Job-Related Reading Tasks: Teaching Marginally Literate Adults to Read. HumRRO Professional Paper 10-78.

Two separate research reports are presented in this paper. In the first report, we have identified through literacy research three sets of job-related reading tasks for adults: (1) those involved in getting a job, (2) those concerned with learning a job, and (3) those concerned with doing a job. National surveys have indicated that the black, poor, and undereducated (the primary adult basic education population) do poorly on task 1 skills, such as reading employment ads. Evidence suggests that job training might produce job-specific reading skills and permit marginally literate persons to function more adequately in task 3 (on-the-job) skills than their reading score might predict. In the second research report, we have employed a model of stages involved in the child's acquisition of reading skills. The model emphasized primacy of language before reading and the fact that reading is built upon language competency. One competency aspect is auding, the ability to comprehend spoken language. A confirmation of the model is that third, fourth, and fifth-grade students have been found to comprehend better by auding than by reading. Marginally literate young men have typically been found to be low in language and reading skills. One research implication is that adult basic education reading training should be based first on what students comprehend by auding. (CSS)