Reading and Adult Literacy
Other People’s Words by Victoria Purcell-Gates was enlightening. While Ways with Words shed some light on different cultural ways of taking meaning from text, the communities of Roadville and Trackton were, in some shape or form, moderately literate. In Purcell-Gates' book, we are introduced to a family on the extreme end of low literacy, and the journey Jenny and Donny embark upon to acquire literacy is immensely inspiring.
One aspect of the book that really stands out to me is Jenny’s process of acquiring reading. As most of my experience is in tutoring adult students or facilitating CATW workshops, I really connected to the difficulty Purcell-Gates expressed with guiding Jenny’s reading education. Purcell-Gates writes, “My theoretical and knowledge base as a teacher of reading and writing told me that Jenny needed to read meaningful, predictable text in order to begin to develop as a reader” (101). The readings need to be meaningful and predictable, yet Purcell-Gates also states, “As I wrote for her to read, I was conscious of the need to keep the difficulty of the text with what Vygotsky calls the zone of proximal development” (106). In my CATW workshops, I’ve been limited to the sample prompts given to me. They are abbreviated readings on a wide range of topics that don’t necessarily interest most of the students I’ve worked with. Purcell-Gates manages to bypass this problem by this issue because Jenny’s primary motivation is to read books to her children. This provides ready-made reading selections for Jenny. So, student’s motivation is a key factor is reading selections, but I wonder how I can implement that on a class-size basis rather than on a one-on-one basis. How can I possibly cater to all students’ interests in meaningful texts?
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