Adolescent and Adult Low-Literacy Readers & Writers

Cheville & Finders article "Defining Adolescent and Adult Writing Development: A Contest of Empirical and Federal Wills" discusses the development of adolescent and low-literacy adult students and implications agencies have had on these groups. As far as adolescents are concerned, researchers have attempted to make connections to the trials and tribulations of being a teenager and how their writing develops. There are differing opinions as to whether or not adolescents are engaged in literacy activities. For example, should "multiple literacies and multimodal texts" be considered literacy activities for teens? If I was to answer that question, I would say definitely, "YES!" Clearly, this is an activity that involves writing and reading AND if it interests the students, they will be engaged (on their own will). Think of all the writing that goes into texting, blogging, writing on Facebook, some video games, etc. (like Dr. Kist presented to us) that adolescents engage in today.

So it seems adolescents are doing writing, but perhaps, we as adults, do not want to recognize it as such because we did writing differently in our teenage years??!! As Cheville and Finders stated, " Literacy is often reduced to mean only reading, and reading in school" (p. 423). Why are some teachers fighting or rather ignoring this particular type of reading/writing so much? We need to keep our eyes on our goals-isn't our goal to get the students to read and write so they can function as responsible citizens in their adult lives?

In my experiences working with adult literacy students, often students begrudgingly drag through assignments because they seem to think they have to "play the game" to get their GED, so they can move on with their lives. It seems they often don't see the relevance to their lives beyond getting that coveted GED. They often don't see the class information as useful to other aspects of their lives. I struggle with this because I see reading and writing as something adults must do in nearly everything they do every day. We need literacy in our workplaces; for understanding prescription and/or doctor's advice; filling out applications of all sorts-jobs, medical records, monetary assistance, etc.; for simple things like filling out grocery and to-do lists; to help with our children's homework, etc., etc. The list could go on and on.

As a former first and third grade teacher who jumped to teaching Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE) students, I found it quite interesting how Cheville and Finders quoted Kazemek as stating that "low-literacy writers share the same developmental needs and problems as struggling elementary students" (p. 426). I couldn't agree more. I have mentioned the similarities of struggling readers at the elementary level versus the adult low-literacy levels to my colleagues. They simply have different needs to use literacy and different interests, but very similar reading and writing problems.

According to Cheville & Finders, another issue in the Adult Literacy Education world was the changes that were brought about by the enactment of the welfare reform in the mid-1990s. Up to this point, adult students were free to enter the enter the program as they pleased. After this reform, many adult students were required to both work and attend classes to improve basic schools. I wonder if the lawmakers thought of how difficult this may be for some students, especially considered the difficulties so many of them had just attending school in the first place??!! Besides, how motivated are you to do something when you are forced to do it? Not so much, I would think!