Appelson (1984) found that by combining a variety of techniques and strategies with different kinds of staffing, retention rates increased to 80 percent. Approaches included language experience, assisted reading, sustained silent reading, tape recorders, personal dictionaries, commercial materials, newspapers, pairing/peer instruction, group activities and games. Staff included instructors, counsellors and volunteer tutors working together to provide a supportive environment for learners.

Students need to know where they are going and how they are doing. Benchmarks and tracking procedures should be provided to assist learners in reaching realistic, attainable goals. Frequent encouragement and verbal strokes are needed so that learners feel progress is being made and their morale is boosted. Continual communication with learners is important and especially with the quiet shy ones. Some of the latter are too diffident to ask for help, but this project has shown that some of them are unhappy when neglected.

When learners appear not to be making progress, adequate counselling and assessment help must be made available. Instructors and some tutors will need to have more specialized training to help adults with learning disabilities and special needs. Ross and Smith (1990) provide a multi-level service model for adult basic educators to serve learning disabled adults.

Such measures as those suggested above will help to retain those adults who enter ABE programs.

A PARTING COMMENT

As I write these words, I think of Daniel (not his real name) who was 32 years old and who told me he cried when he was doing his math -it was so difficult. He was Native and in a Native literacy program which also had a Life Skills component. Ibis was a pilot program for Natives and its success was crucial to the program's continuance. The class supported each other. For the sake of those who were still to come, they wanted to succeed. They rallied round Daniel and encouraged him. He was making progress, but a little more slowly than the others and it seemed likely that he would have to go through the course a second time. This he was willing to do in order to complete the work necessary for his goal. Without that support Daniel would have been a dropout and one more person lost to ABE.

Practitioners may draw their own conclusions from the results and suggestions presented in this report. If there is something somewhere which strikes a responsive chord and causes reflection, or suggests another way of looking at or doing things, then the voices of the people interviewed will not have been raised in vain.