Information for Adult Learners

Conversation Circle Summary

In the conversation circles, women learners discussed a variety of reading materials. In addition to books, they talked about many kinds of formats.* (*Format - the shape, size and general make-up of something printed.) This section discusses many of the formats women mentioned.

 

Magazines

The most popular format preferred by women learners was magazines. They liked how accessible they are.

Magazines are better because the articles are shorter and there's a whole lot of different kinds of articles in magazines. We like them better than books. It's hard to stay focused and read a whole book, especially alone.

 

Magazines have pictures and they are colorful. Often they contain gossip stuff about people and other real life information. They also have advice columns and psychic information. One woman talked about how magazines can help with knowing what's going on in the world. She discussed an article she read in Modern Women. The article discussed women who work at home so they could stay with their children. But they don't make enough money. This got her thinking about possible home businesses. Some of the magazines women like include Mademoiselle, Country Living, Glamour, Oprah, Working Woman, Parenting, Parents.

They're all different subjects. They do kind of interest people. And it's not intimidating like a regular newspaper because it has larger print. It's only eight pages so it's not a big newspaper.

On the other hand, only three women mentioned that they read newspapers. One woman says she only reads it when there is something that interests her. The other two women discussed News for You. It's the newspaper for adult learners published by New Readers Press.

An immigrant woman learner from Vietnam especially liked this paper in order to learn about current events.

 

 

Women mentioned two other important formats for reading materials. They like pictures and bigger print. Women in both basic education and ESL programs like pictures.

I like books with big pictures, especially when the pictures help to explain the text.

Pictures help to explain the text. They could be photographs or drawings or anything that helped to understand the information.

 

I was interested in more the intrigue stuff - clues and stuff like that. And a lot of the books unfortunately that are made that way are bigger books. If they made them as a shorter story with bigger print, they're not as intimidating.

 

Women also liked larger print. It helps with their concentration. It's also less intimidating.

 

Some format suggestions were unique to the women in their setting. One of the centers has inspirational posters on the wall. Some are spiritual and others are about famous women. Women in that program liked reading posters and broadsides. They also mentioned reading signs and posters around the city on the street or on buses.

ESL learners mentioned that they would like to have more bilingual materials. This is especially important for informational materials. In one group of immigrants from Latin America, women wanted bilingual books on topics like the driver's manual, medicine and human rights and laws in the U.S. and on citizenship, the constitution and labor laws, human rights, and dictionaries and terminology and psychology. However, they were concerned that the translations be good.

It's very important to have books that are bilingual in English & Spanish. It helps to learn English and to have more books like that. Also, the translations must be good. Too often the Spanish translations are very bad and confusing. Books like the driver's manual are very hard to understand in Spanish because the way it's written is confusing.

 

In addition to these format suggestions, women had some miscellaneous ideas. Each of these was mentioned only once or twice.

• Chapter books that could be read together as a group

• Videos

• Tapes - both spoken word and/or music

• One woman said she would like to read a $20.00 bill

• Pop-Up books

• Coupons

 

Written question: Imagine that we have an empty room to make into a resource center for women. What kinds of materials would you put in it? What would the items be? (this could be more than books) Written answers: • Addiction Rehab for women. Tapes on what happens to your entire body from the use of any substance abuse. **Take home literature to education them more while they are home. Maybe stories of other real life addicts (woman) • It would be great. Tape recorder's to listen to each other. Gospel music. Books on finding jobs to keep time accounted for.

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Women

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SCHOOL

FICTION

AUTHORS

REAL LIFE

CONCERNS

ADVICE