Abstract

Despite decades of efforts, alarming statistics about the literacy crisis from secondary school teachers indicate that the reading abilities of the learners are inadequate for the materials to be taught and teachers wonder if adolescents are literate enough, language-wise, to leave school and enter colleges or universities.

The common mode of teaching allows students a passive role in class which leads to their being disengaged from literacy. How we teach literacy is of great importance if students are to become empowered as lifelong readers. As individuals differ in their reading abilities, teachers must move beyond testing for comprehension if students are to embrace a new way of being literate.

Although research has taught us much about what is needed to read, it has provided much less knowledge about effective means of helping students learn to read. This study hoped to design a literacy program to respond to this need through a Reading Apprenticeship Framework as a partnership of expertise, drawing on what the teacher knows and does as a reader and on pre- university students’ often underestimated strengths as learners using exploratory mixed method design.

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