The current promotion of diversity encourages people from assorted backgrounds and mutual goals to find compatible but not necessarily identical ways to work together. Each literacy program will have a different need to expand its circle. It must consider all the characteristics that might widen its constituency, analyze all participants, and be…

This document contains a final report, evaluation, and curriculum materials from a project conducted at the RJR Nabisco plant in Indianapolis to upgrade the literacy and numeracy skills of the workers to facilitate technological changes to production lines. As the final report explains, although the goal of the project was to recruit and test 150…

A literature review examined how literacy programs can assess their effectiveness by looking at outcomes and using this information. Very few empirical studies showed the impacts of literacy programs or identified predictors of program success. One reason was the lack of common criteria for evaluating performance. One evaluation issue was whether…

These workbooks are part of a Mexican series of instructional materials designed for Spanish speaking adults who are in the process of becoming literate or have recently become literate in their native language. These workbooks, designed to continue developing literacy skills, include pictures, dialogues, crossword puzzles, and fill-in-the blank…

This workbook is part of a Mexican series of instructional materials designed for Spanish speaking adults who are in the process of becoming literate or have recently become literate in their native language. This workbook focuses on teaching initial sounds and letters and moves on to simple words and sentences. The unit on mathematics goes over…

This workbook is part of a Mexican series of instructional materials designed for Spanish speaking adults who are in the process of becoming literate or have recently become literate in their native language. This workbook provides an introduction to grammar. It is designed to help students learn to write words, complete sentences, and paragraphs.…

Written for teachers of adult literacy students and administrators of literacy programs, this book discusses a multitude of ways to use books appropriate for adult new readers. The book's first six chapters provide annotated lists of 639 books suitable for new readers, including titles, authors, dates, publishers, and suggested reading levels.…

This curriculum framework for adult literacy was written by 21 South Carolina adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instructors, as submitted to the South Carolina Literacy Resource Center. It is based on current theories in the fields of adult education and second language acquisition and is designed to be flexible so that it may be adapted to…

A literature search revealed various definitions of literacy and various theories about how basic skills relate to occupational skills. For example, literacy was said to be defined within the context of a society and was often measured in society, rather than in isolation. Alarms were sounded about the many people in the United States who lack…

The American Management Association's (AMA) 10th annual survey on workplace testing was mailed in January 1996 to a sample of its 9,500 member companies, resulting in 961 usable responses. The survey sought to determine how many firms test for "basic skills," how job applicants perform on these tests, how much the tests costs, and what firms do…

A demonstration project explored the use of speech synthesis and speech recognition in writing-based classes held by two Philadelphia literacy providers. The project examined the use of high quality speech synthesis (the computer reads words from the screen in an understandable voice) and speech recognition (the computer responds to verbal…

A project augmented instruction in writing skills given to learners in the Crawford County (Pennsylvania) READ Program with staff development that involved tutors and learners in a paired workshop setting. Four staff development workshops were conducted for tutor-learner pairs on improving writing instruction and skills. Four follow-up workshops…

The Political Literacy and Civic Education (PLACE) project in Kroo Bay, Freetown, Sierra Leone, was developed to enable people, through functional literacy and civic education, to participate in the processes of good governance by exercising their rights, duties, and obligations in an informed and responsible manner. The project suggests a…

This paper reviews the literature and offers an international perspective on current programs and issues in training individuals with mental retardation to parent, nurture, and care for their children. The first section reviews the limited research on the development of children of mothers with mental retardation, some existing parent training…

The concept of family literacy is firmly rooted in a substantial research base from several disciplines: adult literacy, emergent literacy, child development, and systems analysis. Research from these disciplines was reviewed to determine the benefits of family literacy. The results show that family literacy programs do work and that at least four…