Adult literacy is an adult's ability to read, write, listen, and speak to accomplish daily events in the community, the family, and on the job. The Adult Performance Level program popularized the notion of "functional literacy," which is defined as reading and writing at a minimal level in day-to-day living. These functional skills include everyday literacy skills, such as reading a bus schedule, writing a check, and completing a job application. This cognitive view of literacy thus includes economic competence.

A social view of adult literacy emphasizes the reading, writing, speaking, listening, and critical thinking skills needed for participation in a democratic society. This view emphasizes social power, action, and change. Researchers, educators, community activists, and adults with limited literacy ability argue for this definition of literacy. In this view, literacy is not simply an autonomous set of generalized skills and practices predetermined by others; rather, literacy is embedded in culture and is socially and politically constructed.

The most prevalent and broadest view of literacy in adult literacy programs is "true literacy," covering individuals who can read and write beyond survival levels, take pleasure from a wide range of reading materials (including the canon or classic literature), and engage in writing for creative reasons. Expanding the notion of true literacy is the construct of "high literacy," or the ability to think deeply, efficiently, and effectively with concepts and ideas necessary for the new millennium, particularly those abilities needed to keep up with the changing demands of new technologies. What is considered "high literacy" today, however, may become "basic literacy" tomorrow.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) is a nationally representative survey that measures English language literacy skills of U.S. adults age 16 years or older living in households or prisons. The NAAL defines literacy as both task based (everyday literacy tasks) and skills based (skills ranging from recognizing words to higher-level skills, such as making inferences from a text). Administered in 1992 and again in 2003, the NAAL examined adults' reading ability in three areas--prose literacy (e.g., newspapers, poems, and fiction); document literacy (e.g., job applications, bus schedules, and maps); and quantitative literacy (e.g., balancing a checkbook). Resulting classifications in prose literacy were either below basic (can do no more than the most simple and concrete literacy activities), basic (can perform simple and everyday literacy activities), intermediate (can perform moderately challenging literacy activities), and proficient (can perform challenging literacy activities). Results from 2003 show that about 43 percent of adults scored below basic or basic, and 57 percent of adults scored at the intermediate or proficient levels. No significant change in prose and document literacy occurred between the two assessments, but quantitative literacy increased.

Bibliography:

1) Comings, John. 2002. "Adult Literacy Programs." Pp. 22-25 in Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Theory and Practice, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

2) Dole, Janice A. 2000. "What Will Be the Demands of Literacy in the Workplace in the Next Millennium?" Reading Research Quarterly 35(3):382-83.

3) Kazemek, Francis E. and Patricia Rigg. 2002. "Literacy Definitions." Pp. 310-13 in Literacy in America: An Encyclopedia of History, Theory and Practice, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

4) Mikulecky, Larry and Paul Lloyd. 1997. "Evaluation of Workplace Literacy Programs: A Profile of Effective Instructional Practices." Journal of Literacy Research 29(4):555-86.

5) Smith, M. Cecil. 2007. "Teaching and Learning in Adult Basic Education." In Literacy for the New Millennium: Adult Literacy, vol. 4, edited by B. J. Guzzetti. Westport, CT: Praeger.

6) Street, Brian. 1984. Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

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