A common-sense indicator of the effectiveness of adult literacy instruction is whether the students are reading and writing more in their lives outside of class and/or reading and writing different types of text. The literacy activities that that people engage in as they go about their lives are what we refer to as 'literacy practices'. Examples of these would include reading newspapers, coupons, notes from teachers, memos from employers, television schedules, legal documents and books. Writing examples include writing lists, personal notes and letters, diary entries, recipes, stories, poems and directions. As a teacher and a researcher, I believe that change in literacy practice is a better indicator of students' achievement than a test score. After all, if our students do not use what they learn, what is the point of learning (or teaching) it?

Literacy Practices of Adult Learners (LPALS) study
Funded by the US Government through the National Center for the Study of Learning and Literacy, housed at Harvard University, my study looked for elements of instruction through questionnaires, observation of classes, and student interviews. We then followed students - who had volunteered to participate - from these classes for a year to document changed literacy practice. Students were interviewed in their homes every three months (or as long as they stayed with the class) with an extensive questionnaire about all types of different literacy practices: how often they engaged in them, when did they start/stop, and if they were reading and writing particular texts more often or less often. Information was used from 173 adult students in 83 classes or tutor/tutee arrangements.

Findings
Our analysis revealed that adult literacy students reported an increase in current or new literacy practices when reading and writing in class real-world texts for real-world purposes while learning the skills they need to do so. We use the phrase 'authentic literacy activities' for this real-world aspect
of reading and writing in class.

Classes that were rated as 'highly authentic' used texts that could be found outside of an instructional context: magazines, flyers, drivers' manuals, help-wanted notices, application forms, novels, letters-to-the-editor, and so on. They involved their students in reading or writing these texts for actual purposes that exist for them outside of class: reading the newspaper for the news on a topic of interest; reading a drivers' manual to prepare for an exam; writing a letter-to-the-editor that was to be sent; reading a novel for enjoyment and discussion, and so on.

Classes that were rated as 'somewhat authentic' used some of these texts but often the texts and purposes were simulated rather than real: reading a novel but filling in comprehension questions afterwards; writing a 'model' letter-to-the-editor of a fictional newspaper; reading multiple copies of an actual newspaper that was a month old. In this approach, the concept of real-life can actually be decontextualised in ways that reduce the effectiveness of its inclusion in adult literacy programmes.

The continuum of authenticity ran from 'highly authentic' to 'highly school-only'. Highly school-only texts and purposes were those that one can find only in a literacy instructional context: workbooks, spelling lists, phonics charts, and so on.

Making literacy instruction more authentic
Many teachers ask how they can begin to incorporate more authentic literacy activities into their instruction. The following points are developed in an upcoming handbook for teachers (to be
published by NCSALL,in 2003):

• Get to know your students through discussions, intake interviews, and observations. This will reveal their needs for reading and writing in their own lives which will give you the direction you
  need to find relevant texts and purposes for reading and writing those texts.
• Locate texts from the worlds of your students. Look in the neighbourhoods for newspapers, flyers, brochures, menus. Ask for copies of pamphlets from local health centres. Ask students to bring in applications, school reports and other texts they wish to read/write.
• Work with the students' purposes for interacting with these texts.
• Teach explicitly the skills needed to read/write these texts. None of the teachers in the LPALS study skipped skill teaching. In fact, simply learning to read was also highly related to changed
  literacy practices for our students. The important thing was that teachers involved students in authentic reading/writing of authentic texts while they explicitly taught critical skills.