The Adult Reading Components Study 3

From LiteracyTentWiki

From: john strucker
Subject: [SpecialTopics 30] Re: ARCS questions
Date: Wed May 24 16:03:24 2006

--On Tuesday, May 23, 2006 11:15 AM -0700 "Maricel G. Santos" <mgsantos at sfsu.edu> wrote:

I use John and Ros' articles on the ARCS in my graduate ESL teacher training classes at San Francisco State University. My students are grateful for the practical utility and the instructional value of the ARCS assessments. They bring their knowledge via practicum courses to ESL teachers in the field, who are hungry for this kind of guidance about adult reading development. However, I find that my students often want to know what an ARCS-infused curriculum looks like in practice. This is something I know less about... for example, what would an ESL curriculum that blended ARCS assessments with project-based or content-based learning (e.g., health literacy or vocational job training) look like? I'm interested in hearing John and Ros' thoughts on curricular possibilities, as well as from other adult educators who have made use of the ARCS system in their curriculum. And would it be possible to share these curricula on line?

Hi Maricel,

Another ringer!!!! Like Bill Muth, Maricel is one of our most treasured former graduate students and a major-league researcher in second language acquisition!!!

Ros and I probably wouldn't use the term "ARCS curriculum." Any curriculum that is based in knowledge of students' strengths and needs in the various components of reading would be qualify as an "ARCS curriculum." One example that we've started to try out in a longitudinal study of ABE intermediates is an adult adaptation of Mary Beth Curtis's Boys Town Reading Program. So far the results are promising, but we have a ways to go.

I would, however, suggest that there could indeed be such a thing as an ARCS Curriculum for practitioners. Ros's website is a good example of what that might look like.

With regard to using the components approach in content areas, if an ABE or ESOL practitioner understood reading components and reading profiles, then she could use them to create a content curriculum that used, say, health words for word recognition and vocabulary. The trick would be figuring out the right level of instructional challenge for materials taken from an occupational field, or alternatively creating new materials based on that field that are at the appropriate level. Maricel, I think you're just the person to do this!

From: Nicole Graves
Subject: [SpecialTopics 32] ESOL diagnostic testing
Date: Wed May 24 21:05:43 2006

Hi John and Ros,

I find the discussions most interesting. Thank you!

I teach adult ESOL. Previously, I worked as a special education teacher and as a reading teacher (children). Several of our learners are non-readers or struggling readers. I'm currently teaching a beginning level ESOL group and an ESOL/literacy class. We formed the Lit class based on needs of the students: high level speakers, non- or low-reading level, no or very low -level in writing. What diagnostic tests would you suggest for this population in order to find strenghts and instructional needs? Wouldn't tests normed on a population of native speakers be somewhat inaccurate for ESOL learners? Depending on the native language, I can see that in certain cases some tests might work fairly well. But what of others with different alphabets and different ways? Chinese learners do not sound out words. Russians do not actually spell words, etc.

Thanks again.

Nicole B. Graves
Teacher/ESOL Program Coordinator
The Center for New Americans
Amherst, Greenfield, Northampton, MA

From: NORENE PETERSON
Subject: [SpecialTopics 33] grouping and resources
Date: Wed May 24 23:11:48 2006

Thanks for recognizing the difficulty rural states have in grouping students. As Ros can tell you, this is something that we in Montana experience first hand.

Resource question:
There are times when it is difficult to "convince" others that some adults need to be taught phonemic awareness, etc. Besides referring individuals to the ARCS website, do you have any other recommendation for a basic resource that is easily understood?

Thanks!

NP =)

Norene Peterson
Adult Education Center
Billings, MT

From: Kay Vaccaro
Subject: [SpecialTopics 34] Re: grouping and resources
Date: Thu May 25 10:28:17 2006

Norene,

I think I may have found a resource for you. I am looking at new software published by MindPlay entitled My Reading Coach that may meet the reading needs of the low literacy student, particularly in phonemic awareness. It was recommended to me by a reading specialist in K-12, so I am looking at its applicability to the adult learner. The website is www.mindplay.com

If anyone else has used it or knows about its value to the adult learner I would appreciate knowing. I received my copy of the manual and CD yesterday, so I will check it how and let you know what I discover.


V. Kay Vaccaro
Program Coordinator
Adult Education Division
Harris County Department of Education
713-692-6216
FAX 713-695-1976

From: jgreiner
Subject: [SpecialTopics 35] ARCS and PD
Date: Thu May 25 12:12:59 2006

Hello John and Ros,

I'd like to hear more ideas about how professional development could be designed and implemented to support the use of ARCS in instruction. Some of the questions and comments so far have touched on the complexities involved: Norene Peterson wrote, "It is difficult to 'convince' others that some adults need to be taught phonemic awareness, etc." Stephanie Korber also wrote about adult educators' readiness and comfort with beginning reading skills, and that "this should have a huge impact on the planning and delivery of professional development." And Bill Muth notes how staff development is needed in order to organize learners in new ways.

John, you also wrote that, "If you have [well-equipped centers and well-compensated practitioners] then teacher training will pay off even more than it does currently, because practitioners will be able to stay in the field long enough to make full use of the training and improve upon it based on their experience and sharing of knowledge."

The need for professional development is not limited to what teachers need to know in order provide effective instruction. It seems that professional development needs to also hit the level of program management as well so that alternatives to the "one-size-fits-all' classroom can be implemented.

What recommendations specific to professional development do you (or other discussion participants) have that would support instruction based on diagnostic assessments? What components would it have? What form would it take?

Thanks to all -

Jane

Jane Greiner
Training Coordinator ProLiteracy America
ProLiteracy Worldwide
1320 Jamesville Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 422-9121 Ext. 283
Fax (315) 422-6369
jgreiner at proliteracy.org
www.proliteracy.org

From: David Rosen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 36] Re: ARCS and PD
Date: Thu May 25 12:49:28 2006

Hello Marie,

Jane Meyer, a coordinator of an adult education program in Canton, Ohio has joined this discussion. Jane was one of the panelists in the video that you may have seen as you prepared for this discussion

http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/webcasts/20040204/archive/sec4-r.html

She has used a study circle model for professional development focused on the ARCS. Jane, could you tell us about that here in some detail? Then I hope others may have some questions for you about this as a professional development model for the ARCS.

David J. Rosen
Special Topics List Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net

From: Jane Meyer
Subject: [SpecialTopics 37] professional development using the ARCS website
Date: Thu May 25 14:06:20 2006

David suggested that I tell a bit about how we used the ARCS website for professional development in our ABE program in Canton, Ohio. First I explored the website myself and then, at a staff meeting, I told the teachers about the site highlighting some features that I thought might be of particular interest to them. I offered to pay them if they wanted to explore the website for a professional development activity. I set a meeting date about a month away for those who had explored the website to discuss what they had found and how it could be useful to them as well as ask any questions. The teachers loved using the website for professional development because it was so convenient and the format worked great for us because I had staff with various levels of knowledge about reading. The website allowed those who needed basic information to get it without holding those back who had more knowledge and were ready to go deeper. It has been a while, but I remember the discussion about the site being quite rich.

Jane Meyer
Canton City Schools
Canton, Ohio
meyer_j at ccsdistrict.org

From: rosalind davidson
Subject: [SpecialTopics 38] Re: ARCS questions
Date: Thu May 25 14:58:42 2006


--On Monday, May 22, 2006 10:17 PM -0400 ylerew at aol.com wrote:

Here are a couple of initial questions about ARCS:

1. Was the age of the adult students a factor? Were older or younger adults more commonly found in any cluster of reading skill? What implications might there be for practitioners working with older adults versus younger adults?

Hello Yvonne,

Although we did not use age to form the clusters,we see three age groups among the 10 clusters: Clusters 1 and 2 with an average age of 27.5; clusters 3-8, 30 to 34 years; clusters 9-10, 37 -41 years.

The younger learners in GED Clusters, 1 and 2 have made the decision to finish their education fairly soon after leaving high-school, so we can say that they are returning to school, not starting anew. They come to adult ed with 10th or 11th grade educations, with some good reading skills, ready to 'finish up'. Their individual diagnostic profiles will pinpoint areas that need shoring up along with test taking skills. Vocabulary instruction, always a must for any group, should include words from the academic vocabulary list since many learners in these clusters will go on to post secondary vocational schools or community colleges. Download the list from: www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/research/ awl/download/awlfrequent.pdf

Many more of those in the middle clusters reported having had trouble learning to read from the beginning in the primary grades. their phonological abilities of distinguishing, isolating and blending sounds should be assessed. Teachers can use the assessment on the ARCS website to find those phonics elements that learners need to master.

Another age related factor is the amount of help learners received in K-12. The older learners in all clusters may not have had the advantage of Chapter One, special classes, or tutoring and remain at primary or low intermediate reading levels. Some of the 25 to 40 year olds who have phonological deficits may be curriculum casualties of embedded rather than systematic phonics programs that would have helped ameliorate their basic sound discrimination problems.

Also related to age and lack of supplementary reading services (or ineffective interventions) are the poor reading tactics that older learners use in order to read well enough to lead their adult lives. It requires reeducation and repeated success with new skills that help undo poor readers' unproductive word recognition and comprehension strategies.

The clusters are composed of learners with similar strengths and needs, age doesn't indicate the particular reading difficulty in any cluster, rather it is an indicator of the amount of reeducation that might be required to get them 'unstuck' and redirected.

Ros

From: rosalind davidson
Subject: [SpecialTopics 39] Re: grouping and resources
Date: Thu May 25 16:19:38 2006

--On Wednesday, May 24, 2006 9:11 PM -0600 NOREN PETERSON <norenehp at bresnan.net> wrote:

Thanks for recognizing the difficulty rural states have in grouping students. As Ros can tell you, this is something that we in Montana experience first hand.

Resource question: There are times when it is difficult to "convince" others that some adults need to be taught phonemic awareness, etc. Besides referring individuals to the ARCS website, do you have any other recommendation for a basic resource that is easily understood? Thanks! NP =)

Hi Norene,

You mean after all your fine work on curriculum and reading workshops, you still have doubters? How about a mini-workshop on mastering the decoding of difficult scientific or other specialized vocabulary so doubters can see what skills they need in order to decode unfamiliar as well as long familiar words. Would they then understand the value of teaching learners to isolate sounds, blend and syllabicate - strengthen reading skills at the word level? Worth a try?

Love that Montana - All the best,

Ros

From: David Rosen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 40] ARCS questions from Tom sticht
Date: Thu May 25 17:17:21 2006

John: In 1999-2000 I conducted workshops on listening and reading processes of adults. One of the things that came from a survey of some 247 participants was that most thought alphabetics (phonemics; phonics) was "very important" to their classroom teaching or tutoring. Yet, 38-79 percent (depending on the site) said they had never received training in teaching or tutoring phonemic awareness and 31-59 percent said they had no training in teaching phonics.

In preparing the workshop, I searched for research indicating that a focus on alphabetics (code emphasis in Jeanne’s terms) with adults with low literacy produced better learning outcomes than some other, perhaps meaning (whole language) emphasis. But I could find no such research.

So I looked at historical approaches to teaching adults to read. Cora Wilson Stewart in 1910 and beyond did not like the alphabetics approach and clearly stated that adults should be taught using the "word’ approach. Reports of her work indicate that hundreds of thousands of adults learned to read following her "whole language" approach. But in World War I, J. Duncan Spaeth took a strong phonics approach to teaching reading to soldiers. Then in World War II, Paul Witty took a strong "word", "whole language" approach, and indeed teachers in Special Training Units got demerits if they emphasized phonics too much. It is reported that over a quarter million soldiers learned to read using this meaning emphasis approach.

This type of variable historical data, and the lack of any solid research that I could find on the relative effectiveness with adults of the code or meaning emphases left me to have to report in my workshops that I did not know of any good data to help make decisions about the use of these two approaches. I knew that Jeanne favored the code approach in her clinical work but her reported gains did not seem to be much better, if at all better, than what other adult literacy programs reported.

So my question now is do you know of any research with the ARCS comparing it to other approaches to teaching reading that could be pointed to to convince teachers and administrators in adult literacy education that the ARCS approach is the road to take today and the time, money, and effort needed to invest in professional development on the ARCS would be worth it in improved student learning?

Thanks,

Tom Sticht

From: John Nissen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 41] ARCS Mini-course - teaching of basic reading skills
Date: Thu May 25 17:19:09 2006

Hello John and everybody,

I would like to discuss the "mini-course" part of ARCS, following the discussion about teaching basic reading skills which came under the subject heading: "flurry of questions about the ARCS".

There was an issue of how easy it was to teach these basic reading skills, in a question raised by Stephanie Korber and answered by John (see below). This was followed by a comment from Jim Williams about the availability of programs to help in the learning of basic skills (see below that). But I have been looking at the mini-course on the ARCS site.

I am concerned by advocacy for teaching whole word recognition on the "Sight words" page: http://www.nifl.gov/readingprofiles/MC_Sight_Words.htm But in this same page there is this telling passage:

[quote] Because most adult poor readers have difficulty with letter-sound skills, they tend to use a whole word recognition approach much more than do children who are reading at the same level. Whole word recognition only works if the words are mastered sight words. The result of continued reliance on whole word "recognition" instead of phonetic skills when decoding unfamiliar words is guessing and misreading. [end quote]

I agree with that deduction. Moreover I claim that teaching letter-sound skills to adults, as for children, means no effort need be spent on whole word recognition! The teaching of whole word recognition as an approach was in the now deprecated Searchlights model of the UK National Literacy Strategy. It leads indeed to much guesswork and error. It has no doubt contributed to the failure of 20% children to learn to read. On the other hand, experience with teaching synthetic phonics shows that rapid recognition of whole words arises naturally from rapid decoding which gradually increases automaticity. The use of multiple modalities should be applied to the phonics instruction that gives the rapid decoding ability, rather than to whole word recognition as ARCS proposes.

Synthetic phonics, with multimodal techniques, was used in the Clackmannanshire study, where all 300 children were taught to read successfully in a few months, and by the end of Primary School their average reading age was over three years ahead of their chronological reading age. This result has caused the government to change tack on literacy, and advocate the introduction of synthetic phonics "first and fast" in all primary schools.

So, John and colleagues, I think you could go further with the mini-course, and show an even simpler and more effective way to teach the basic reading skills. You could at least take a systematic phonics approach, but I would strongly recommend more specifically the synthetic phonics method.

BTW, the synthetic phonics approach is applicable to TESOL - i.e. teaching students who do not have English as their native language. Thus by choice of suitable reading material, one might be able to "kill two birds with one stone", and teach a class with mixed categories of student, addressing one of the major issues being raised in this "flurry of questions".

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Try WordAloud with synthetic phonics:
http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm
Tel: +44 208 742 3170 Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk

From: David Rosen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 42] Re: professional development using the ARCS website
Date: Thu May 25 17:29:39 2006

Thanks, Jane. I wonder if anyone else in this discussion has used the ARCS Web site and/or a study circle model using the ARCS Web site or other ARCS materials. If so, please tell us about your experience.

Also, if anyone has questions for Jane or Ros about the use of the ARCS Web site, please ask them now.

David J. Rosen
Special Topics List Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net

From: William R Muth/FS/VCU
Subject: [SpecialTopics 43] Re: professional development using the ARCS website
Date: Thu May 25 20:21:48 2006

We designed a "front end" module to introduce Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) teachers to the ARCS website/course. The module was taught in real time through CENTRA (a distance training platform), and we provided participants (from around the country) with FBOP training credit. The module presented some reading theory (e.g., Marilyn Adams' 4 Processors Model), and tied this to ARCS terminology (e.g., print skills, meaning skills). We cited John Strucker's 'Why Silent Reading Comprehension Scores Are Not Enough" article, and provided examples of clusters I found in my ARCS dissertation study of literacy learners in federal prisons. The session ended with an overview of Ros' on-line course. The training took about 90 minutes, and I think we conducted four sessions, reaching about 80 teachers in all. After this, teachers were encouraged to take the on-line course. We credited teachers with course completions when they (a) conducted ARCS tests on a student, (b) submitted scores to the website, and (c) printed out the profile/results. Since I have retired from the FBOP, I do not have staff completion data, but I do know that we (opps, 'they') are now incorporating ARCS training in our face-to-face training for all new teachers entering the Bureau.

Bill

William R. Muth, PhD
Assistant Professor, Reading Education and Adult Literacy
Virginia Commonwealth University
(804) 828-8768

From: Nicole Graves
Subject: [SpecialTopics 44] Re: grouping and resources
Date: Thu May 25 20:23:08 2006

Rosalind Davidson <davidsro at gse.harvard.edu> wrote:

How about a mini-workshop on mastering the decoding of difficult scientific or other specialized vocabulary so doubters can see what skills they need in order to decode unfamiliar as well as long familiar words. Would they then understand the value of teaching learners to isolate sounds, blend and syllabicate - strengthen reading skills at the word level? Worth a try?

Great idea!

Nicole Graves

From: David Rosen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 45] Explicitly assessing and teaching an understanding of English morphology
Date: Thu May 25 20:37:43 2006

Mina Reddy wrote:

...Specifically for second language learners, how important or useful is it to explicitly assess and teach an understanding of English morphology? How much does an understanding of English morphology influence their comprehension of text? I am curious about this because of my personal experience reading in languages in which my vocabulary is limited. I find that an understanding of the structure of the language helps me to derive at least a basic meaning from the text even when I do not understand many of the words.

John Strucker answered:

Mina, I think you are right about this last point, but I don't know of much ESOL research that focuses on this. NCSALL's Steve Reder would be a good person to ask about this. However, I think ELL research has looked at this from time to time, and that research supports your position. As an aside, in general, I think those of us in ABE/ESOL can probably learn a lot by looking more at ELL research.

I (David Rosen) asked Steve Reder to reply, and he turned to his colleagues at Portland State University's Department of Applied Linguistics, Kathy Harris and Lynn Santelmann. They asked that we post this reply:

"There isn't a lot of research directed at this specific question, but the research that exists points to a couple of conclusions. First, student acquisition of some kinds of morphemes (e.g. plural and 3rd person -s) can be promoted with instruction. However, instruction of other forms (e.g. -ing) can promote overproduction. Also, other types of English morphology aren't easily acquired through instruction (e.g. articles such as the and a). Generally, the order in which English morphology is learned isn't altered by instruction, but some aspects may be acquired more quickly through instruction. Instruction may help students to "notice" new forms so that when the new forms become salient (through error correction or negotiation for example), learners have knowledge of the new form to apply."

Kathy Harris & Lynn Santelmann
Department of Applied Linguistics & the NCSALL Adult ESOL Lab School
Portland State University

From: NOREN PETERSON
Subject: [SpecialTopics 46] Re: grouping and resources
Date: Thu May 25 23:32:10 2006

Thanks for the suggestion, Ros! I bet "atherosclerosis" and many others might do the trick, right? =) And we'd love to have you back any time!

NP =)

From: John Nissen
Subject: [SpecialTopics 48] Re: Explicitly assessing and teaching anunderstanding of English morphology
Date: Fri May 26 10:58:55 2006

Hello David and all,

We seem now to be getting into the area of understanding or comprehension.

One of the basic skills is segmentation of the speech stream into separate words. This is a key skill in conversational English or other "joined up" speech. (Even more key in French!) Perhaps we should be doing more dictation to test student's ability not only to segment words into phonemes and spell out the words, but also to test their ability to decide on word boundaries within a stream of speech. There can be some tricky things. For example "I scream" is phonetically similar to "Ice Cream".

In doing this segmentation into words, the common "function" words, like "the" and "about", are very important to recognise. But to make sense out of the stream, the morphology is very important as well. So that an ending "ing" strongly suggests a verb, and the ending "ly" often indicates an adverb, just as a "the" strongly suggests a noun, etc. Then the /d/ or /t/ at the end of a word often indicates the past tense of a verb, perhaps used as an adjective, as in a "marked paper".

In the reply from the linguists, we got some thoughts on the difficulty of _producing_ the correct morphology, e.g. use of definite and indefinite articles ('the' and 'a'). However I think the comprehension aspect deserves attention, especially for teaching literacy skills to adults with English as a second or other language (TESOL).

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Try WordAloud with synthetic phonics:
http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm
Tel: +44 208 742 3170 Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk

From:jn@cloudworld.co.uk
Subject: [SpecialTopics 50] Re: grouping and resources
Date: May 26, 2006 11:34:00 AM EDT

Hello Norene,

"Atherosclerosis"? No spelling or pronunciation problem there! But what about "dyslexics", especially for the eponymous individuals? The /i/ and /ks/ are each encoded in two different ways within this one word. And if you tried to decode and pronounce by analogy with "my exam" you'd get quite the wrong sound for the word... /die/ /sligziks/.

This goes back to my mini-course problem (see SpecialTopics 41).. teaching people to try to recognise words as a whole is actually a bad thing, because it sets the brain along the wrong channels for being able to quickly decode new words.

And, yes, a mini-workshop specifically on decoding is a good idea, considering the importance of converting the doubters!

Cheers from Chiswick,

John Nissen

From: john_strucker@harvard.edu
Subject: Re: [SpecialTopics 40] ARCS questions from Tom sticht
Date: May 26, 2006 12:13:11 PM EDT

Hi David and Tom,

ARCS isn't really a teaching approach as such, except in the narrowest sense that it implies that you can't plan good instruction without having done diagnostic assessment in the components of reading.

As far as Tom's question about alphabetics, at least half of the ARCS ABE clusters are made up of learners who could need instruction in print skills, ranging from beginners who need everything from phonemic awareness onward, to many of the intermediates who need brush-up work in lower frequency phonics patterns (e.g., diphthongs), syllabication of long words, and fluency.

Although as Tom points out the research on the effectiveness of teaching various print skills to adults is sparse, as Tom implies with his historical examples, nearly all successful adult literacy programs have done so for quite a long time. Down at the clinical level of our reading lab, we simply tell our graduate student tutors, "Find out what print skills an adult learner already has and teach her/him the ones they haven't mastered."

Some of the NICHD studies that are in the field now are taking a pretty close look at the effectiveness of teaching print skills - from phonemic awareness through phonics, word recognition, and fluency. So pretty soon we may have evidence for something that teachers, clinicians, and adult learners themselves - as Tom documented - have known for a long time: we need to teach print skills to people who haven't mastered them.

I don't want to convey the impression, however, that we already know everything we need to know about print skills. Our adult learner population includes many people who are moderately-to-severely reading disabled. They may never "master" some print skills - e.g., higher levels of phonemic awareness. What we need to know more about is <how close to mastery> they have to get in order to move forward, read less laboriously, and comprehend what they read better. The NICHD studies and others should shed some light on "how much mastery one needs" - and this info will be very important for practitioners.

John Strucker, EdD

From: jgreiner@proliteracy.org
Subject: [SpecialTopics 51] Re: professional development using the ARCS website
Date: May 26, 2006 12:54:35 PM EDT

Thanks Bill. I'm wondering if your front end module approached the issue of how learners are organized (either in the actual module, or in convesations leading up to it).

Does anyone else have ideas about how to involve program administrators in these discussions. Jane, maybe this was part of your study circle?

Or is it more important to support widespread acceptance and use of the ARCS among teachers first?

Thanks,

Jane

Jane Greiner
Training Coordinator ProLiteracy America
ProLiteracy Worldwide
1320 Jamesville Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13210
(315) 422-9121 Ext. 283
Fax (315) 422-6369
jgreiner@proliteracy.org
www.proliteracy.org

From: john_strucker@harvard.edu
Subject: [SpecialTopics 53] Re: Patterns of Word Recognition Errors
Date: May 26, 2006 1:01:57 PM EDT

Hi Barbara,

I think it makes sense for people to read the whole paper, because I'm not sure how much sense the appendix makes by itself. However, we don't have an electronic version of the paper. Folks with access to university libraries such as yourself should be able get it right away in <Scientific Studies of Reading>, V. 6, N. 3 (2002), pps 299-315.

For those who don't have access to university libraries, we'd be happy to snail mail hard copy versions to you if you send us your addresses.

Best,

John

From: john_strucker@harvard.edu
Subject: [SpecialTopics 54] Re: Flurry of Questions about the ARCS
Date: May 26, 2006 1:13:11 PM EDT

Hi Jim, Not much to add except to commend you for your work with adults and adolescents and your point about computer-based print skills programs. There are a number of really good ones on the market now, including some that come with relatively low-cost teacher training. A few of these are being tested in research programs now. Of course, the most severely reading disabled adults require a human teacher or tutor in addition to such programs, but a well-designed computer phonics and word recognition programs could help to offset gaps in teacher training.

Again, great point. Thanks for making it!

From: john_strucker@harvard.edu
Subject: [SpecialTopics 55] Re: professional development using the ARCS website
Date: May 26, 2006 1:23:49 PM EDT

Hey Bill,

Glad you mentioned your FBOP teacher training. You were one of the first to use the ARCS findings as a basis for teacher training, way back in 2001. I'm glad to hear the Bureau is still using your training.

Best,
John

Discussion Continued on The Adult Reading Components Study 4

Retrieved from "http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/The_Adult_Reading_Components_Study_3"