Everyday Living Series

Educational Activities, Inc. has produced a series of practical software programs for adult basic education students. Their software gives students practice reading and writing in simulated real-life situations.

How to Read for Everyday Living gives adults the opportunity to practice reading materials such as product labels, menus, job ads, application forms, banking documents, travel schedules and maps. Each topic begins with a short video to grab students’ attention. The topic is then broken down into specific activities. At the beginning of each activity students read background information. The information provided here is very simplistic. Some literacy students who already have good general knowledge may be put off by this, but for those literacy students who also need to work on life skills, or ESL students who may benefit from simple explanations of vocabulary, the information is ideal. On the other hand, the text used here is fairly advanced. If the reading is too advanced for students, they can listen to the text being read. After students have completed the reading, they then have the opportunity to listen to Clue Words and their definitions. Finally, students practice using the information they have read in a Puzzle and a Quiz. Here students must read on their own and this makes the Puzzles fairly difficult. The Puzzles also tend to focus on spelling more so than reading. The Quizzes seem to be the most useful, giving students practice reading practical sample materials.

How to Write for Everyday Living is the second program in the series and it similarly focuses on activities that most people face in everyday life. In this program students learn about writing tasks relating to finding a job, letters and memos, organizing information, filling out forms, and banking. Again, each topic is broken down into two or more specific activities. Students can read about how to do an activity and then practice using sample information. The information provided is thorough and clearly presented but because students don’t receive any assistance reading the questions interspersed in the introduction and the practice, the material is most appropriate for students at an intermediate to advance reading level. (It should be noted that the software is American and because of this the forms contained in the “Filling out Forms” sections may not be useful and accommodation must be made for the American addresses found throughout the program.) Finally, teachers should be aware that because the writing tasks are almost always based on sample information, students are copying for the most part. The main focus of this program tends to be learning what to write and where to write it.

Overall both programs are easy to use and the student feedback is appropriate. These programs and the two others in the series come with a Management feature that helps to manage students’ progress. A teachers’ manual provided with the software contains some useful student handouts and pre and post tests that may help teachers build on the material contained in the software. It is always nice to find software that is specifically targetted to adult literacy students and this series is certainly full of material relevant to adults learners.