Author Description

This book is intended to help adult literacy tutors look at the variety of reading tasks in the adult world and see what use they can make of them with their students. In Chapter 1, the tutor looks in depth at all the reading and writing tasks adults do. The message and medium aspects of literacy are introduced. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the need to choose relevant tasks and discusses the message and medium aspects in more detail. A selection of real-life tasks is listed; a suggested list of relevant literacy skills is also provided. Finally, five sets of questions are suggested to help tutors relate these skills to student needs. Chapter 3 contains four separate, detailed examples of adult reading and writing tasks, with activities relating these to the structures suggested in Chapter 2. In Chapter 4 the tutor is asked to work through one of the tasks with other tutors. Ways in which teachers in groups might use the ideas in the book are suggested. A section addressed to organizers asks them to consider the training and resource needs of this approach. An appendix raises three issues helpful in implementing the approach: newsletter production, tape recorder use, and text simplification. (YLB)