Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Level Three: The reader locates, understands, interprets, and makes judgments about ideas and information in a variety of texts that have some complexity of content and form. To do this, the reader uses a variety of more advanced reading strategies, personal experiences and knowledge and a familiarity with a variety of forms and conventions of formal texts.

Level Four: The reader analyzes, synthesizes, makes reasoned judgments, and draws conclusions about ideas, information and the writer's perspective in texts that are complex in form and content. To do this, the reader uses a wide variety of reading strategies, personal experiences and knowledge as well as familiarity with a wider variety of forms and conventions, including some stylistic elements.

Level Five: The reader analyzes, synthesizes, makes reasoned judgments, and draws conclusions about ideas and information, including the writer's perspective and bias, and the use and impact of stylistic devices in texts that are complex in form, content and style. To do this, the reader uses a wide range of appropriate and efficient strategies, including a deeper application of personal experiences and knowledge and a familiarity with complex forms and conventions, including stylistic conventions.

To understand what strategies you need to help a student become a fluent reader you have to know what skills the learner already has and what skills he or she will need to achieve his or her goal(s). You will find this out through the process of assessment (please see the assessment module for more information).

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Questions for Reflection

1. How do we as literacy practitioners make learning to read relevant to students?
2. How can we encourage learners to incorporate their new or enhanced reading skills into their daily lives?
3. Why are learners reading? (for pleasure, for work, for information)
4. Think about the real-life tasks that you do that require you to read at each of the above levels. Are there times when you need to use different skills within the same document?

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Beginning Readers

Adults who read very little, or not at all, will likely begin learning to read by developing word recognition or decoding skills. Here are some examples of how they might do that.

Phonological Awareness: This refers to the ability to differentiate and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in words. We often call this “sounding out”. Although this approach works well with many learners, some will run into difficulties because of hearing problems or auditory learning difficulties. The intricacies of the English language can also pose problems. However, basic phonics is a good place to start.

Word Analysis: This refers to the ability to recognize that letters correspond to speech sounds and that letters can be blended together to form words. This is where the “rules” come in about vowels and letter blends (e.g. “i” before “e” except after “c”; when “g” and “n “are together, the “g” is silent, etc.). Word analysis, combined with phonological awareness, is very helpful when learners read out loud.

Sight Words: This refers to the ability to recognize words “on sight”. Thanks to the intricacies of the English language, good readers need a large vocabulary of sight words because so often the “rules” do not apply. As learners develop their skills, reading becomes a combination of sounding out, applying the rules and remembering sight words.

As with so many topics, the Internet can provide a wealth of information about sight words. About.com has a list of the 1000 most commonly used words in English that you can find at http://esl.about.com/library/vocabulary/bl1000_list1.htm. If 1000 words are too many, you can start with the top 500 by visiting World English at www.world-english.org/english500.htm.

Strategies

• Apply reading lessons to the texts that people encounter in their everyday lives, e.g. road signs, store flyers, school newsletters, workplace memos, applications, etc.
• Building on principles of adult learning, start with words and short phrases that have the greatest interest for the learner, e.g. family names, home address, days of the week.
• Use a word bank system – learners keep their own bank of individual words on recipe cards kept in a box. Individual cards allow you to group words to form phrases and short sentences.
• Write out short sentences that learners tell you orally and help the learner read back his/her own story.

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