There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective instructional practices for teaching writing to adolescents, the authors conducted a meta-analysis of the writing intervention literature (Grades 4 -12), focusing their efforts on experimental and quasi-experimental studies. They located 123 documents that yielded 154 effect sizes for quality of writing. The authors calculated an average weighted effect size (presented in parentheses) for the following 11 interventions: strategy instruction (0.82), summarization (0.82), peer assistance (0.75), setting product goals (0.70), word processing (0.55), sentence combining (0.50), inquiry (0.32), prewriting activities (0.32), process writing approach (0.32), study of models (0.25), grammar instruction (-0.32).

This study examined whether word-reading processes operate similarly in adult literacy (AL) students and elementary school students matched for reading level. Comparison of mean performances revealed that adults were severely deficient on phonologically complex tasks (segmentation, deletion, and nonword reading). In contrast, on orthographically complex tasks, adults revealed both strengths (sight-word reading) and weaknesses (spelling). Regression analyses revealed that individual differences in word and nonword reading abilities were explained by the same orthographic and phonological processes in AL students and children, despite differences in their levels of performance. Correlations between word reading and spelling measures were weaker among AL students than among children. Inadequate integration of these skills may explain adults' phonological deficits as well as their reading acquisition difficulties.

This is a review of evidence for contextualization, defined here as an instructional approach connecting foundational skills and college-level content. Two forms of contextualization are identified, contextualized and integrated instruction. Despite methodological limitations, the available studies suggest that contextualization has the potential to accelerate the progress of academically underprepared college students.

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