Additional Profile 8 Information from the Research

In addition to testing the reading skills of ABE learners, the ARCS researchers administered a lengthy questionnaire, so we can give you more information about the people in Profile 8.

• Seventy-four (74) percent are Native Speakers of English (NSE).
  
  
• The average age is 37.
  
  
• The average number of grades completed is 8.6.

• Oral Reading Accuracy:
  
  
  • Profile 8 learners read orally (not timed) with accuracy at a group average of GE 5.35 as compared to their average accuracy on reading isolated words of GE 4.0. Readers are usually able to decode words more accurately when reading passages, where they can use meaning and sentence structure to recognize familiar words, rather than when reading words from word lists where there are no contextual clues to aid decoding. Differences between these two forms of oral reading exist for all Profiles except for those groups composed of the weakest readers who read text word by word as if reading words on a list.
  
  
  
• Word Meaning:
  
  
  • Receptive (listening) vocabulary: PPVT-III scores range from "low average" (19%) to "moderately low" (81%). The PPVT-III assesses word knowledge by asking the learner to select one of four pictures that best tells about a word spoken by the examiner. It is an assessment of verbal ability.
    
    
  • Even with the moderately high DAR word meaning performance, "Tell me what X means," their verbal ability is not high enough to compensate for poor word recognition (See Profile 5). Their silent reading comprehension average is at the same level as their decoding ability.
  
  
• Phonemic Awareness (PA) - (sound deletion): (as measured by the Test of Auditory Awareness (TAAS))
  
  
  • Group average on the TAAS indicates only first level competence with phoneme deletion tasks. Only 2% are successful with all 13 consonant deletion tasks. Many cannot consistently delete the first and last consonant in a word, e.g., responding with gay when asked to, "Say game. Now say it again, but don't say /m/ ", and most (72%) cannot delete a consonant that is part of a blend, e.g., responding with lay when asked to, "Say play. Now say it again but don't say /p/." (A letter within bars, e.g., /m/, denotes the sound of the letter "mmm," not the name "em.") Profile 8 learners have trouble isolating sounds.
    
    
• Phonological Development (pseudowords): (Woodcock Reading Mastery Test - Word Attack (WRMT))
  
  
  • Eighty percent are unable to read nonsense syllables and words composed of regular phonetic combinations, e.g., zoach, phat, snolaker, and common non-phonetic combinations, e.g., igh, beyond the "moderately low" range of difficulty.

There is little possibility that they will be able to read more difficult text unless they bring their decoding abilities to a higher level of mastery, and preferably to automaticity. This group needs further instruction and practice in the recognition of individual words in isolation as well as in connected text. Learners in Profile 8 show a lack of the development of the foundations for reading acquisition and fluency: phonemic and phonological awareness. Their deficiencies highlight their need for mastery of basic decoding skills.

Non-native Speakers of English (NNSE) in Profile 8 are significantly more advanced than NSE on word recognition, word analysis, and oral reading accuracy and do as well as the NSE on the vocabulary measures. In other words, at this level, the NNSE show more ability with written language than the NSE, whose reading difficulties have been evident throughout K-12.