Unschooled illiterate adults living in print-rich environments have good knowledge of the pragmatic functions and uses of written language but cannot read environmental print out of context¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · qualitativer1·q2
Currency · newest study 2009 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2014: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Interviews showed all illiterate adults had a fairly good idea of the functions and uses of literacy, yet they recognized hardly any inscription and only a few logos presented out of context. → Kurvers 2009
Evidence¶
Kurvers 2009¶
Kurvers, J., Van Hout, R., & Vallen, T. (2009). Print awareness of adult illiterates: a comparison with young pre-readers and low-educated adult readers. Read Writ 22, 863-887. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-008-9129-7
q2 · i? · qualitative · r1
Interviews with the 25 illiterate adults about experiences with written language, conducted in the participant's preferred language. They reported pragmatic and religious functions and use of reader/writer helpers in their families.
"All illiterate adults had a fairly good idea of the functions and uses of literacy. They knew the purpose of a newspaper, they knew about subtitling on television, they knew the uses of bills and billboards, and most of them knew the working of a calendar, agenda, or phonebook"
Discussion¶
Learner Variables¶
- Home Learning Environment — predictor: learners who differ on it differ in outcomes
Related Claims¶
- The three groups did not differ in distinguishing conventional written signs from other visual signs — related
- Non-reading children and unschooled illiterate adults both differ significantly from low-educated literate adults on most print-awareness tasks, but do not differ from each other — related
- Adult illiterates significantly outperform pre-reading children on grapheme knowledge and on writing-speech correspondence — related
- Non-readers recognize logos with additional visual features better than logos distinguished only by color and typeface — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
illiterate-adults-know-functions-not-environmental-print |
title |
Unschooled illiterate adults living in print-rich environments have good knowledge of the pragmatic functions and uses of written language but cannot read environmental print out of context |
description |
Unschooled illiterate adults living in print-rich environments have good knowledge of the pragmatic functions and uses of written language but cannot read environmental print out of context |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2009 |
recheck_by |
2014 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-17 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — kurvers-2009 |
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