Reading Comprehension Strategies for Adult Literacy Outcomes

© 2005 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 192–200) doi:10.1598/JAAL.49.3.3

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 9 : 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 5192

Mike Hock, Daryl Mellard

Reading comprehension strategies for adult literacy outcomes


This study extends the knowledge garnered

with younger populations by determining

the reading comprehension strategies most

important to adults’ success on

adult literacy outcome measures.

Even before the No Child Left Behindlegislation (2002) required publicschools in the United States to use ef-fective methods and instructionalstrategies that are based on scientificresearch, the converging research in-dicated ways to improve child andyouth literacy (National Institute ofChild Health and HumanDevelopment [NICHD], 2000). Nosuch body of scientific research hasyet to emerge for adult literacy interventions,while the need for it is no less significant.

The National Adult Literacy Survey (Kirsch,Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993) reported thatnearly half of all adults in the United States, or 90million people, scored in the two lowest levels offunctional literacy; 58% of those individuals arebetween 16 and 55 years old—today’s workforce(Moore & Stavrianos, 1995). The economic, civic,and cultural implications of this collective literacydeficit merit the attention and resources of thescientific research community.

One possible way to quickly address the lackof scientific research-based interventions for adultliteracy is to extend the knowledge garnered withyounger populations to meet adult needs. Several

studies have reported that instructionaltechniques traditionally used with chil-dren with learning disabilities areadaptable and effective in teachingadults with learning disabilities (Bell &Lindamood, 1992; Greenberg, Ehri, &Perin, 1997; Idol-Maestas, 1981;Lewkowicz, 1987). However, the effec-tiveness of most reading interventionresearch with children has been evalu-ated using measures of reading com-ponent skills such as word recognition(accuracy or fluency) and readingcomprehension (Foorman et al., 1997;Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1997;Velluntino, Scanlon, & Tanzman, 1994)

and reflected by grades in school or standardizedachievement test results. In contrast, many out-come measures of adult literacy shift to ecologi-cally valid, functional outcomes (Merrifield, 1998;Wagner & Venezky, 1999) related to employment,citizenship, and family membership.

Because an adult’s literacy is measured ondifferent dimensions from a child’s or youth’s,several competency-based, standardized tests ofliteracy are commonly accepted as reasonableproxies for the global construct of adult literacy.Tests such as The Adult Basic Learning

Hock is the associatedirector of the University ofKansas Center for Research

on Learning (1122 WestCampus Rd., JRP Hall, Room510, Lawrence, KS 66045-

3101, USA). [email protected]. Mellard is aresearch associate for the

University of Kansas inLawrence. This study was

funded by the NationalInstitute of Child Health andHuman Development and the

U.S. Department ofEducation Office of

Vocational and AdultEducation (HD 43775).

Examination (ABLE), Comprehensive AdultStudent Assessment System (CASAS), Test ofAdult Basic Education (TABE), NationalAssessment of Adult Literacy (NAALS), and theGeneral Educational Development (GED) may beuseful in evaluating the effectiveness of a readingcomprehension intervention with adult learners.

Reading comprehension is the ultimate goalof any reading activity, especially functional liter-acy tasks. Reading comprehension is a collectiveterm that describes the result of grasping themeaning from a text with one’s intellect—a taskthat involves many skills. To achieve reading com-prehension the reader employs skills such as iden-tifying the main idea of a passage, summarizingthe content of a text, generating questions aboutthe information in the text and looking for cluesthat answer those questions (Curtis, 2002;Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001; Kamil,2003; NICHD, 2000; RAND Reading StudyGroup, 2002). Readers also draw inferences fromthe text and perhaps even create visual images ofthe ideas or processes presented in it in order toachieve comprehension. Gersten et al. (2001) not-ed different reading comprehension skills are re-quired when reading expository and narrativetext (e.g., deleting redundant information, delet-ing trivial information, locating topic sentences,detecting valid arguments in text).

With the large number of skills that con-tribute to reading comprehension, determiningwhich are most important for adult literacy is dif-ficult. The purpose of this research was to identify(a) the reading comprehension skills that aremost important to adults’ success on three com-monly accepted literacy measures, and (b) the in-tervention strategies, which were previouslyresearched and found effective with adolescents,that may be most helpful for instructors to usewith adults with literacy deficiencies.

Research designA multidisciplinary team of researchers—withexpertise in adult education; special education

with emphasis on learning disabilities; speech,language, and hearing; and psychology and re-search in education—designed the assessmentprotocol to examine the relationship betweenreading comprehension strategies and adult liter-acy outcome measures based on Weber’s (1985)content analysis recommendations. Researchersestablished a categorical framework for the con-tent analysis using three dimensions: text struc-ture, reading comprehension strategy, andspecific intervention strategy. The recording unitwas defined as an individual test item so that re-sults could be analyzed for patterns within eachtest.

Three categories of text structure were estab-lished for the analysis: expository, narrative, anddocuments. Documents, a special type of exposito-ry text such as want ads or job applications, weretreated as a separate category because of their im-portance in functional literacy assessments.

Six key reading comprehension strategy cat-egories were selected based on a review of pub-lished literature on the subject (Curtis, 2002;Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991; Gersten etal., 2001; Kamil, 2003; NICHD, 2000; RANDReading Study Group, 2002). These strategy cate-gories were operationally defined for this study as(a) Identifying the Main Idea, (b) Summarizing,(c) Drawing Inferences, (d) GeneratingQuestions, (e) Creating Visual Images, and (f)Looking for Clues. A metacognitive strategy formonitoring comprehension was considered a partof all these reading comprehension strategies, andthus was not treated as a separate category. Table1 provides a brief description of reader behaviorin each strategy.

Intervention strategiesTo determine which intervention strategies wouldmost likely help an adult learner become profi-cient in using the needed reading comprehensionstrategies, the research team employed a set ofscientifically researched intervention strategiesknown as the Strategic Instruction Model, or SIM


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Strategies, as representatives of the larger body ofresearch on reading comprehension interven-tions. The interventions were (a) Paraphrasing(Schumaker, Denton, & Deshler, 1984); (b) StoryGrammar (Hock, 2005); (c) Self-Questioning(Schumaker, Deshler, Nolan, & Alley, 1994); (d)Visual Imagery (Schumaker, Deshler, Zemitzsch,& Warner, 1993); (e) Visual Interpretation (Lenz,2005); and (f) MultiPass (Schumaker et al., 1981).Table 2 provides a brief description of each SIMintervention strategy.

MaterialsResearchers selected four literacy outcome meas-ures for use in this study. The ABLE, Form E,Level 3, was selected for practice scoring and de-lineating the strategy categories. Three tests withdiffering levels of difficulty and purpose werechosen for the content analysis: CASASEmployability Competency System (2002) read-ing test Levels A through D (two versions ofeach), the GED half-length predictor test for lan-guage arts and reading (2002, McGraw-Hill/Contemporary), and a portion of the public release of the eighth-grade level NationalAssessment of Educational Progress (NAEP;1990, U.S. Department of Education).

The CASAS reading test is administered as apre- and posttest in many adult education pro-grams to assess functional skills and learner gains.In many states, CASAS is used by social serviceagencies to determine educational services pro-vided to clients (e.g., basic skills, job readinesstraining, on-the-job training, mentoring). TheCASAS is a leveled test, and thus was expected todemonstrate the differences between readingskills needed for success at each level of literacy.

The GED language arts and reading assess-ment, on the other hand, is an achievement testthat reflects the societal standard of literacy com-mensurate with high school attainment.Successfully passing the GED’s five tests providescertification of literacy for the large number ofyouths who leave school prior to graduation.



Ta b l e 1R e a d i n g c o m p r e h e n s i o n

s t r a t e g i e s

Identifying the Main Idea• Determine what the author thinks is more im-

portant in a paragraph.• Select some information.• Delete some information.• Condense some information.• Integrate some information into a paraphrase.

Summarizing• Determine what is most important in a unit or

selection.• Select some information.• Delete some information.• Condense some information.• Integrate some information into a summary.

Drawing Inferences• Draw inferences based on the reader’s prior

knowledge.• Fill in details missing from the text.• Draw inferences from prior text knowledge.• Elaborate on what was read.

Generating Questions• Generate questions about setting, character

plot, and theme in narratives.• Generate questions about expository texts based

upon author-generated structures such as thefollowing:– compare and contrast;– descriptive (traits, functions, properties);– sequence;– explanation of concepts or terms;– definitions and examples;– problem, solution, and effect; and– cause and effect.

Creating Visual Images• Read small sections of the text.• Create visual images or pictures about the text.• Evaluate and refine the images and pictures.

Looking for Clues• Find descriptive word clues.• Search for clues to the elements of fiction.• Look for clues in the pictures, headings, graph-

ics, and author’s questions.

Although the CASAS and GED are wellknown in the adult education community in theUnited States, the NAEP is recognized as a stan-dard of literacy in the broader literacy community.Different levels of the NAEP are used in publicschools throughout the United States, and its psy-chometric properties are better known than thoseof the CASAS and GED. Thus, the NAEP was in-cluded in this study as a point of comparison.

ParticipantsA panel of six analysts—two practitioners andfour researchers—was assembled to conduct thecontent analysis of the selected outcome meas-ures. Each panelist had extensive knowledge ofreading instruction, standardized measures, cog-nitive and metacognitive reading strategies, andstrategies for instruction, as well as experience inteaching reading strategies. The panel conferredfive times as part of their preparatory training toperform the content analysis.

ProceduresPractice scoring. The panel of analysts practicedcategorizing items from the ABLE to ensure dis-creteness of categories, clarification of decisionrules, and any hierarchical relationships amongcategories. Researchers provided the panelistswith an Analysis of Content Measures Notebookto ensure procedural fidelity and descriptions ofeach reading comprehension strategy. For thetraining activity, the panelists each assumed therole of an adult learner taking the ABLE test, andthey determined the reading comprehensionstrategies he or she would use to read each pas-sage and correctly answer the comprehensionquestions that followed. The panelists independ-ently scored the test items by classifying the textstructure of the associated reading passage andnoting a first- and second-choice reading com-prehension strategy on a score sheet. After com-pletely scoring all the test items, panelists alignedtheir first- and second-choice reading compre-

hension strategies with specific interventionstrategies.

Decision rules. Discoveries made in the practice-scoring process with the ABLE led researchers to



Ta b l e 2S p e c i f i c i n t e r v e n t i o n s

Paraphrasing (for Identifying the Main Idea)• Read by chunking each paragraph:

– Locate the main idea of a paragraph.– Locate the key details.

• Paraphrase the main idea and key details.

Story Grammar (for Summarizing)• Find elements of fiction in text.• Make predictions from elements of fiction.• Summarize the predictions orally.• Draw conclusions about the predictions.

Self-Questioning (for Generating Questions)• Look for word and picture clues in text.• Ask yourself the five “W” questions about clues

(who, what, where, when, and why).• Make prediction based on the questions.• Read to find answers to your predictions.• Evaluate the accuracy of the predictions.• Summarize your predictions orally.

Visual Imagery (for Creating Visual Images)• Find descriptive word clues in narrative text.• Create a visual image from clues to include a

general scene or picture and specific visual de-tails found in the scene.

Visual Interpretation (for Looking for Clues withpictures and graphs)• Scan graphics in reading selection.• Make predictions about graphic meaning.• Analyze clues within the graphics.• Find the main idea of each graphic.• Paraphrase main ideas.• Summarize ideas.

MultiPass (for Looking for Clues in text)• Survey chapter for text and question clues.• Read chapter or section questions.• Skim to find answer paragraphs.• Paraphrase answer paragraphs.• Answer questions in writing.

impose new decision rules. First, the practicescoring showed that good readers could use dif-ferent reading comprehension strategies to obtainthe same outcome on a test item, sometimes dueto the similarity between strategies. For example,Identifying the Main Idea is very much likeSummarizing, the difference having to do withthe length of the passage and number of para-graphs analyzed at one time. Thus, researchersgave the panelists a decision rule: If the passagelength is more than two paragraphs, chooseSummarizing; if one or two paragraphs, chooseIdentifying the Main Idea.

Panelists were often split between the first-and second-choice strategies, which suggested thatthey disagreed. For example, for a given test item,three panelists made their first-choice strategyLooking for Clues and second choice GeneratingQuestions, while the other three panelists chosethe same two strategies, but in reverse order.Therefore, the researchers decided that whentallying scorer agreement, an agreement of five-out-of-six panelists on their first- or second-choice strategy selection counted as scoreragreement.

Scoring. Next the panel of analysts independentlyanalyzed test items from CASAS, GED, and NAEPaccording to the procedures, definitions, and de-cision rules developed during practice scoring.Each panelist scored the three outcome measuresin random order to eliminate order bias.

Scorer agreement and frequency analysis. Thefirst author tallied the panel’s scoring results foreach outcome measure, calculating the percentageof test items on which scorer agreement was ob-tained, and noting which first- and second-choicestrategies panelists selected. A second researcherrandomly selected 25% of the scoring results toretally: one CASAS Level A, one CASAS Level D,and the GED. An interrater reliability of 93%, or69 out of 74 test items, was achieved.

In addition to the scorer agreement analysis,researchers performed a frequency analysis of testitems to identify patterns of reading comprehen-

sion strategies required for success on each out-come measure.

Aligning intervention strategies. As the finalstep in the analysis, the panelists aligned the topfour reading comprehension strategies to the SIMintervention strategies they judged to be mostlikely to help an adult learner become proficientin using the needed reading comprehensionstrategies.

ResultsScorer agreementReading comprehension is a complex process ofdeveloping an understanding of textual materials.Given this complexity, the first concern waswhether panelists could reliably agree on theirratings of items.

Panelists agreed on the first- and second-choice strategy in a range between 67% and100%, depending on the text structure and levelof difficulty. Scorer agreements were highest forreading selections and tasks related to documenttext structures, which are most predominant inCASAS Levels A through C. For example, scoringagreement for an employment ad in which thereader had to find the starting wage was 100%.On the other hand, the panelists had less agree-ment (71% to 90%) for test items on the GEDand NAEP (e.g., short stories, plays, and poems)because the panelists judged that different strate-gies may be used with equal effectiveness withnarratives. The complete listing of interrater scor-ing agreements is included in Table 3.

Frequency analysis The frequency analysis (see Table 4) showed pan-elists nearly always chose Looking for Clues andGenerating Questions as the top two strategies forCASAS Level A. As CASAS difficulty increased toLevel D, the most frequently selected strategieswere still Looking for Clues and GeneratingQuestions, however, Summarizing and Drawing



Inferences were chosen for 10% to 15% of theitems. Strategy choices widened as the literacytasks became more demanding in the GED andNAEP. Panelists most frequently choseSummarizing and Drawing Inferences for theGED; they chose Looking for Clues,Summarizing, Generating Questions, andDrawing Inferences for the NAEP.

The frequency analysis by outcome measureshowed that very often the panelists noted that anitem required the reader to use more than onestrategy. For example, 85% (17 out of 20) GEDitems required the reader to draw an inferencefrom a reading passage, and 70% (14 of the same20 items) also required the reader to summarize.

CASAS Level A test items were judged to re-quire the reader to look for clues 100% of thetime. The reader needed to generate a questionfor about 84% of the items, and draw an infer-ence for only 10%. A similar, but less extreme,pattern was found for CASAS Levels B and C.CASAS Level D items similarly placed a high pri-ority on Looking for Clues (67%) and GeneratingQuestions (64%), but required a wider variety ofother strategies as well—Identifying the MainIdea (12%), Drawing an Inference (10%), andSummarizing (3%).

Intervention strategiesThe panelists aligned the top four strategies tothe SIM intervention strategies to determinethose strategies most likely to help an adultlearner become proficient in using the neededreading comprehension strategies. Self-Questioning (Schumaker et al., 1994), VisualImagery (Schumaker et al., 1993), and MultiPass



Ta b l e 3 I n t e r r a t e r s c o r i n g a g r e e m e n t s

Percentage of items

with scorer agreement

Outcome measure First choice Second choice

CASAS Level A, 611 100 75

CASAS Level A, 612 96 96

CASAS Level B, 613 77 67

CASAS Level B, 614 80 73

CASAS Level C, 615 87 77

CASAS Level C, 616 79 82

CASAS Level D, 617 83 77

CASAS Level D, 618 80 67

GED 75 90

NAEP 71 71

Ta b l e 4F r e q u e n c y a n a l y s i s

Top choice among

reading comprehension strategies

Outcome measure First choice Second choice

CASAS Level A Looking for Clues Generating Questions

CASAS Level B Looking for Clues Generating Questions

CASAS Level C Looking for Clues Generating Questions

CASAS Level D Looking for Clues (40) Generating Questions (32)

Summarizing (9) Drawing Inferences (6)

GED Summarizing Drawing Inferences

NAEP Looking for Clues (8) Drawing Inferences (13)

Summarizing (6) Generating Questions (4)

(Schumaker et al., 1981) intervention strategieswere selected as most helpful for teaching anadult learner to look for clues in a text; Self-Questioning for instructing a learner to generatequestions; and Paraphrasing (Schumaker et al.,1984) for learning to summarize. Although theseintervention strategies fit very well with three ofthe four top reading comprehension strategies,no intervention strategy fully addressed how toinstruct a learner to draw inferences.

A full toolbox of strategiesThe research team found that Summarizing andDrawing Inferences are the most important read-ing comprehension strategies for adult literacyoutcomes. The SIM Paraphrasing and Self-Questioning interventions (revised to includedrawing inferences) are most likely to benefitadult learners. The functional nature of theCASAS Levels A through D predominantly re-quired the very basic strategies of Looking forClues and Generating Questions; in contrast, theGED’s language arts and reading exam requiredthe more advanced strategies of Summarizingand Drawing Inferences.

The differences between the recommendedreading comprehension skills for the GED andCASAS are a good reminder that the tests servedifferent purposes. The CASAS is heavily focusedon lower level comprehension questions. For ex-ample, CASAS Level D asks 40 questions judgedto benefit from Looking for Clues (low-level com-prehension) and only nine Summarizing (high-level comprehension) questions. The GED is justthe opposite; it asks many high-level comprehen-sion questions and no low-level comprehensionquestions. Thus, the CASAS may not be as good ameasure of high-level comprehension but may beuseful for functional reading assessment.

The different skills assessed by the outcomemeasures, adult learner goals (e.g., simple readingversus certification as a high school graduate),and skills with which they enter adult educationnecessitate a range of intervention strategies be

available to adult learners. Furthermore, the con-tent analysis makes clear that functional literacy iscomplex, placing multiple requirements on adultreaders. Proficient readers do not rely on just onereading comprehension strategy, but several.Thus, adult education program staff need inter-ventions that equip learners with a “full toolbox”of reading comprehension strategies. In somecases these strategies may work independently,and in others, interdependently. For example, theParaphrasing strategy actually links multiple sub-ordinate strategies by teaching a reader to read aparagraph, which is a chunking strategy; to askyourself to identify the main idea and a coupleimportant details using a self-questioning strate-gy; and to put the main idea and details into yourown words, which is a paraphrasing strategy.Thus, Paraphrasing is made up of three discretebut mutually supportive strategies.

An implication of providing adult learners afull toolbox of reading strategies is they mustknow not just how, but when, to use a particularstrategy. A proficient reader must be able to self-regulate reading behavior: choose a strategy touse, evaluate its effectiveness, and abandon andchoose another strategy if necessary. We are un-certain about how and when instructors need toexplicitly teach these metacognitive processes, orwhether learners develop these metacognitiveprocesses on their own as they become more pro-ficient with reading comprehension strategies.

With a full toolbox of strategies and ametacognitive process for using them, one mightexpect success on the outcome measures of adultliteracy. However, the panelists observed thattheir own metacognitive processes when analyz-ing the outcome measures could not be confinedto reading comprehension strategies. They foundthemselves using test-taking strategies (e.g., elim-inating obviously wrong answers on multiple-choice questions or underlining key words andphrases.) Thus, we believed in order to evaluatethe efficacy of an adult literacy intervention, evenwhen using a competency-based standardizedtest, adult learners need to be coincidentally



taught test-taking skills. If one applies the Bruner,Goodnow, and Austin (1962) principle aboutcognitive strain, teaching test-taking skills makessense.

The basic concept of cognitive strain is thatlearners have a limited capacity for focusing at-tention and integrating information. The moretask demands that a learner confronts, the moredifficult the task is judged. Increasing learners’proficiency increases their efficiency and reducestheir cognitive strain. Thus in a reading compre-hension task, we could get a better index of alearner’s reading comprehension skills if the test-related factors were less taxing on the learner’s capacity.

One might see this approach to selecting lit-eracy intervention strategies and instructing adultlearners as teaching to the test. However, unlikeelementary- and secondary-level classroom orstandardized tests, the skills assessed by adult lit-eracy outcome measures are definitive of func-tional literacy, placing authentic performancedemands on the test taker. In the same way that atechnical school might teach a future mechanic touse tools to repair cars and assess his or her quali-fications through performance of authentic carrepair tasks, so too adult literacy education teach-es adult learners to use tools to read with compre-hension and assesses their qualifications byauthentic reading tasks on the CASAS or GED.Therefore, the process of selecting interventionsthat teach adult learners to use the literacy toolsthat lead to success on these outcome measuresaccomplishes the goal of increasing literacy inemployment, citizenship, and family member-ship, not just achieving a particular score on atest.

This study identified the intervention strate-gies most likely to benefit adult learners with lit-eracy deficiencies, but has not, in fact, showedthem to be effective in producing functional liter-acy. Further research into the actual efficacy ofthese intervention strategies with adult learners isthe goal of a subsequent study. In addition, thedevelopment and validation of an intervention

strategy that aids adult learners in drawing infer-ences is an important next step in adult literacyresearch.

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