Kruidenier (2002) finds that teaching fluency to adult students can increase reading achievement. Luckily,
“Reading fluency is gaining new recognition as an essential element of every reading program” (Hudson, Lane, &
Pullen, 2005, p. 702). Fluency needs to be taught because when students’ only concern is decoding words, they will
not get the meaning of what they read (Kruidenier, 2002). When students can read with the rhythm that an author
has intended, writes Kruidenier, students will have a better chance of understanding the author’s intended meaning
of the text. This emphasis on fluency is for readers of any age. Kruidenier (2002) observes, “Fluency is an issue for
adult beginning readers, intermediate readers, and perhaps for those reading at more advanced ABE levels” (p. 57).
McShane (2005) reports that adult beginning readers may not be the only ones who need work on fluency. Students
who score well enough on tests of silent comprehension, and deemed intermediate level students, the author
remarks, may need to improve their fluency and decoding. McShane advises that in order to find out if this is the
case, instructors need to listen to students read. The author mentions that a student who works slowly on a silent
reading comprehension assessment may need help with fluency. According to McShane, students who can read
accurately and rapidly may read without any expression, resulting in a lack of comprehension.
“Vocabulary is crucial for getting meaning from text. Without knowledge of the key vocabulary in a text, a
reader may struggle to understand the writer’s intended message” (Kruidenier, 2002, p. 67). According to McShane
(2005), individuals in adult education classes need to develop their vocabulary because since they did not complete
high school, they “have not acquired basic knowledge in secondary school curriculum areas, like science and social
studies. That means they have neither the vocabulary nor the required conceptual background to understand some
words even if they are well defined” (p. 60).
McShane (2005) states that comprehension requires having the basic skills of decoding, fluency, and
vocabulary. For proper comprehension to take place, a reader must be skilled in the components of reading so that
those processes will work unconsciously, allowing the reader to think about what he or she is reading. A good reader
will interact with the text in order to make meaning and understand the author’s intended meaning. This interaction
involves relating the text to one’s own experience, asking questions, using headings and graphics to get a general
idea of what the passage will be about, and picking out the most important information and putting that into a
coherent summary (Hock & Mellard, 2005). Gunning (2004) concurs by writing, “Comprehension is a constructive,
interactive process” (p. 178). Kruidenier (2002) reports that ABE students differ from good readers in that the ABE
students are less aware of strategies to monitor comprehension, think of reading as simply decoding words, and are
less familiar with the structure of paragraphs and stories. It is imperative that instructors work with students to give
and model effective comprehension strategies (National Reading Panel, 2000). The National Reading Panel says that
instructors need to assist students in being able to understand their own thought processes as they read.
“Metacognitive ability refers to the ability to manage and control one’s cognitive activities and evaluate whether or
not they are performing successfully” (Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001, pp. 280-281).
The following strategies are intended to provide specific instructional tools to enable adult education
instructors and volunteer tutors to increase adult education students’ reading levels in the four major components of
reading. The first major component of reading is phonemic awareness.
Phonemic Awareness
Sorting. An activity Gunning (2004) recommends is called sorting. “Sorting forces students to analyze the
elements in a word and select critical features as they place the words in piles. Students classify words on the basis of
sound and spelling and construct an understanding of the spelling system” (p. 84). The author goes on to explain that
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