(Reading for the 21st Century: Adolescent Literacy Teaching and Learning Strategies," 2004) 2. Alphabetic Principle-related Skills: This includes: "phonemic awareness, the ability to manipulate the sounds of oral language and phonics and the relationship of letters to sound." (Ibid) Strategies includes instruction" that focuses on high-frequency, sound- spelling relationships." (Ibid)

3. Fluency: This is the ability to read "quickly, accurately and with appropriate expression." (Ibid) Strategies include: "guided oral reading and repeated reading" (Ibid) for improving fluency and comprehension.

4. Vocabulary: The size of the learner's vocabulary is that which leads to "large variations in reading ability." (Ibid) Strategies include "direct [and] explicit instruction and learning from context while reading" (Ibid) for increasing vocabulary among students.

5. Reading Comprehension: This is the most "apparent deficit in students' reading abilities at the secondary level." (Ibid) Strategies include the following:

a) Comprehensive monitoring;

b) Cooperative learning;

Graphic organizations;

d) Story structure;

e) Question answering;

f) Question generating; and g) summarization. (Ibid)

Alan Wigfield states the following three instructional practices for fostering engagement of students in reading:

Provision of conceptual content goals;

Motivating through hands-on learning activities; and Motivating students through texts that are interesting to them. (nd)

Summary and Conclusion

While many factors for the decrease in reading levels of adolescents have been cited it is certain that identification of methods to motivate students and to do so on the 'intrinsic' level is 'key' in raising reading comprehension levels and abilities in adolescents. This work has clearly demonstrated the express need for increasing motivation for reading among adolescent students and has stated concrete instructional practices for use in the classroom that will provide adolescent learners with motivation to achieve higher levels of reading comprehension. Presentation of material that is interesting to the adolescent individual has been cited as important as well as collaborative and collective learning. Student-centric, or learning strategies are cited as critical for use in the classroom to make an effective learning environment for adolescent students. Content goals and autonomous learning in reading have also been cited as very important in the research.

Wigfield has identified the important of the beliefs of students in relation to their own competence in reading and the fact that adolescents are often more motivated for 'non traditional' reading than they are for 'in school' reading. Adolescents often suffer from resistance to reading and disaffection for reading which may be overcomethrough meaningful reading experiences and reading material that...

Reading instruction that is collaborative has also been found to be effective in motivating adolescent learners in reading instruction. (Wigfield, nd)
Stated in the work of Alvermann is the important fact that while instructional practices that vary have been shown to have little effect on student reading levels and achievement 'engagement of students' has been shown to be "the mediating factor, or avenue" (2001) or path through which the instructor may use their classroom instructional practice for positively impact the outcome of the student in reading achievement and reading comprehension.

Bibliography

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Alvermann, Donna E. (2001) Effective Literacy Instruction for Adolescents. National Reading Conference (NRC) position paper - revised. 25 Oct 2001. Online available at http://www.coe.uga.edu/reading/faculty/alvermann/effective2.pdf.

Reading Literacy for the 21st Century (2004) published online and available at http://www.all4ed.org/publications/Reading%20for%2021st%20Century.pdf.

Wigfield, Alan (nd) Motivation for Literacy During Adolescence. Online available at http://www.soe.umich.edu/events/als/downloads/wigfield.pdf.

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U.S. Department of Education. (2000). NAEP 1999 trends in academic progress: Three decades of student performance (NCES 2000-469, by J.R. Campbell, C.M. Hombo, and J.Mazzeo). Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement and National Center for Education Statistics. Available:(http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/reading/trendsnational.asp

Kamil, M.L., Intrator, S.M., & Kim, H.S. (2000). The effects of other technologies on literacy and literacy learning. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.),Handbook of reading research Vol. 3 Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum

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Assessing Adolescent's Motivation to Read