American Literacy Council, Web Site for Literacy Information

Welcome from the President

On behalf of the Board Members we offer you a warm and sincere welcome. We're pleased you're visiting this warehouse of information about literacy. I'm standing here high above our Boulder Colorado literacy research center. A second Center is North of New York City at Croton-On-Hudson.

Be sure to read about our mission and goals. If you arrived here after querying on a search engine, you'll find we've uncovered innovative and surprising concepts related to literacy.

After more than 150 years of scholarly research and publications issued from this organization, we continue to seek and find tools, concepts, and action plans that help counter the dismal literacy statistics found in most English-speaking countries.

More than 22 million people in the US can't distinguish one medicine label from another. Unable to compare two newspaper ads, they can't determine the better deal. The pockets of illiteracy are known. Survey numbers have been broken down to State and County levels.

ALC Board Members have agreed that this web site should be a portal to world-wide literacy innovations and concepts. If you search the Internet for "ESL" for example, you'll get nearly eight million results. However, most teachers, parents, and literacy coaches will rarely see more than the top ten of those eight million listings.

Consider this ALC site to be a portal, your doorway that opens upward from the bottom of those search lists, attempting to glean and filter from wide-spread Institutions and scholars surprising new solutions, innovative technologies, and tools for engaging more boldly in the battle for literacy. We even have a few products of our own that you may find useful. I can be reached here: PresidentALC2@AmericanLiteracy.com

Warm Regards, Robert Alan Mole,
President

Similar to a ship's window, this web site enables you to peer out from your private world of teaching, parenting, coaching, or literacy center management. There's an ocean of literacy information out there - over 35 million items on the Internet search engines related to illiteracy, literacy, ESL, dyslexia, phonics, and spelling reform that you could view and analyze - although not in your lifetime.

Therefore we've selected from that
storehouse, specific items that
can lead you to further
exploration. As this site
continues to fill up
with pointers and links
to the larger world out
there, you'll be em-
powered to move
further in your study of
literacy-related topics.

On this site we've
collected scholarly
articles as well as
practical "how-to" case
studies. There are recordings, videos, conceptual debates, sources for software packages, links to classroom materials, lists of funding sources, professional organizations, statistical studies, and examples of innovative initiatives.

A high percentage of our visitors get here by using one or another of the common search engines. Yahoo/Overture, Google, and MSN Search are used most frequently. We know the audience is vast because the Nielson company and other rating companies keep counts on the searching traffic. You have many intellectual partners if you're concerned about literacy. The following topic areas reveal how many people did searches in June of 2007 in these subject areas:

SEARCHES PER MONTH

ESL and EFL	53,840	Major topic for educators
Spelling	45,000	Skewed by searches for "Spelling Bee"
Dyslexia	36,381	Major topic for special ed staff
Phonics	14,185	Critical learning factor
Reading	11,862	Comprehension evaluations
Eng as 2nd Lang	6,848	ESL not abbreviated for these searches
Reading Worksheets	3,315	In demand for each grade level

Scroll up to see the menu on the left side. Hover your mouse on the various items shown there to see a description of the contents for each area. Bookmark this page to assist an easy return to this site.