Research-Based Principles for Adult Basic Education Reading Instruction

The main sections of the book focus on the major aspects of reading instruction: assessing students in order to describe their reading “profiles” or overall reading ability, alphabetics instruction, fluency instruction, vocabulary instruction, and reading comprehension instruction. Computer technology also forms a section.

Assessment of student strengths and needs in reading is presented first because it is one of a teacher’s first tasks. Sections on the major components begin with alphabetics and end with comprehension.This corresponds to the movement from smaller units of instruction to larger ones, and also from those aspects of the reading process that are considered “enabling” (alphabetics and fluency) to those that are considered the ultimate goal in reading (vocabulary and comprehension) (Snow, Burns, & Girffin, 1998; NRP, 2000a).

Although each component is covered in a separate section of the book, this does not mean that they should be taught separately. In fact, research suggests they need to be taught together for instruction to be truly effective (Snow et al., 1998; NRP, 2000a). Although research may attempt to isolate effective instructional approaches or aspects of effective instruction, this does not imply that only one approach should be used or that instruction should focus on only one aspect of reading.

Each of the main sections of the book presents (a) a description of the major aspect of reading covered in a section, including a definition and rationale and, when appropriate, how a reading component is assessed, (b) major questions related to ABE reading instruction associated with specific topics of interest to ABE practitioners, (c) answers to these questions in the form of emerging principles or trends when the questions have been addressed by the research, (d) a short summary of the research related to each principle or trend, and (e) ideas (and comments) for ABE reading instruction derived from K-12 reading instruction research.