ABSTRACT
This chapter examines both qualitative and quantitative approaches to look closely at the demands of reading in trade’s education through interviews with tutors and learners and a corpus-based analysis of the texts in carpentry, plumbing, fabrication, and automotive technology. It deals with an analysis of interview and questionnaire data of the kinds, amounts, and examples of reading texts in the four main trades, along with bricklaying and electro-technology. The chapter explores for types of reading and draws on challenges, and shows how tutors help with reading and reading once learners are in the workplace and investigates vocabulary load. Reading was seen as a more solitary activity by the tutors, compared to the interactive classes in WelTec. One of the plumbing tutors reported that most of the students hated reading, and that ‘many of them have not done well at school and that’s why they go into the trades’.
