A study examined the reading profiles of adult poor readers at a community college and investigated the effectiveness of auditory perception training in the reading ability of these adults. Subjects, 30 students from varied ethnic backgrounds attending the Community College of Rhode Island who were registered for a reading and study skills course, were placed into two equal sized groups based on the confines of the students' schedules and randomly assigned to one of two instructional conditions: a control group using a traditional metacognitive approach and an experimental group using a phonological skills approach based on the "Auditory Discrimination in Depth Program." Pre- and posttest results from a variety of measures were compared. The final subject group used for analysis consisted of 21 students. Results indicated that (1) subjects continued to be plagued by deficiencies in phonological processing and word attack skills; (2) knowledge of vocabulary was low; (3) subjects' reading comprehension scores were below the tenth percentile for students at the end of twelfth grade; (4) spelling was poor; however, (5) the experimental group made significant improvement on phonological tasks. Findings suggest that phonological skills do appear to be important to the reading process and that it is possible to teach adults phonological skills. Follow-up research is called for, and a longitudinal study would be helpful. Three tables and one figure are included. (Contains 21 references.) (RS)