Work with adult learners

Bakery worker reading on a breakDo you work with adults who want to improve their reading and writing skills? The Reading Agency supports practitioners from the library and learning and skills sectors to help them reach out to adult literacy learners and emergent readers - people who can read but have yet to develop confidence in choosing and reading books for enjoyment.

On these pages you can find out more about how we do this by following the links:

  • The Vital Link principles, developed with the National Literacy Trust, that support libraries and learning providers working in partnership
  • Evidence to demonstrate the impact of engaging learners in reading for pleasure.

We also have a set of practical tools and programmes for librarians and adult literacy tutors:

  • The Six Book Challenge is an annual programme to encourage new readers to develop a reading habit.
  • The First Choice Books database contains more than 600 specially selected to appeal to less confident readers.
  • Our Quick Reads learning resources support tutors to use the Quick Reads titles that are issued each year as part of World Book Day. You can download these from the Resources section on this page.
  • We worked with NIACE on a set of Reading for Pleasure resources during the National Year of Reading.
  • We have a partnership with BBC Learning to ensure that libraries get fully involved in adult learning campaigns such as raw.

We are currently developing a national network of reading groups for less confident readers called Chatabout.

And we now plan to extend much of this work to embrace adults at the lowest level of literacy as we're well aware that they are underserved at present.

Our work with adult learners is endorsed by the Society of Chief Librarians and forms part of the Government's Framework for the Future Action Plan for public libraries being implemented by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). It is also supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (formerly DIUS) which is providing funding through NIACE for The Reading Agency to promote the use of reading for pleasure and links with libraries to the learning and skills sector.