Note: Because this article was written by two teachers, we have indicated authorship of each section in the subheadings.

As teachers in Boston's Asian American Civic Association, we work with immigrant adult learners at a reading level of 3-4, the grade level equivalents used by the Massachusetts Department of Education. Richard's level I class is slightly lower than Janet's level II class. In this article, we will provide some practical, classroom-based ideas for teaching higher-order reading skills to lower level readers who are nonnative speakers of English. Richard shows how to get students to read and respond to a whole book on work and family issues. Janet shows how to take a student-generated text and provide reading and writing activities to build background knowledge in order to increase comprehension.

Joining the Literacy Club
Our common goals are to help lower-level learners, in Frank Smith's words, to "join the literacy club," that is, to make reading more enjoyable, to engage with texts, to go beyond the wall of print barrier of "too many new words," and to acquire the kinds of reading strategies necessary for success at higher levels of education and employment. We don't see these goals as mutually exclusive, and we believe teachers shouldn't focus on one at the expense of the other.

Linking Theory to Practice: Richard
In my level I ABE class, students read Woman's Work, Man's Work by Roseanne Keller (New Readers Press), a small "chapter book" focusing on the difficulties faced by an immigrant family. The husband, laid off and unable to find work, is forced to stay home and take care of the couple's three children, while his wife works full-time to support the family.

First Steps: Content and Formal Schemata
Since none of the students had ever read an entire book in English, we thought it useful to bring some reading theory into the classroom to support our view that meaning is not found in individual words or texts but as part of an interactive process between a reader's background knowledge and the text (Carrel and Eisterhold, 1983). First we examined content schemata (what readers already know about the subject they're reading). Students easily wrote examples of "woman's work" and "man's work," both in their native countries and in the United States, and they were asked if they ever knew of a woman who did "man's work" or a man who did "woman's work." We also discussed how different societies would view men and women in these situations. These activities provided much useful information for a future lesson on changing gender roles.

Next, we used formal schemata (knowledge of the organizational structures of different kinds of texts-for example, how a book is different from a poem).

Students were asked to skim the entire book by looking at the front cover (a picture of an exasperated house husband), table of contents, names of chapters, pictures, and reading small sections, such as any chapter's first and last paragraphs. Each student then shared her/his findings with the class. Finally, we tried to predict the content of each of the seven chapters by writing one sentence summaries based on the titles ("The Broken Dream," "Anger," "Change of Heart,"etc.) and to predict the ending from the last line of the book, "Oh, Ernesto, I have something wonderful to tell you."

Students read the book in different ways: through sustained silent reading in class, by reading a few paragraphs aloud "round-robin style," by listening to the teacher read aloud, and by reading assigned chapters at home. All in-class reading followed a strict "no dictionaries" policy. If students encountered difficult new words or idioms, they would underline them and try to guess meanings from context with the rest of the class, or they would try a "list it and skip it" approach of writing the word in their reading journal and looking up the meaning later. (For an excellent list of strategies that can be used before, during, and after reading, see Auerbach and Paxton (1997).

Reading and Writing as Interactive Skills
In all our classroom work, we use reading and writing together, not as discrete skills. Among the writing assignments was a letter to either Carmen or Ernesto, the two main characters, in which students would give their reactions to the husband's or wife's plight and offer suggestions to improve their respective situations. After reading the book, students were asked to write their own ending to the story and predict what might happen to Carmen, Ernesto and their children in the next few years. Finally, they did a longer piece of writing to explain how they would deal with the problem of job loss and shifting child care obligations if those situations surfaced in their own families.

Narrow Reading
These activities were not done in a vacuum but were part of longer units on the changing family and working in the United States. Through this kind of "narrow reading," investigating a topic in depth by reading multiple genres-a short book, a newspaper article, a poem- students are able to increase their background knowledge and transfer both content and formal schemata to more challenging readings. Although we do only one chapter of the book in class every day, each time we read this book I have always noticed that many students are reading it at a faster pace on their own, proving that if the material connects with their realities, students often do more independent reading.

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Using Student-Generated Writing as Class Texts: Janet
At the beginning of each new class cycle, I try to establish a strong foundation for reading. For example, we begin the first class day with a reading assignment integrated with a writing assignment. Although most students are Chinese, we often have non-Asian students in our classes. The challenge is to find themes that all students can relate to. For my students, immigrating to the United States is a universal experience; therefore, I choose readings related to this theme. What follows reflects a combination of in-class and at-home reading activities.

Students begin by writing about the thoughts they had about the United States before they immigrated here. We next list all of the students' responses on the board. The following class, students are given a photocopy of the list they generated from the previous class. This list enables students to read their classmates' responses and validate their own ideas in print. We then discuss similarities and differences among the group. Students respond very positively to this activity because they receive immediate feedback from their peers. It also encourages them to relate their experiences to their peers' and prepares them to respond to subsequent class readings at more challenging levels.

We continue the theme with a published reading assignment using two excerpts from I Was Dreaming to Come to America: Memories from the Ellis Island Oral History Project (New York: Puffin Books, 1995). Students read about the expectations and thoughts of two immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island in 1920. They also read a short biography of each of the immigrants. After referring to their earlier responses in the opening activity, they write a short letter to one of these immigrants. In their letter, they explain how they can identify with the writer's feelings or experiences and how they themselves reacted in their own situations. Using letter writing provides students with a clear audience for their writing, making it easier to determine tone, level of formality, and other choices any writer has to make.

The following day, students do a variation on a role-play using writing instead of talking. Each student exchanges her letter with a partner and takes on the role of the immigrant her partner wrote to. Students write responses to their partner's letter addressing specific issues, concerns, or challenges their partners have faced. These student- generated texts give students opportunities to read more authentic texts with a controlled level of diction. Depending on the class, we will do up to two "letter exchanges" to reinforce their reading and writing skills from multiple perspectives.

The follow-up reading is a longer student-generated text from a former ABE student. We discuss students' reactions to this student's experiences, again drawing comparisons and contrasts. As a final activity, we create a chart comparing the three writers to the class members, examining country; age when immigrated; thoughts before coming to the U.S.; hopes for the future; and advice/suggestions for each person. Through the use of this graphic, we look for commonalities. The use of a chart also provides students with a different reading skill: locating information from a graphic, which is organized differently from a narrative.

Recycling Vocabulary
By following one relevant theme for a period of time, we created a context that helped students increase their comprehension of the reading matter. Vocabulary is naturally recycled when you use a theme, so students have the chance to see new words repeated in different readings. Using student-generated texts is a natural way to keep the level of diction low enough for students to read with ease. By introducing published material on the same theme, they have the opportunity for exposure to language somewhat beyond their reach. By combining reading and writing as interactive activities, students see the connection between the two. All of these strategies with low- level students help set the stage for higher order reading skills.

Sample Reading Strategies
(based on Auerbach and Paxton, 1997)

• Accessing prior knowledge
• Writing your way into reading (Writing about your experiences related to the topic)
• Asking questions based on the title
• Making predictions based on previewing
• Identifying text structure
• Skimming for the general idea
• Reading the introduction and conclusion first

• Skipping unknown words; guessing from context
• Predicting the main idea of each paragraph
• Drawing pictures to show what you see in your mind's eye

• Revising prereading expectations
• Making an outline, chart, map, or diagram of the organization of the text
• Retelling what you think the author is saying
• Relating the text to your own experience

Janet Fischer is an ABE teacher and Richard Goldberg is ABE Program Coordinator and teacher at the Asian American Civic Association in Boston. They can be reached by e-mail at jfischer@boston.quik.com and goldber@massed.net, respectively.

Notes

Auerbach, E. and Paxton, D. (1997). "It's not the English thing:" Bringing reading research into the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 31( 2), 7 237-261.

Carrell, P. and Eisterhold, J. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading pedagogy. TESOL Quarterly, 17 (4), 553-573.