure of the language]." (p 2640) DYS
> readers brains did not show that increase, whereas the frontal region
> (inferior frontal gyrus) did show increased activity, which is
> similar to the brain patterns of persons who lost reading ability due
> to stroke or tumor. This "may provide the neural signature for the
> phonologic difficulties characterizing dyslexia." (p. 2640)
>
> You haven't raised this point, but I did as I began my lit review:
> Are adults with low literacy skills dyslexic? This evidence led me
> to conclude that the answer is "Yes." Stanovich and Siegel (1994)
> studied dyslexics with above average IQs (discrepant) and below
> average IQs (garden variety poor readers). While reading levels
> differed, they scored equally poorly on phonologic tasks. When I
> read that I exclaimed, "Yeah!" Our poor readers don't have trouble
> because they are quote/unquote, "dumb". It's because they truly
> cannot process language effectively. Bruck found similar results
> with college dyslexics.
>
> Now to your issue of the higher percentage of poor readers in low
> income populations. Here's where disadvantaged backgrounds come into
> play. A study found that mothers who are college graduates provide
> significantly more verbal stimulation (number and quality of words)
> over the type of verbal communication mothers with and without high
> school diplomas have with their infants and preschool children. I
> don't have the reference for this, but I can get it. My background
> is early childhood, and recent brain research points to the necessity
> for stimulating sensory environments to enhance children's cognitive
> functioning. Juel (1988) cites several studies that indicate that
> playing word games, reading and singing rhymes (which foster
> phonemic awareness), story reading, telling stories provide the basis
> for future reading success. When the environment contains these
> elements, they have a more powerful effect on later reading than do
> the effects of IQ and socioeconomic status. In an analysis of 32
> studies of phonologic instruction, it was found that phonemic
> awareness and preschool story reading had the strongest effects on
> future reading, with phonemic awareness being slightly stronger.
> (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999.)
>
> My guess is that low literacy skills are a causal factor in low
> socioeconomic status, which has a causal effect on educational
> opportunities, which have a causal effect on economic opportunities,
> etc., etc. It's a cycle which must be addressed through early family
> literacy intervention, adult literacy efforts, job training, etc.,
> etc., etc. Kathleen, the chicken or the egg? Both!
>
> Your statement that "reading is as much caught as a result of
> unconscious assimilation through practice over time" is the basis of
> whole language instruction. For those who have phonemic awareness,
> Yes! On the other hand, the research is clear- written language does
> not compute (will not be assimilated) for persons without phonemic
> awareness.
>
> Paulo Freire is a social theorist, not cognitive, and my
> understanding of this part of his theory (I haven't read his works)
> is that societies oppress the populace by withholding literacy
> instruction-education as social policy. As Frederick Douglass said,
> "Once you learn to read you will be forever free." We work with
> persons who have been in school for at least six, if not 12, years
> and still have failed to learn to read. What was withheld from them
> was instruction which would remediate their deficits-phonologic,
> vocabulary, comprehension, written expression. They need it all.
> But phonology comes first. You said you have experienced reasonable
> success with the assisted reading approach as "starting place." In
> my fewer years of experience, I did not. My goal, as you stated, is
> that adult literacy learners become "independent, fluent readers".
> Can we accomplish that? The question is out there, but we don't have
> the answer - yet.
>
> On the other side of the issue, Glenn Young, on the LD NIFL listserv,
> stated that it took him over 1000 hours and considerable expense to
> learn to read. He contends that teaching LD adults to read is too
> time consuming and that we should put our efforts into teaching them
> other strategies for life success and give them the technological
> supports they need to be more functional in the work place. In the
> short term, forget the reading instruction, he states, and get them
> on with their lives. I'm not ready to agree with that position, but
> Glenn is one in the LD field who holds to that view.
>
> Short term memory is a key, and what I'm understanding in my reading
> is that short term memory actually holds the sounds (phonemes) of
> words long enough for meaning to be extracted. So phonologic
> processing also is a factor in memory. (Muter & Snowling, 1998).
> You referred to Smith's writing that associations between visual and
> nonvisual information come into play here. I have not read his work
> but know that others have found that reading is more phonologically
> based than visually.
>
> I had a similar experience with a stately African American in his 60s
> whose son brought him to see what our Center offered. He was
> hesitant but when he found me to be straightforward and respectful,
> he opened up and told me of his life experiences and ability to
> function despite the ability to read. He seemed pleased that someone
> would listen. Adults need a place that's safe in order to tell their
> stories. Our literacy programs offer such a place. He has not yet
> begun tutoring, so I can't say how he will respond to WRS
> instruction. I just know that the 20 year old young man I've begun
> tutoring is finding it "productive!" The WRS does offer text
> reading, albeit controlled vocabulary, but text written with
> adult-related topics. But that gives the new reader the opportunity
> to practice learned skills. And by the way, 85% of the English
> language is regular, i.e., follows the phonologic rules. It's the
> other 15% that drive us crazy! (I didn't believe this statistic at
> first but I've read it in many different publications, so I've come
> to accept it.)
>
> I agree with you, George. The questions we are raising here have
> deep implications for how we deliver literacy services to adults.
> Are we offering instruction and/or supports they need in order to be
> more independent and productive? The issue, as you say, needs to be
> better researched. I am embarking on such research in my little
> corner of the world. I'll keep you posted.
>
> Cordially,
> Anne Murr
> Coordinator, Adult Literacy Center
> Drake University
> Des Moines, IA 50311
> anne.murr@drake.edu
>
> Bibliography
>
> Bradley & Bryant, 1983, Categorizing sounds and learning to read-a
> causal connection, Nature, 301,419-421
>
> Bruck, M. ((1998). Outcomes of adults with childhood histories of
> dyslexia. In Hulme & Joshi, (Eds.) Reading and spelling, Maharch,
> N.J.: L. Erlbaum.
>
> Bruck, M. (1990). Word-recognition skills of adults with childhood
> diagnoses of dyslexia. Developmental Psychology, 26, 439-454.
>
> Bruck, M. (1990). Word-recognition skills of adults with childhood
> diagnoses of dyslexia. Developmental Psychology, 26, 439-454.
>
> Bruck, M. (1992.) Persistence of dyslexics' phonological awareness
> deficits. Developmental Psychology, 28, 874-886.
>
> Bruck, M. (1992.) Persistence of dyslexics' phonological awareness
> deficits. Developmental Psychology, 28, 874-886.
>
> Bruck, M. (1998). Outcomes of adults with childhood histories of
> dyslexia. In Hulme & Joshi, (Eds.), Reading and spelling. Maharch,
> N.J.: L. Erlbaum.
>
> Bus, A.G. & van IJzendoorn. (1999) Phonological awareness and early
> reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training studies. Journal
> of Educationa.l Psychology, 91, 403-414.
>
> Byrne, B. & Ledez, J. (1983). Phonological awareness in
> reading-disabled adults. Australian Journal of Psychology, 35.
> 185-197.
>
> Chall, J. Heron, E., & Hilferty, A. (1987). Adult literacy: New
> and enduring problems, Phi Delta Kappan, 190-196.
>
> Juel, C. (1988). Learning to read and write: A longitudinal study of
> 43 children from first through fourth grades. Journal of Educational
> Psychology, 80, 437-447.
>
> Liberman, L. & Shankweiler, D. (1985). Phonology and the problems of
> learning to read and write. Remedial and Special Education, 6, 8-17.
>
> Muter & Snowling, 1998, Concurrent and longitudinal predictors of
> reading: The role of metalinguistic and short-term memory skills,
> Reading Research Quarterly, 33, 320-335.
>
> Perfetti, C. A. & Marron, M.A. (1995). Learning to read: Literacy
> acquisition by children and adults. National Center on Adult
> Literacy, Technical Report
> TR95-07.
>
> Stanovich and Siegel (1994), ). Phenotypic performance profile of
> children with reading disabilities: A regression-based test of the
> phonological-core variable-difference model. Journal of Educational
> Psychology, 86, 24-53)
>
> Torgesen, J., Wagner, R., & Rashotte, C. (1994). Longitudinal
> studies of phonological processing and reading. Journal of Learning
> Disabilities, 27, 276-286.
>
> Torgesen, J.K. (1999) Phonologically based reading disabilities:
> Toward a coherent theory of one kind of learning disability. In
> Sternberg, R.J. & Swerling,L. (Eds.). Perspectives on Learning
> Disabilities.
>
> Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K., Rashotte, C.A. (1997). Prevention and
> remediation of severe reading disabilitites: Keeping the end in
> mind. Journal of Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 217-234.
>
> Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K., Rashotte, C.A. (1999). Test of Word
> Reading Efficiency. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
>
> Torgesen, J.K., Wagner, R.K., Rashotte, C.A., Lindamood, P., Rose,
> E., Conway, T. & Garvan, C. (1999). Preventing reading failure in
> young children with phonological processing disabilities; Group and
> individual responses to instruction. Journal of Educational
> Psychology, 91, 579-593.
>
> Vellutino, F. (1979). Dyslexia: Theory and Research. Cambridge,
> MA: MIT Press.
>
> Vellutino, F., Steger, B., Moyer, S., Harding, C., & Niles, J.
> (1977). Has the perceptual deficit hypothesis led us astray?
> Journal of Learning Disabilities, 10, 376-385.
>
> --Boundary_(ID_dZGMQYXwXFPZwqM3P8JAiw)
> Content-type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
>
> <!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
> <html><head><style type="text/css"><!--
> blockquote, dl, ul, ol, li { margin-top: 0 ; margin-bottom: 0 }
> --></style><title>Response to George</title></head><body>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1"
> color="#000000">George,</font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Thank you for
> taking the time to clarify your thoughts and questions in your
> response. You are compelling me to return to the literature to
> clarify my information! (However, these time-consuming
> conversations MUST become shorter!!!!)</font><br>
> <font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"></font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">I am a newcomer
> to adult literacy (I've been tutoring for 3 years and am starting my
> 3rd year coordinating this Literacy Center.) I have just
> completed coursework toward a masters degree in adult education
> (emphasis adult literacy, or course) and have designed a study that
> asks what is/are effective instruction(s) for adults with low
> literacy skills. At present, I'm waiting for adults to enroll,
> and it's taking time! It will be a year before I have
> results. So I agree with you:</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Effective
> strategies for teaching reading for adults is not a given. I
> hope to have a more clear picture in due time though.</font><font
> face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Keep in mind
> that researchers do not prove, they suggest, indicate, etc. It
> is lay persons like us who take what we understand from the research
> to try to prove things. I was a debater in my first college
> life, and I must remind myself now, as a novice researcher, that I'm
> not proving things, I am searching for truth. However, I do get
> passionate about what I am learning!</font><font face="Times"
> size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Here's my
> response to your other "given" - that the causes of reading
> failure are not known and "that phonemic awareness is important
> , but not foundational, or the building block of
> literacy". The causes of reading failure are known.
> In my lit review I began researching the question, why do children
> fail to learn to read? The evidence from researchers is very
> strong, many say conclusive, that it is a lack of phonemic awareness
> and inability to segment (encode/spell) and blend (decode) phonemes
> which must be in place for reading skills to develop (Bradley &
> Bryant, 1983). Research in Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden,
> Denmark (Juel, 1988) as well as a large body of research in this
> country, starting with Vellutino, Liberman & Shankweiler,
> Torgesen and expanded by Bruck, Byrne & Ledez, Perfetti in adult
> literacy support this view. (I'll include some references at
> the end of this email.) </font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">You might be
> interested in Pratt & Brady's 1988 study, "Relation of
> phonological awareness to reading disabiity in children and
> adults,"<u> Journal of Educational Psychology,
> 3:319-323</u>. They looked at good and poor third grade readers
> and good and poor adult readers (in ABE and in Literacy Volunteers
> tutoring in New Haven, Conn.) and found that the low reading 3rd
> graders and adult poor readers perform poorly on phonological
> processing tasks but not on an auditory control task and word length
> tasks. In fact the adults scored more poorly than the third
> grade poor readers.</font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Here's the
> Shaywitz complete reference: Shaywitz, et al. (1998) Functional
> disruption in the organization of the brain for reading in
> dyslexia.<u> Neurobiology, 95</u>, 2636-2641. Their method was
> quite fascinating. Brain activity was measured while 61 adults
> (29 dyslexic-DYS and 32 nonimpaired readers - NI) were presented with
> 5 tasks. Tasks ranged from 1) matching sets of lines, 2)
> matching series of letters, 3) single letter rhyme, 4) nonword
> rhyming, and 5) categorizing words on the basis of meaning. NI
> readers showed increasing activity in the posterior region (angular
> gyrus) as phonological task (2-4) demands increased. The
> angular gyrus is "considered pivotal in carrying out the
> cross-modal integrations necessary for reading [i.e., mapping the
> visual precept of the print onto the phonologic structure of the
> language]." (p 2640) DYS readers brains did not show that
> increase, whereas the frontal region (inferior frontal gyrus) did
> show increased activity, which is similar to the brain patterns of
> persons who lost reading ability due to stroke or tumor. This
> "may provide the neural signature for the phonologic
> difficulties characterizing dyslexia." (p. 2640)</font><font
> face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">You haven't
> raised this point, but I did as I began my lit review: Are
> adults with low literacy skills dyslexic? This evidence led me
> to conclude that the answer is "Yes." Stanovich and
> Siegel (1994) studied dyslexics with above average IQs (discrepant)
> and below average IQs (garden variety poor readers). While
> reading levels differed, they scored equally poorly on phonologic
> tasks. When I read that I exclaimed, "Yeah!"
> Our poor readers don't have trouble because they are quote/unquote,
> "dumb". It's because they truly cannot process
> language effectively. Bruck found similar results with college
> dyslexics.</font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"></font></div>
> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Now to your
> issue of the higher percentage of poor readers in low income
> populations. Here's where disadvantaged backgrounds come into
> play. A study found that mothers who are college
> graduates provide significantly more verbal stimulation (number and
> quality of words) over the type of verbal communication mothers with
> and without high school diplomas have with their infants and
> preschool children. I don't have the reference for this, but I
> can get it. My background is early childhood, and recent brain
> research points to the necessity for stimulating sensory environments
> to enhance children's cognitive functioning. Juel (1988) cites
> several studies that indicate that playing word games, reading and
> singing rhymes (which foster phonemic awareness), story
> reading, telling stories provide the basis for future reading
> success. When the environment contains these elements, they
> have a more powerful effect on later reading than do the effects of
> IQ and socioeconomic status. In an analysis of 32 studies of
> phonologic instruction, it was found that phonemic awareness and
> preschool story reading had the strongest effects on future reading,
> with phonemic awareness being slightly stronger. (Bus
> & van IJzendoorn, 1999.)</font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">My guess is
> that low literacy skills are a causal factor in low socioeconomic
> status, which has a causal effect on educational opportunities, which
> have a causal effect on economic opportunities, etc., etc. It's
> a cycle which must be addressed through early family literacy
> intervention, adult literacy efforts, job training, etc., etc.,
> etc. Kathleen, the chicken or the egg? Both!</font><font
> face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Your statement
> that "reading is as much caught as a result of unconscious
> assimilation through practice over time" is the basis of whole
> language instruction. For those who have phonemic awareness,
> Yes! On the other hand, the research is clear- written
> language does not compute (will not be assimilated) for persons
> without phonemic awareness. </font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Paulo Freire
> is a social theorist, not cognitive, and my understanding of this
> part of his theory (I haven't read his works) is that societies
> oppress the populace by withholding literacy instruction-education
> as social policy. As Frederick Douglass said, "Once you learn
> to read you will be forever free." We work with persons who
> have been in school for at least six, if not 12, years and still have
> failed to learn to read. What was withheld from them was
> instruction which would remediate their deficits-phonologic,
> vocabulary, comprehension, written expression. They need it
> all. But phonology comes first. You said you have
> experienced reasonable success with the assisted reading approach as
> "starting place." In my fewer years of experience, I
> did not. My goal, as you stated, is that adult literacy
> learners become "independent, fluent readers". Can we
> accomplish that? The question is out there, but we don't have
> the answer - yet.</font><font face="Times" size="+1"
> color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">On the other
> side of the issue, Glenn Young, on the LD NIFL listserv, stated that
> it took him over 1000 hours and considerable expense to learn to
> read. He contends that teaching LD adults to read is too time
> consuming and that we should put our efforts into teaching them other
> strategies for life success and give them the technological supports
> they need to be more functional in the work place. In the short
> term, forget the reading instruction, he states, and get them on with
> their lives. I'm not ready to agree with that position, but
> Glenn is one in the LD field who holds to that view.</font><font
> face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Short term
> memory is a key, and what I'm understanding in my reading is that
> short term memory actually holds the sounds (phonemes) of words long
> enough for meaning to be extracted. So phonologic processing
> also is a factor in memory. (Muter & Snowling, 1998).
> You referred to Smith's writing that associations between visual and
> nonvisual information come into play here. I have not read his
> work but know that others have found that reading is more
> phonologically based than visually.</font><br>
> <font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"></font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">I had a similar
> experience with a stately African American in his 60s whose son
> brought him to see what our Center offered. He was hesitant but
> when he found me to be straightforward and respectful, he opened up
> and told me of his life experiences and ability to function despite
> the ability to read. He seemed pleased that someone would
> listen. Adults need a place that's safe in order to tell their
> stories. Our literacy programs offer such a place. He has
> not yet begun tutoring, so I can't say how he will respond to WRS
> instruction. I just know that the 20 year old young man I've
> begun tutoring is finding it "productive!" The WRS
> does offer text reading, albeit controlled vocabulary, but text
> written with adult-related topics. But that gives the new
> reader the opportunity to practice learned skills. And by the
> way, 85% of the English language is regular, i.e., follows the
> phonologic rules. It's the other 15% that drive us crazy!
> (I didn't believe this statistic at first but I've read it in many
> different publications, so I've come to accept it.)</font></div>
> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">I agree with
> you, George. The questions we are raising here have deep
> implications for how we deliver literacy services to adults.
> Are we offering instruction and/or supports they need in order to be
> more independent and productive? The issue, as you say, needs
> to be better researched. I am embarking on such research in my
> little corner of the world. I'll keep you posted.</font><font
> face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> <br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1"
> color="#000000">Cordially,</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Anne
> Murr</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Coordinator,
> Adult Literacy Center</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Drake
> University</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1" color="#000000">Des Moines, IA
> 50311</font></div>
> <div><font face="Palatino" size="+1"
> color="#000000">anne.murr@drake.edu</font></div>
> <div><font face="Times" size="+1" color="#000000"><br>
> </font><font face="Palatino" size="+1"
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> </body>
> </html>
>
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