This study reports opinions and practices of teachers of students with visual impairments (TSVIs) in 34 states regarding functional literacy for students with visual impairments (VIs) and significant cognitive disabilities (SCDs). The survey asked TSVIs to select a definition of functional literacy, indicate agreement with a series of literacy…

Current pedagogical approaches recognize literacy as a social practice and yet school-based conceptualizations continue to dominate understandings of literacy learning of individuals with intellectual disability. Such understandings lead to local or everyday literacy practices being devalued and overlooked. Thus, for adults with intellectual…

A 12-step procedure was used in teaching five minimally literate, male juvenile offenders to read and interpret prototypes of road signs displaying words, and a 5-step procedure for interpreting a sign without words. All students' correct responses in reading and interpreting signs increased and were maintained during subsequent post-checks.…

In order to identify the reading behavior and instructional needs of functionally illiterate adults reading below fourth grade level, 50 adults were identified and diagnosed on the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty test and the Slosson Intelligence Test for Children and Adults. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to Oklahoma City…

The article provides a task analysis and procedures for teaching reading skills to nine trainable mentally handicapped students with the use of the TV Guide. (PHR)

English as a second language (ESL) teachers find the newspaper a terrific source for easy-to-prepare reusable materials. Travel ads with coupons from the travel section can be cut out for beginning level students to complete and mail in envelopes they address. Students can find places on maps. In addition, intermediate and advanced students can…

The major purposes of the project were to determine the nature of the literacy problem in the Army by studying the literacy demands of Army jobs together with the literacy skills of Army personnel, and to develop a literacy training program to provide job-related-functional, literacy skills. Literacy research and development performed by HumRRO…

Designed to meet the needs of older nonreaders, this booklet provides teaching suggestions and classroom activities for functional or survival reading skills. The topics covered include using the telephone; figuring the cost of a purchase; following directions; survival vocabulary for public signs; vocabulary for the medicine chest; reading the…

Comprising a study of the application of linguistics to literacy, the 16 papers in this book were prepared by contributors from both developing and developed nations. The papers in the first section illustrate the relevance of certain developments in theoretical and applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics to literacy teaching.…

Government survey results reveal that large numbers of adults in the United States do not possess the minimal survival and life-coping skills necessary to function successfully in daily living. Since reading is the most basic of all life survival skills, a thematic reading that emphasized consumer survival was developed in the fall of 1977 at…

Suggests a variety of activities and projects which integrate functional literacy instruction into the curriculum. (MM)

This pamphlet is the result of working papers prepared for the 1969 UNESCO meeting held to analyze problems associated with implementing an experimental world literacy program. Functional literacy is distinguished from traditional literacy as being an integral part of the economic and social development of the area in question, not isolated or an…

The views and practices of literacy advocates who focus on workplace literacy foster an impoverished understanding of adult literacy and, ultimately, life itself. They reduce literacy to something that is "functional" in the reductive sense of serving someone else's ends as a functionary. A "functionally literate" person is a consumer of someone…

This handbook is a practical aid intended to help the tutor of adult illiterates assess the student's needs, evaluate his progress, and plan a program which will assist him in reaching the level of functional literacy (i.e., the ability to develop reading skills and vocabulary, using reference books, without outside help). Evaluation and lesson…

The prevalence of underprepared students attending colleges, the need to define literacy requirements of courses, the implications of research on literacy in the design of remedial programs, and the need for systematic evaluation of such programs are considered. Literacy is broadly defined as a language competence that is used to achieve both…