Functional Literacy of Clerical Workers: Strategies for Minimizing Literacy Demands and Maximizing Available Information.

An ethnographic study of five clerk-typists and five applications clerks in a large federal agency incluaed observations, interviews, and a 3-week job literacy program. Both in their performance on job tasks and in the tests and exercises in the literacy program, the clerks demonstrated a number of strategies by which they quickly locate information: sorting, avoiding, searching, relying on oral information, and using manuals. In sorting, checklists (that were developed by another group of employees) that bore little resemblance to the tasks were reorganized by the clerks. Avoidance strategies included making sure all necessary information was included before starting a task, looking for key words, and looking for the expected sequence of documents. In searching, the use of key words, of the sequence of papers within a file, and of format clues enabled the clerks to locate and verify information effectively. The clerks relied on asking for help orally rather than attempting to use manuals, as they learned their jobs by the trial and error of doing them, not through formal instruction. Homemade "manuals" were more widey used than agency manuals. The importance of ethnographic studies of literacy, which illustrate the degree to which people exceed others' expectations of their literacy skills, was identified. (A nine-item reference list is included, along with eight examples of clerical tasks.) (CML) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EMS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Paper presented to Annual Meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, New York City, December 28, 1981 FUNCTIONAL LITERACY OF CLERICAL WORKERS: Strategies for Minimizing Literacy Demands and Maximizing Available Information U.S. DIPARTII1NT Of INCAT0011 Ot ql teurarenel Plesirce IM Idronwerwi TiONALASTMENFORMATION 115Tes dOcument hes wen reproduced es racy.: Item the WWI Os Co6 IMMO" brib C maw enmesh:Al 60: midi to tinotowe 6WW:hipt FICODSLIOIKA 6taltty tit! Vont 01 wee Of oP.C41 ended al d X tt ritnl do not 11010111111titY trtinOrtt official OEM mew. or pprrol PIO Literacy provides both the process and the product of clerical work: it is the means by which clerks perform their tasks and the products which ra4 result from them. Thus, literacy tasks are of crucial importance in clerical Jo Ann Crandall Center for Applied Linguistics -PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY