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| Working with Adult Learners | If you’ve accepted the challenge that comes with knowing what should be done, how can you help learners understand what they need and make a commitment to do what it takes to improve their skills? Browse through some suggestions that are based on the experience of adult education practitioners, as these will certainly help you to make the most of what the research says about adults' reading needs. Consider how or whether these ideas apply to the learners in your class.
Building learner awareness of reading needs
• Learn as much as you can about each individual's reading strengths and needs. You should do more than one assessment.
• Share the assessment results with the learner in plain language. Be explicit, give examples, and include strengths as well as needs. Avoid talking about grade-equivalent (GE) scores because a low GE may be discouraging.
• Explain that the results will be kept confidential (not released to others except for reporting purposes) and only used to set goals and plan instruction.
• Working in collaboration with the learner, establish a learning plan based on assessment results and individual goals and including details for the first steps: specific skills to be addressed, learning activities, and assessments.
The work with adults as partners gives them a measure of control and may help them to maintain the motivation to continue their studies. Another tactic for continuing energy is to keep learning activities connected to individual learner goals.
Making relevant and useful instruction
Usually adult learners have practical goals in mind, including those working on basic reading skills. Things they do in class should directly be connected with those goals because if they do not see the instruction as relevant they may stop coming to class. For attaining their goals, adults must be able to transfer their reading skills to out-of-class contexts and tasks (on the job or at home), and making this transfer requires practice doing exactly that. Transition doesn't always happen regularly. Try to teach the transfer.
In contrast, you are obliged to provide the instruction learners need, and if, for instance, they need basic reading skill development, and you will have to use a structured, sequential approach. Although you do not adopt one textbook or program, you may decide to use commercial materials to introduce concepts and skills and provide early practice opportunities or reading matter with a controlled vocabulary. You will integrate the skills instruction they need with real-world learning based on goals.
It may be fairly easy for many learners to use authentic work, or family-related materials, or pre-GED textbooks to practice reading and writing. For some with more serious reading deficiencies, though, finding adult materials at appropriate levels is often difficult. You should ask the learners to have patience as you use classroom texts or other structured material to introduce skills. At any possible time, they should eventually practice those skills with authentic (real-life) materials.
Example
Remember you can figure out some of the words you don't know in labels and directions at work.
You may tape portions of authentic materials (manuals from work, for instance) and have adults read along with the tape. This may work best in a way if the material is not too far above their reading level. Another alternative for weaker readers is to read the material aloud and ask them to retell it. If you note their words you create meaningful reading material they can discuss and use for skills practice.
And evidently, direct skills instruction should not be the only focus of the reading lesson. Adult learners must have other literacy-rich experiences as well: reading and discussing stories, poetry, and articles, or researching topics of interest.
Planning for out-of-classroom learning
Even those attending on a regular basis almost certainly spend only a few hours in class each week, and adults with limited reading skills will likely need to attend class for many months or years to achieve their reading goals. Without discouraging the learners, you should show your respect for adults by being truthful and preparing them for a large investment of time and effort. They may increase their "time on task" by studying outside of class on their own time. Try to encourage them by making specific assignments, but be sure to assign only tasks they can complete without assistance. Remember also, that some people don't have time for home study.
It is also known that many adult learners attend for a while, "stop out" for a while, and then come back or re-enroll at another location. It’s a general pattern. There’re some adult learners that make a real effort to continue learning during the periods when they are not attending class. They like to review their textbooks and use TV or computer-based instructional programs.
Having this knowledge in mind, and understanding that life complications make it likely that many of the adults in your class today will not attend long enough to reach their goals before they leave you, you may want to think about ways to facilitate self-study.
• Provide books or articles on tape (if possible) for fluency practice. Be ready to use unabridged tapes so the text and audio match.
• Encourage learners to make word banks or personal dictionaries and take them home so they can review vocabulary.
• Provide copies of stories and articles you have read and discussed to encourage re-reading.
• Encourage learners to use the text/closed-caption feature (available on most television programming), which allows the viewer to follow the text while hearing the language simultaneously.
Be sure that learners have tools and materials to continue learning outside of class. And take care they are familiar with the library and, if their skills permit, know how to use the computers most libraries now make available to patrons.
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