TY - JOUR A1 - Duncan, S Y1 - 2009/09/01/ IS - 3 VL - 14 N2 - This article presents the results of a qualitative study into how adult literacy learners perceive reading. Individual interviews and focus groups were used to ask 37 adult literacy learners at a London further education college what reading is. It follows a grounded theory approach to build a model, or narrative, of reading in the form of six interrelating aspects and seven findings for discussion. These findings include insights on metalanguage and phonic decoding, the distinction between how we read and how we learn to read, motivation and learning to read, the place of reading aloud, the manifold relationship between reading and time, reading as a social practice and reading as a distinctly asocial practice. Implications for the learning and teaching of adult emergent reading are presented for each finding. © 2009 Further Education Research Association. JF - Research in Post-Compulsory Education EP - 331 AV - public ID - discovery1562891 SN - 1747-5112 N1 - This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher?s terms and conditions TI - What are we doing when we read? ? adult literacy learners KW - adult literacy KW - adult education KW - reading acquisition KW - phonological awareness KW - emergent literacy KW - literacy practices UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/13596740903139420 SP - 317 ER -