Relative Effectiveness of Reading Programs for Adults
The Boggs Center and the Literacy Alliance of Greater New Orleans are working together to coordinate the New Orleans area’s participation in a major national experimental study to determine the relative effectiveness of several methods of helping low-literate adults learn to read. In this project four supplemental instructional programs that directly target decoding and fluency are being compared with regard to their effectiveness in improving word-level reading abilities of adult learners. The planned interventions are all adult-appropriate adaptations of programs with demonstrated value for enhancing reading abilities of children with skill levels equivalent to those of low-intermediate adult readers. They vary primarily in the relative emphasis given to the teaching of decoding vs. fluency.
The findings from this study will provide valuable information about what kinds of literacy instruction are most effective for raising the reading abilities of low-intermediate adult readers, how to identify these adults’ instructional needs accurately and efficiently by using an appropriate battery of assessments, and how literacy instruction might be tailored to the specific needs of individual adults. The research findings will be used to formulate national standards in reading instruction methods for adults.
