Case Studies: Learner Testimonies
Perhaps one of the best ways we can reflect on our experience is by sharing some of the feedback we have received from the adult learners using these web resources through Citizen Literacy, which in turn puts the spotlight on their voices and insights from having engaged in this form of digital learning (often in conjunction with face-to-face learning). These testimonies have been collected by interviews as part of the evaluation process for funded research projects:
Citizen Literacy User-Centred Evaluation (Nesta 2021).
“I went on YouTube and I saw a video cos it was like for kids… there’s nothing for adults…so it sang the words out…but this app it’s like for grownups so it’s much more better…it’s refreshing”
“When you can’t read and write you feel always small in a box and you put yourself in the box forevermore…it’s very difficult to come out and climb out and say ‘ok I’m gonna do this”
“I feel more knowledgeable, I feel that, because I’m learning every week, I can turn the app on and I can start doing it…it helps you cos we only go to college once a week so the app when you got into it you’ve got it there every day”
Citizen Literacy – UfI Final Evaluation Report March 2021 Learners Feedback – Interview from Audio Transcriptions (UfI 2021)
“I done it [the question] and it said it was right and I felt so relieved so happy inside.”
“erm I will go out, we got a shop called (name) the shop down here and I never can remember its name so what I did is I spelled the letters out you know, and I remembered it…I told my daughter she said ‘where are you mum’ and I went ‘I’m in that shop’ ‘what shop’ and I went ‘ok yeah’ I was there that’s it and I spelled it out read it to her what shop I was in but I felt so good inside.”
“The reading part, I will read something now like and if I know it’s a mistake, I will go over it a few times… I do go through it a couple of times just to read it properly, write it properly”
“I’ve got a lot better on that app by using it. I can make mistakes on it.”
“The app…it makes you think, and you can always go back you can say ‘alright I don’t want to know today I’ll go back tomorrow’ you can go back to it all the time you don’t have to go ‘oh I’m going to lose it or it’s not going to be there anymore.”
“my son called me yesterday and he asked how was my learning was getting on and I should get really good he asked me to spell EastEnders and I spelt it without thinking nothing I just felt straight away and thank you thank you thank you.”
“My tutor told me about the app and I went into it the first [lesson] and it was brilliant honest and truth I was amazed because all the words what you’ve been learning are on that, and even if you get it wrong ‘please try again’ and you do it again and then it makes you think what is the word, like stamp that’s what I got muddled up with and erm oh god what is it and I couldn’t think and I sat down at the computer and said ‘no you have to look at it properly’ so I done it and it said it was right and I felt so relieved so happy inside.”
Case Studies: Tutor Testimonies
Here we reflect on our experience of working with tutors, volunteers and advocates by sharing some of the feedback we have received from their use of our web resources through Citizen Literacy, which in turn puts the spotlight on their voices and insights from having engaged in this form of digital teaching (often in conjunction with face-to-face learning).
It is worth noting that our web analytics reporting indicates that our App is being used widely around the world in variety of contexts. The personal testimony from an ESL / ESOL tutor (please see video links in the references section) describe using our App with Afghan refugees. Our next phase of work hopes to share international feedback on the use of our digital and printed resources. Many of the testimonies shared here have been collected by interviews as part of the evaluation process for funded research projects in the UK:
Citizen Literacy – UfI Final Evaluation Report March 2021 – Tutor Interviews and Survey Responses (UfI 2021)
“The app is great, it fills a big gap and having a fully integrated app and course materials is just what a tutor needs. A lot of good work has previously been done by many people, but resources and materials are distributed all over the internet and in different publications and it’s tiring and time-consuming to find it all and fit it together – a fully integrated course like this solves that problem.
The structure and the sequence of activities are very good, making it easy for the learner to self-study and progress at a speed which is best suited to him/her.
It is really good that the app includes a combination of listening to identify a word and speaking a given word. This is missing from many apps.
I think the app is well designed and should be easy for learners to use in my literacy class. It is welcome that there are no distracting animations, it treats the learners like adults, and having the consistency of using the same app throughout the course will facilitate access, making it much easier for learners to achieve autonomy in study.
Many of our literacy learners have come to us through our ESOL assessments – so it is good that this course targets that group as well,”
Donal, Adult Education Tutor, London
“I did love the ‘well done, you’re doing well’ I thought that was great, there was a lot of affirmation throughout it… I think the confidence level will come…by being perhaps scaffolded a little bit with a bit of support.”
Sally, advocate.
“I liked the encouraging feedback of the ‘well done you’re doing great’ I think learners really need to hear that especially if they’re doing it on their own, I think this particular learner that I’ve been supporting that would be really boosting for him just to hear that”
Emma, teacher.
“You could see there was an awful lot of pedagogy and thought process and really it came from a really hugely strong base”.
Sally, advocate.
“Again, I’ve seen it working with students who they thought they’d never be able to learn using a computer or they’ll never be able to learn using an app you know their mobile phone, but they can, and it just takes a bit of time”
Blair, teacher.
Personal Testimonies
“The handbooks provide a clear and friendly introduction to the program it’s rationale structure and contents with detailed lesson plans broken down into exercises step-by-step lesson plan activity guides and teaching tips to get tutors up and running quickly, it’s exhaustive [with] very good lesson plans”
“So, there are also free resources for us [tutors] if we’re just starting or we’re going back to teaching literacy, so on the website you’ve got free tutor training and development resources free training guides and sequence for new tutors, a post 16 phonics approach toolkit, now this is this is huge. But it’s fantastic if you’re beginning with literacies if you’re just starting off. It takes a very structured approach and as I was saying before if you don’t know your phonemes from your graphemes or if you don’t know your IPA from whatever then this is a very good place to start.
“So, it can be used by useful tutors and others to develop reading and writing speaking and listening skills in their low literacy level learners and as I was saying it’s a program designed to be adopted adapted and delivered by others. It’s an integrated set of digital paper digital and paper learning resources to support tutors and their students so you’ve got the tutor handbooks the learner workbooks you’ve got the tutor platform and, their words not mine, the revolutionary citizen literacy learner web app, which is quite a quite a mouthful, but I do actually agree with it!
NATECLA Scotland 2022-23 Workshops. Ciaran: An ESOL Group Tutor Fife, Scotland (NATECLA Scotland 2022-23)
“There is no reason why this could not be used in Schools.”
Kevin, Special Educational Needs Teacher 2024
Personal Interview
“This could be useful for economical CPD training in literacy for teachers to develop their literacy teaching skills at a time of funding cuts.”
Jon, Primary School Head Teacher Bristol 2024
Personal Interview
Feedback
A growing list of examples of feedback, observation, comment from from Learners, Tutors, Volunteers and Advocates for Adult Literacy education. Also, extracts from (and downloads of) independent funders evaluation reports from 2019 up to to the present. Gives a good ideas of the iterative and learner-centred nature of our R&D activities.
Video: Citizen Literacy Class- Spelling and Peer learning: Digital Lifelines Project.
Video showing how the free learner web app can be used in class on a large touch screen. Here the learner is learning how to spell words and using phonics to relate the sounds to the spellings.
Audio: A volunteer reflects on using Citizen Literacy resources: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
A moving account of the benefits of working with adult learners – both for them and the volunteers. Also shows how volunteers can use Citizen Literacy resources to become confident literacy tutors
Audio: A learner reflects on using the Citizen Literacy resources in class: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
A learner explains how attending a class that uses Citizen Literacy resources has given him confidence again about writing and learning.
Audio:A volunteer discusses the importance of making learners feel safe and the effects confidence building: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
A volunteer discusses working with adult literacy learners in a Glasgow charity and how making everyone feel welcome and safe to talk about literacy problems is so important to make progress and grow confidence in learners who have often very negative past experience of education. Gives an example of an individual learner who is good at some things but needs to improve in others. This is often the case with adult literacy learners – they have what some tutors call ‘spiky literacy profiles’ i.e. strong in some areas and weak in others. Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
Video: Learning to use phonics to help spell words: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
Video:A learner using the Citizen Literacy web app to learn about how to spell the same sound in different ways in different words: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
Video:We use letters of the alphabet printed on card cut-outs in class to help learners blend the sounds of letter combinations (sounding out)to help spell words. You can see the learner here spelling the words ‘moon‘ and ‘most‘ and learning where to use capital letters. These simple tools – letters on card cut-outs – are highly effective. The act of touching, seeing, moving, and sounding out the letters helps encode the relationship between letters / sounds / spelling / words. Touching and moving things is called ‘haptic‘ learning. Technology does not have to be fancy to be effective! :-). So here we have sight, sound, touch, movement, social interaction and teacher feedback – powerful stuff: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.
Video: In this video the learner is working on the free app in class with a volunteer tutor. In this app activity new sounds and ways of spelling them are being introduced to the learner. The learners hears the new sound and then a sentence is spoken with the new sound in one of the words. The sentence is displayed in a mixed up form, the word with the new sound has the spelling of the new sound highlighted – in this first case the sound is the /oo/ sound in the word ‘cook’. The learner has to put the sentence in the right order. Note the encouraging (i.e. affective) nature of the online tutor feedback: Digital Lifelines Project 2024.