Towards a better understanding - DataAngel

Towards a better understanding of the link between oral fluency,

literacy and Essential Skills

Authors

T. Scott Murray DataAngel Policy Research Incorporated

Richard Shillington Tristat

David S. Gordon Living Through Learning Foundation

Michael D. Hardt AIM Learning Systems

Towards a better understanding of the link between oral fluency, literacy and Essential Skills

Introduction

This report presents the results of an analysis of the link between official language oral proficiency, literacy and Essential Skills proficiency in adult Canadians. The study summarizes a range of existing Canadian and international literature to give a sense of the expected interactions between oral communication skills and literacy skills and then presents an analysis of two Canadian datasets ? the International Survey of Reading Skills (ISRS) and the IALSS/CLB linking study (IALSS/CLB) - that support an examination of the correlation between oral communication skills and other text-based skills.

All errors and omissions are those of the authors. Readers are invited to direct questions of clarification to:

T. Scott Murray DataAngel Policy Research Inc. 19 McIntosh Way Kanata, Ontario K2L 2N9

Email: Web: Phone:

dataangel@ dataangel.ca 1-613-240-8433

? 2011 DataAngel Policy Research Incorporated

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Towards a better understanding of the link between oral fluency, literacy and Essential Skills

Table of contents

Introduction

3

Acronyms and Glossary

5

International Adult Literacy

5

Background to the present research

7

Organization of the report

8

Chapter 2

9

The Learning Nexus of Oral Proficiency and Literacy

for Adults: What the Research Literature Reveals

9

2.1 Typical Oral Language Development

10

2.2 Resulting Typical Literacy Acquisition

10

2.3 Atypical Oral Language Developmental

11

2.4 Resulting Atypical Literacy Acquisition

12

2.5 Second Language Oral Development

13

2.6 Resulting Second Language Literacy Acquisition 13

2.7 Common Factors

14

Chapter 3

The Relationship of Oral Fluency, Prose Literacy,

Document Literacy and Numeracy: What the

Canadian Evidence Reveals

15

About the IALSS

15

About the ISRS

15

Overall Score

18

Understanding how performance is related

across skill domains

23

How prose literacy, document literacy and

numeracy skill are correlated

23

The relationship between oral fluency and the

other domains

23

Patterns of strength and weakness in oral fluency, prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy levels 28

The social distribution of oral fluency skill

30

Regressions of earnings against prose and oral

literacy controlling for demographic predictors

36

Chapter 4

What the IALSS CLB link reveals

37

About the Canadian Language Benchmarks

37

About the CLB/IALSS Linkage Study

38

About Essential Skills and the Essential Skills Profiles 38

CLB vs PhonePass Oral fluency

43

Chapter 5

45

Summary and Conclusions

45

Annex A

References

49

Annex B

Statistical Tables

53

Annex C

About the CLB/IALSS Linkage Study

81

Description of the CLB/IALSS link Sample

81

Description of the CLB-PT assessment tool

83

Listening component

83

Listening Conversion Grid

84

Reading component

85

Writing component

86

The IALSS instruments used in the

CLB/IALSS linkage study

87

Annex D

Joint distributions of oral fluency with document

literacy and numeracy

85

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? 2011 DataAngel Policy Research Incorporated

Towards a better understanding of the link between oral fluency, literacy and Essential Skills

Acronyms and Glossary

ALL

Adult literacy and life-skills

CBT

Computer-based training

ESL

English as a second language

FSL

French as a second language

GDP

Gross domestic product per capita

IALS

International Adult Literacy Survey

IALSS

International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey

ICT

Information communication

technologies

IEP

Individual education plan

ISRS

International Study of Reading Skills

LCA

Latent class analysis

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

PSE

Post-secondary education

TOWRE-A Test of Word Reading Efficiency-- Real Words

TOWRE-B Test of Word Reading Efficiency-- Pseudo-words

Computer- An interactive instructional method

based training that primarily uses computers to

(CBT)

deliver course instruction.

Decoding skills

Skills required to identify spoken or written letters and words, and to understand their meaning in the context in which they are used.

Document literacy

The ability to find and use information in forms, figures, graphs and other tables.

Individual education plan (IEP)

A plan that identifies a student's learning goals, and maps how the school or program will meet these specific goals.

Information Education tools including computers, communication software and the internet. technologies (ICT)

International Adult Literacy

Survey (IALS), 1994, 1996 and 1998

The world's first internationally comparative survey of adult literacy, which created comparable literacy profiles across national, linguistic and cultural boundaries.

International Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL), 2003, 2005

ALL built on its predecessor, the 1994

International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). It measured adults' knowledge and skills in four domains: prose literacy, document literacy, numeracy, and problem solving. Proficiencies were rated and reported as scores on a 500 point scale or on the basis of five levels: Levels 1 through 5. Data is available for Canada, the US, Norway, Australia, Bermuda, Hungary, Korea and the Netherlands.

International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey (IALSS), 2003

The Canadian version of the ALL survey.

International Survey of Reading Skills (ISRS), 2005

Additional clinical reading tests administered to a sample of adults who had participated in the 2003 IALSS.

Latent class analysis (LCA)

A process by which individuals are organized into groups based on their patterns of response to a set of background questions and/or skills

Prose literacy

The knowledge and skills required to understand and appropriately use information from print materials.

? 2011 DataAngel Policy Research Incorporated

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