Ted Power
English Language Learning and Teaching

Adult Literacy

Worksheets for beginners who are unfamiliar with the Roman Alphabet.

Basic Handwriting

Handwriting: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08

Click HERE for Handwriting Worksheet Maker. There is also a Quick Worksheet Maker where you can input just the learner's name or a short phrase such as "the quick brown fox". Another useful practice site is Basic Handwriting for Kids.

Basic Reading

Reading: 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

Basic Spelling & Phonology

Spelling & Phonics: 16 | 17

For further help with the design of adult literacy materials, see:

Guidance for Teachers

  1. The BBC Adult Literacy Handbook - edited by Chris Longley [94 pages: BBC 1975]
  2. BBC Writing and Spelling edited by Catherine Moorehouse [96 pages: BBC 1979]
  3. Teaching English as a Second Language - Sandra Nicholls & Julia Naish [96 pages: BBC 1981]
  4. Adult Literacy: A Handbook for Development Workers planning a small-scale teaching & literacy programme [185 pages: Oxfam Academic 1995]
  5. The Phonics Handbook (photocopiable) for teaching reading, writing & spelling to young children, by Sue Lloyd [218 pages: Jolley Learning 1992]
  6. The Child and the English Language Arts (p245-286 are on 'Handwriting') buy used - Mildred R. Donoghue [474 pages : W.C. Brown 1989]
  7. Parents' Guide To Handwriting - by Christopher Jarman [28 pages]
  8. The Development of Handwriting Skills: A Resource Book for Teachers | Spiral-bound 1993 | hard cover 1979 | by Christopher Jarman [136 pages]

Designing handwriting practice materials for your learners

Free handwriting fonts (Windows XP) for private or educational use only

Instructions for Windows XP users: create a new folder for the downloads on your computer's hard disk (e.g. HANDWRITING) before clicking on the download links below:

  1. Jarman handwriting font: description | DOWNLOAD Jarman.zip
    an Italic manuscript font designed to be used with Christopher Jarman's handwriting scheme for schools.
  2. Jardotty (Christopher Jarman's) dotted handwriting font: description | DOWNLOAD JARDOTTY_Repaired.TTF
    an Italic manuscript font with a tiny arrow to show where to start and in which direction to write when tracing the letters.

After the Jarman.zip has downloaded, right click with your mouse on the icon of the zip file and select 'Extract All'. Then select the extracted 'Jarman TT icon (TrueType Font File)' and copy it into C:/WINDOWS/FONTS. You will now be able to select, size and use the Jarman handwriting font within Windows based word processing applications (e.g. Microsoft Word).

The Jardotty dotted handwriting font is offered as a Zip download on a few Internet sites, but the TrueType font has been corrupted and cannot be copied into C:/WINDOWS/FONTS. The second download listed above (JARDOTTY_Repaired.TTF) is the repaired file for this TrueType Font. It does not need to be extracted from a Zip file and the download should copy straight into the folder with all your other fonts (e.g. C:/WINDOWS/FONTS) without any problems.

School web site design

Many designers of school web sites make use of the text font 'Microsoft Comic Sans MS' since it is present on most computers accessing the Internet whether these work under the Windows, Mac or Unix operating systems.

Although categorized as a 'cursive font' and attractive to children, 'Microsoft Comic Sans MS' is not the best model for handwriting pratice since the joins which are needed between most letters in good handwriting are not realised.

Previously, I made the mistake of attempting to use more closely joined fonts such as 'Brush Script MT' and 'Signet Roundhand'. These are not dedicated handwriting fonts (for example 'rounded letter shapes' in 'Brush Script MT' are not very round) and provide poor models for handwriting practice. Just because a TrueText font is present on a web designer's computer, it does not follow that it will display on the computers of other people visiting a web site. If web page designers specify fonts in their code which Internet users have not got on their own computer systems, then font display will revert to a normal font i.e. one which is not intended.

The only way round this (apart from the impressive matrix of dots used by the designer of www.handwritingworksheets.com) is to embed a dedicated handwriting font such as JARMAN or JARDOTTY as a layer of TEXT within a GRAPHIC IMAGE.

To do this, choose FILE and NEW within a graphics application such as Adobe's Photoshop Elements. The default setting is usually a white background. Set the WIDTH as 9 inches, the HEIGHT as 0.5 inches and the RESOLUTION at 72 dots per inch. This will give you a white strip i.e. a graphic image into which you can embed a layer of text. Select the TEXT icon and set your handwriting Fonts (e.g. Jarman 30 point or Jardotty 24 point) within the graphics application where your white strip is displayed. Add just one line of text. Select 'FILE' and 'Save for Web' and save as a low-quality JPG file. To produce the graphic content for a handwriting web page which will print onto a single sheet of A4, you will need no more than seven of these strips or graphic images, each with one line of text (in your handwriting font) embedded.

You may be worried that seven strips or graphic images per worksheet could be hungry on web space and make web pages slow to display themselves. However, each of the seven JPG images should not have a file-size of more than about 2 KB. There are many single pictures on web pages with file sizes of 14 KB or more. Although these practice sheets may take a while to produce, people learning handwriting for the first time will find that 7 lines of text is quite enough to occupy themselves for a good session. With well modelled materials, handwriting practices become fit to offer learners. Teachers then have a case for insisting on legibility and neatness. Points to insist on may include:

  1. The formation and direction of the letters: all letters are made with circles, part circles and straight lines. All vertical and all straight lines start at the top. Form the vertical lines of a letter before putting in the horizontal ones (horizontal movements go from left to right). Circles or parts of circles which are made in an anticlockwise direction begin at the two o'clock position (proceeding to the left), while circles or parts of circles which are made in a clockwise direction begin at the ten o'clock position (proceeding to the right). Note that teaching learners to write their names in capital letters (or whole words not normally produced in upper case letters) is considered damaging to handwriting later on. Most copying tasks should involve mainly lower case letters. Use upper case letters according to the normal rules of capitalization and at no greater frequency.
  2. The spacing &/or joins between letters and the space between words: the web site at www.handwritingworksheets.com allows you to tailor your own practice materials, helping with handwriting by offering learners guidelines to letter formation, orientation and spacing. Skeleton alphabets are often used as the model for early handwriting practice. However, note that some educationalists recommend that schools lead towards a 'cursive handwriting style' from the very first lessons.
  3. The height of letters: tall letters such as 'b', 'f', 'h', 'k' and 'l' should be about twice the height of small letters such as c, e and o. Medium sized letters such as d and t should be in between. There are arguments for using plain paper with young children attempting to form the letters of the alphabet for the fist time; correct penhold, hand movement and orientation pose a sufficient challenge. A little later, ruled guidelines can be used to indicate the positioning and relative sizes of the letters. Such guidelines are printed in many published handwriting workbooks. You can also generate and print this stationery (complete with copying task!) by entering a word or a short phrase in the input box at www.handwritingworksheets.com. When printing these worksheets, it is often best to select 'Landscape' as your page orientation, especially if you have entered a short phrase as opposed to a single word of text. Take care if you are drawing the guidelines yourself. If you place them too close together (as found in narrowly ruled exercise books) you may be cramping your learners' handwriting. Space them too far apart and you could slow handwriting down and make it unnecessarily untidy, as your learners unnaturally stretch their upper case letters to meet your upper guideline. These guiding features commonly consist of 'continuous parallel guidelines' defining the optimum height of upper case and tall lower case letters. The space between these continuous guidelines is important. If they are too close together (as found in narrowly ruled exercise books), this may result in cramped handwriting, while if these lines are too far apart handwriting speed will be unnecessarily slowed if learners feel they have to stretch their upper case letters to meet the top line.
  4. The use of Guidelines (i.e. ruled lines) (as found in handwriting workbooks): a straight 'dotted guideline' is often included, usually running half-way between the continuous parallel ones. In many handwriting schemes, the space between this 'dotted line' and 'the lower of the two continuous parallel lines' defines any of the following:
    • the optimum height of the rounded part of lower-case letters (b c d e g h m n o p q s)
    • the vertical length (before dotting) of letters such as 'i' and 'j'
    • the place for crossing letters such as 'f' and 't'
    • the height of lower case letters such as u, v, w, x, y and z.
  5. The lower strokes of lower case letters such as g, j, p, q and y are positioned below the lower of the two continuous parallel guidelines.
  6. The alignment and slant of letters: while letters leaning in different directions reduce legibility, keeping all downstrokes parallel helps to improves it.

    7. Learners need some practice in the recognition of handwritten text. Once that they have been exposed to good samples of other people's handwriting, additional practice might include deciphering badly formed handwriting and recognising the obstacles to legibility. However, for the purpose of teaching reading, the school web site should contain the common fonts seen in books, newspapers, other printed materials and on general web sites. So common today is the use of word processors and machines for texting friends, that apart from the teacher's handwriting on the white board (if the Start By Writing - suitable for Arabic language backgrounds - John Naunton [88 pages: Longman 1985]

  7. Basic Handwriting in English - suitable for Arabic language backgrounds - Bernard Hartley & Peter Viney [62 pages: Nelson 1982]
  8. Handwriting: Work Book - Bright and Piggot [32 pages: Cambridge 1976]
  9. Handwriting: Teachers Book - Bright and Piggot [34 pages: Cambridge 1976]
  10. Practical Punctuation - Ian Gordon [80 pages Heinemann 1978]
  11. Collins Good Punctuation - Graham King [192 pages: Collins 2004]

For young learners (aged 12 to 16)

  1. Rainbow 2000: Beginning Handwriting Skills - young learners within an Arabic-world context [24 pages: Macmillan ELT 1991]
  2. English Punctuation (Usborne Better) - well illustrated rules and practice for young learners aged 12 to 16 [32 pages: Usborne 2003]

For small children (aged 5 and 6)---------including early reading / synthetic phonics

  1. Handwriting Skills: Copybooks (Paperback 1994) | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | - Christopher Jarman [32 pages: Nelson Thornes Ltd 1994]
  2. Learn Cursive Writing - Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
  3. Learn Reading Skills - Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
  4. Learn Phonic Spelling - Jillian Harker & Geraldine Taylor [32 pages: Ladybird 1994] - National Curriculum English Stage 1 (children)
  5. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 1+: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 books, 1 of each title)
  6. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 2: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title)
  7. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 3: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title)
  8. Oxford Reading Tree: More Stage 3: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title)
  9. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 4: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title) (Pack of 6)
  10. Oxford Reading Tree: More Stage 4: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title)
  11. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 5: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 books, 1 of each title)
  12. Oxford Reading Tree: Stage 6: Songbirds Phonics: by Julia Donaldson. Pack (6 Books, 1 of Each Title)
  13. Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 1 - for very young children - Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1988 ]
  14. American Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 1 - for very young children - Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1990 ]
  15. Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 2 - for very young children - Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1988 ]
  16. American Get Ready!: Handwriting Book Level 2 - for very young children - Felicity Hopkins [32 pages: Oxford 1990 ]

Stages 1+ to 6 of the Oxford Reading Tree cover the National Curriculum Strategy - Word Level requirements for Key Stage 1 (5 to 6 year-old children). The materials provide systematic practice of synthetic phonics: consonant clusters, sound segmentation and blending. Stages 1 to 6 (of songbirds or e-songbirds) cover all 44 English phonemes (vowel and consonant sounds) and offer activities to develop new reading skills, contextualising phonic learning and increasing comprehension of the written word. This is a fun approach. Julia Donaldson is one of the most successful living writers of stories and educational materials for very young children, including The Gruffalo and The Snail and the Whale.

Teaching small children (aged 5 and 6) to read via the interactive Whiteboard using e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROMs

  1. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 1+-2: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Single-user Licence
  2. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 1+-2: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Unlimited-user Licence
  3. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 3-4: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Single-user Licence
  4. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 3-4: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Unlimited-user Licence
  5. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 5-6: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Single-user Licence
  6. Oxford Reading Tree: Stages 5-6: e-songbirds Phonics: CD-ROM Unlimited-user Licence

Note: all the above Oxford Reading Tree titles are designed for the UK National Curriculum Key Stage 1 (5 to 6 year-old children)

Are you equipped to teach a child or an adult basic reading skills?

Is it worth using phonics to teach reading when so many of the English sounds can be represented by a variety of spellings?

Two research projects conducted in 1966 focusing on American English suggest "yes":
1. Paul R. Hanna et al., Phoneme-Grapheme Correspondences as Cues to Spelling Improvement (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office)
2. Richard L. Venezky and Ruth H. Weir. A Study of Selected Spelling-to-Sound Correspondence Patterns. (Cooperative Research Project No. 3090. Stanford University. Cal).

These studies established that American English orthography is alphabetically based at least eighty per cent of the time and that the unit phoneme-grapheme correspondences can be predicted upon sound bases alone about ninety per cent of the time.

Computational linguistics has grown of age since the above studies were conducted. It is not difficult now to do your own research, using either British or American English phonemes and spellings as given in either the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary (17th Edition) or the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary both with interactive CDs which allow 'wildcard searches for spellings', based on combinations of phonemes. You can test out any phoneme in any possible position in the word for variant spellings, and assess the difficulty of reading the target sound correctly.

Should the method of teaching reading be limited to phonics?

Clearly not, and authors of reading schemes such as Oxford Reading Tree Songbirds Phonics are far more eclectic in their methodology.

For example, the phonics focus of Stage 6: Songbirds: Paula the Vet is the sound as in the first syllable of the word "August". However, Paula The Vet includes practice of the sound using the variant spellings "or", "au", "aw", "ore", "oor" and "a".

Recognising 'whole words' visually (look and say methodology) plays a significant part in learning to read, especially as reading speed becomes greater. However, it remains the case, nearly always, that the phonetic and graphetic environments of 'single letters' or 'combinations of letters' making single sounds, provide excellent clues to the target sound.

What may go wrong educationally and socially if phonics is continued for too long?

Firstly, reading aloud is a very limited representation of the skill of reading. For the most part, reading is done silently. A 'sub-vocaliser' is usually going to be a slow and inefficient reader, and may prove to be an annoyance to peers who wish to read in silence.

Phonics is often practised with single words. If words connect to make a longer text, the latter is usually a story or something which allows a linear reading-style.

To read aloud well, a learner needs to be aware of the differences between the 'spoken' and 'written' channels. Spoken English involves features such as assimilation where the choice of phoneme used at the end of particular words depends on the phoneme beginning the next word. In these instances, phonics can badly mislead, resulting in stilted speech.

To read aloud well, also requires the use of syllable & sentence stress and intonation. Phonics may allow some success in reading aloud in a syllable-timed language such as Spanish. However, in the context of a stress-timed language such as English, phonics may result in disastrous pronunciation. Learners (e.g. adults) who may not have already spent the first five years of their lives immersed in the oral part of the target language, should not depend on phonics as a guide to how the language is spoken.

An efficient and flexible silent-reader looks beyond individual words and sentences and will be familiar with discourse markers and methods of topic development within paragraphs. Different reasons for reading affect anticipation and bring different reference skills into play. Reading 'a menu' or 'a bus timetable' differs considerably from the linear treatment given to a story text. Reading styles are several and need to be sensitive to purpose, content, text-type and layout.

Phonics may help a learner to decipher content in the very early part of the literacy programme. However, excessive focus on phonemes as components within words, especially if weak forms go unrecognised, has a very limited amount to do with 'the skill of reading' and provides a misleading and stilted model for oral production.

There are very good reasons to 'read aloud' to children. It is a step towards interesting them in books and 'radio & tv broadcasts with literary content'. Phonics has very little to do with the value of reading aloud. Adults reading to their children would do best to focus on the features of spoken English: sounds, weak forms, rhythms, contractions, sentence stress, placement of the tonic syllable, tunes etc. The actors who undertake audio-book recordings are usually able to adopt different voices for different characters. Those telling stories on children's TV can give plenty of play to gesture and facial expression, which also help to make a story.

My own graded reader for beginners and elementary with practice exercises

suitable for learners aged 15 and over

Classroom activities and games to encourage reading and writing

The following materials were written with children in mind, though the tasks are functional and can easily be adapted to the needs of other age groups.

Many books about teaching writing focus on "what?" and "how?". Jill and Charles Hadfield believe that in order to encourage children or adults to write, lesson tasks should emphasize "who for?" and "why?".

  1. Simple Reading Activities - by Charles & Jill Hadfield [ 72 pages: Oxford Basics 2000]
    30 activities at elementary level, complete with ideas for boardwork and pictures teachers can copy. All the activities are simple and adaptable. They are particularly well-suited to classrooms where there are few resources apart from a board, paper, and pens - and of course the teacher and the learners themselves.
  2. Simple Writing Activities - by Charles & Jill Hadfield [ 72 pages: Oxford Basics 2001]
    The two Oxford Basics books (above) are organised into 30 useful topic areas eg. numbers, food and drink, describing people. Each book has the same format with units clearly laid out in the form of an actual lesson plan giving ideas for activities, checking comprehension, pronunciation points and follow-up activities.
  3. Reading Games - Photocopiable ELT Games and Activities by Charles & Jill Hadfield [114 pages: Longman Nelson 1995]
    pairwork, small group and whole class games and activities, using reading texts from newspapers, magazines, notes, maps etc.
  4. Writing Games - Photocopiable ELT Games and Activities by Charles & Jill Hadfield [116 pages: Longman Nelson 1997]
    contains descriptions, brainstorming, poems, story writing, postcard exchanges, etc. Review.

Producing your own reading tasks (selecting texts relevant to your learners' needs)

Production of your own materials is time-consuming, but learners are most likely to be encouraged to read if practice texts and tasks reflect their needs i.e. their likely reasons for reading. In this way, the reading lesson can emphasize who for?" and "why?" as well as what?" and "how?". The following book saved me considerable time by providing an index of exercise-types and numerous model texts and tasks:

In order to consider a wide range of reasons for reading, teachers producing their own materials should be aware of the many different reading techniques (corresponding with "what" and "why" we read), different aims and functions within reading texts, and the different exercise-types needed to serve the full development of reading skills. Developing Reading Skills contains a most accessible 23-page introduction which highlights all these points. It is followed by numerous examples of texts and exercise-types, providing helpful models for teachers wishing to tune reading texts and tasks to their learners' needs. Most of texts used in the examples assume a certain level of literacy, though there is no reason why most of the exercise-types could not be used with texts which are less demanding linguistically. Françoise Grellet's classic should be compulsory reading on all CELTA and DELTA TEFL courses and should also prove invaluable for anybody planning to develop literacy materials beyond the basic level of decoding the letters of the alphabet. The key to producing motivating reading lesson materials is an interesting and appropriate text and an interesting and appropriate task.

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