3.1 Adult Learners and Alphabetics

book.pngWhat Are Alphabetics Skills that Adult Learners Need?

The alphabetics skills that adult learners need are likely to vary across these 3 NRS levels:

  • Beginning readers (GLE 0-3.9) have difficulties with the fundamentals of reading: phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate the individual sounds of a language) and decoding (applying letter/sound correspondences to recognize words), as well as word recognition (reading isolated familiar words) and spelling. Those who are complete beginners may also lack rapid and automatic identification of the letter names.
  • Intermediate readers (GLE 4-8.9) usually possess some basic decoding skills but may be unsure how to unlock less-common spelling patterns and longer multisyllable words. They may also guess at words rather than use the phonics knowledge they possess. This leads to slow, inaccurate reading, with many hesitations and self-corrections.
  • Advanced readers (GLE 9-12.9) have often mastered the most useful alphabetics knowledge and skills. A few, however, may need to fill in some gaps related to higher-level skills involved in reading multisyllabic words. Vocabulary instruction in structural analysis can do double duty as alphabetics instruction. However, if a reader shows a GLE below 9.0, intermediate-level alphabetics instruction may be helpful.

 

Click “Next” to start with an overview of assessment tasks and analysis for the essential component of alphabetics.