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Thanks to George Schueppert and Mark Gillingham for invitation to talk about the challenges present in helping young adults who struggle with literacy to become literate.
Three principal challenges to help unskilled and poorly prepared readers to improve their reading skills. The other side of any challenge is opportunity . So, I will describe the present opportunities for helping students and teachers.
First challenge -- consider how literacy is defined . Important because how we define it says something about how we believe reading skills should be taught. This belief is played out in legislation, educational policies, and reading instruction, and assessment.
Reading ability defined as primarily an intellectual skill --consists of cognitive processes and sub-processes, incl. letter/word recognition, phonemic awareness. These skills lead to comprehension. Dominant belief of skills perspective is that reading ability is trainable and portable .
Skills definition applied in developmental reading programs looks like this: Students read isolated paragraphs in workbooks, other decontextualized texts. They identify, report, or paraphrase sentences that stand for the main idea of the passage. Then, they are told if they are correct or not (test score).
A fundamentally flawed approach to helping struggling readers become interested in or motivated, and—ultimately--able to read well. This approach doesn’t get students excited about reading great works of literature!
The second definition of literacy -- reading is one of many kinds of literacies in which individuals participate. This perspective suggests that reading, writing, numeracy are not simply cognitive skills, but are social practices --ways of interacting with others, and

2 ways of interacting with, understanding and using written language--and ways of identifying oneself as a literate person.
Social practices -- reading is not a portable, transferable skill: People do not just
“read,” they read for particular purposes, in particular ways, in particular times and places.
Reading skill is not all or nothing : People read well in one situation, but not in another.
Administrators, practitioners need to think about how they define literacy. What kinds of literacy skills and practices do young adults need to develop and participate in?
Why these skills and practices and not others ? Instructors must also identify and embrace the literacy skills that students bring into the classroom and the non-academic literacy practices in which they participate. They need to capitalize upon these existing skills and practices because these are the avenues through which students will acquire academic literacy skills and practices.
2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy : 30 million U.S. adults have “ Below
Basic
” literacy proficiency; simple and concrete literacy skills. Who are these adults? Mostly non-English speaking immigrants, elderly adults, and those having multiple physical and cognitive disabilities. Most did not graduate from high school, did not speak English before starting school, and are members of racial and ethnic minorities.
Adults at “ Basic
” literacy proficiency level most likely in community college developmental reading programs. They can do simple, everyday literacy tasks. Same kinds of diversity as the Below Basic population -- languages, disabilities, and ethnicities.
Second challenge for developmental reading programs: respond to needs of increasingly diverse student population under-prepared for academic demands of college.
Social practices perspective has great promise for developmental reading programs. But,

3 requires stepping outside of narrow confines of skill—drill—and--assess approaches to reading instruction. Re-examine the multiple, complex ways that people participate in literacy.
Despite large numbers of young adults who appear unprepared for college work, there is cause for optimism .
1) the condition of adult literacy not as awful as we think. Many adults at lowest
NAAL literacy levels able to accomplish many demanding literacy tasks.
2) these adults do not see themselves as having a literacy problem! Fooling themselves? No, they do engage in wide range of literacy practices, not necessarily academic ones--but are evidence of their literacy. Many young people:
● Create their own “texts” through remixing or mashups, by combining various media (texts, audio, graphics, images).
There are opportunities to engage students’ existing literacy practices to motivate their participation in a wider range of literacy, including academic literacy.
We have a pretty good cognitive science of reading . A well-grounded understanding of the skills for decoding, comprehending, remembering text information. We know that
► Context is critical to learning to read
► Learning must be meaningful, relevant , and connected to everyday life
►Learners’ interests must be engaged
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Time is needed for learning to occur
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Practice is essential for developing and refining skills
● Extensive practice is better than limited practice
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Motivation is a key variable in learning
● People have different motivation orientations
—to be competent or to impress others--and instruction has an impact on shaping orientations

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►Readers need comprehension and memory strategies --and they need strategy instruction that teaches them to determine when, where, and how to use strategic reading skills such as:
● making predictions
● creating mental images
● interpreting and summarizing
● comprehension monitoring
►Finally, we know that skillful and strategic reading is fostered through quality reading instruction:
● Gradually move from using easily comprehensible, organized texts having appropriate vocabulary to more difficult texts as readers develop skills and strategies
● Use explicit instruction and model strategic reading for students by thinking aloud while reading
● Use guided practice as students practice these learning strategies while reading authentic texts, and give students corrective feedback
● Encourage independent practice in a variety of authentic situations
(such as academic studying)
● Help students become self-efficacious so they can take responsibility for their own learning
The third challenge is that we are lacking careful, consistent application of this cognitive science knowledge to reading pedagogy—particularly at the post-secondary and adult education levels. But, this challenge presents an opportunity to create professional development programs for developmental reading teachers that prepare them to skillfully apply this cognitive science in their classrooms. We have a lot of work to do .