Hypothesizes that developing an understanding of the connections between oral and written language rather than phonemic awareness per se, is essential to learning to read. At the macrolevel this involves an understanding that written words represent words in oral language, and at the microlevel that letters in written words stand for phonemes in…

Videotapes of four teachers tutoring first graders in a reading intervention program were analyzed for instances of metacognition and scaffolding (interactional talk structured by teachers to maximize learning). The most frequent category of scaffolding was coaching, which frequently preceded children's self-corrections and served to reinforce…

A Canadian bilingual ESL program for Cambodians was taught by an experienced English-speaking ESL teacher and a Cambodian-speaking coteacher. Observations, interviews, and journal analysis showed that a bilingual monocultural format encouraged student participation and peer teaching and that second-language learning was facilitated by…

Perceptions of 94 adult learners and 31 teachers regarding the nature and goals of literacy education revealed that adult learners tended to view literacy from a fundamental perspective, but entered programs for job-related (functional) reasons. On the other hand, teachers viewed literacy from a functional perspective, but presented programs that…

Critique on two overstatements about literacy: the illiteracy problem is much worse than many people think and is getting worse; and literacy development is both the cause and the solution to many social problems and will lead to economic development. Explores issues in literacy education such as skills versus processes, standardized testing,…