Focusing on activities that can be directly taught as "survival language situations," this journal (1) evaluates what school critics mean by "survival English," (2) demonstrates that teachers can easily pay attention to "survival"-oriented language, and (3) argues that a comprehensive English course enables students…

The Survival Skills Center described in this report operates at Columbia College, CA, to provide individualized instruction in basic reading, writing, and math skills using a series of modules which focus on problems commonly encountered in everyday life. After discussing the need for such instruction among nontraditional students, the paper…

This guide contains 15 units designed to help adult basic education or literacy education students write materials used in everyday life. The first section of the guide contains an introduction to the writing/teaching process and suggestions for teachers. The 15 units that follow serve as a workbook for students. They cover the following topics:…

Discusses the contributions that consumer and homemaking education make towards improving students' basic skills. These skills include verbal (discussing consumer issues, family relations, child development); reading (product labels, magazine articles, newspapers); writing (reports, notes, term papers); mathematics (budgets, recipe ingredients,…

This book aims to meet the needs of students who are beginning to learn English and to help them reach such goals as gaining an education, finding a job, continuing on to higher education, or functioning better in everyday life in the United States. The book stresses the basic language skills of vocabulary development, grammar, reading, writing,…

A project is described that attempted to formulate a meaningful concept of adult performance levels, to devise instruments to measure performance at those levels, and to use those instruments to assess the functional competence of a representative sample of the population of the United States. Three levels of competence are defined in terms of…

This booklet along with six others comprises a curriculum guide developed for adult education supervisors and teachers of undereducated workers or job seekers whose inability to develop the skills and obtain the knowledge necessary to meet the requirements of the working world are primarily due to a lack of competence in reading and math skills.…

Emphasizes understanding the social psychology of individual and community resistance to schooling in classes of adult students in job training programs. Points out that basic unit of educational organization should be the group of teachers, that classes should be organized as work groups which should share the tasks of education and everyday…

A mother of an adolescent daughter with blindness and learning disabilities focuses on how she helped her daughter improve reading and writing skills by finding a meaningful purpose for those skills in daily life. This article discusses early signs of learning problems, the learning environment, talking books, books in braille, technology,…

The basic skills activities in this booklet are intended for use by adult basic education (ABE) students who are parents or who otherwise interact with children. The lessons are constructed to be used first by ABE teachers or counselors with a parent and then by the parent and child at home. The lessons introduce concepts that children can learn…

In May 1993, 1,060 people in England and Wales were surveyed on the use of basic skills in everyday life. Data obtained from these questionnaires were weighted to reflect the demographic profile of the population in terms of age, gender, working status, and social class. Interviewees were asked 40 questions about activities they had done in the 7…

A report is presented on a two-year project developed by the Cleveland Public Schools to develop and pilot-test a "packaged" curriculum model designed to support both the basic and functional skill development of high school students in each of five major content areas--English, social studies, mathematics, science, and…

This curriculum guide is intended for use with mentally retarded adults who are enrolled in adult basic education classes. The curriculum provides guidelines to improve students' competencies in three main areas: general functioning skills and independence (transportation, interpersonal relationships, health and safety, goal setting, planning and…

This resource and reference guide provides complete listings of learning activities that integrate basic and life skill learning. It is designed to assist adult basic education (ABE) teachers in the implementation of a competency-based learning system that emphasizes the integration of basic and life skills learning. The philosophy of and…

In May 1977, the governing bodies of three professional organizations concerned with vocational home economics education (the American Home Economics Association, the American Vocational Association, and the Home Economics Education Association) formed a coalition. Consisting of two representatives of each organization, the coalition has as its…