[nabs-l] reliable readers

[bookwormahb at earthlink.net]

Hi all,

Well I hope your semester is going well.  I am frustrated with not getting reliable readers.
Why is it that they read better and say they have more availabality than they actually do in the interview?

I do not have an accessible grammar book.  My school cannot scan books; Nova said they would have to outsource to scan the book; even then I would not have full access to the book because you have to see what is underlined, italicized, and marked to understand the sentence, like what is the subject or what is the prepositional phrase.  The editing book has tables and other things that lend themselves to being explained by someone as well.

Anyway, so I get a reader who I thought was great; he read fluently with little mistakes; I thought he could work Monday and Wednesdays; then it became Monday because of his other part time job; that was okay; we ended up meeting at my home on weekends.

So then I found out he cannot read two evenings after all during the week because he has to watch his kids while his wife is in class.
We had talked about reading one weekend day and one day during the week. 

Well, anyway, he is uncommiting after this week because he found a full time job.
I kept working with him for a month because again he was the best reader; he projected; he was articulate and read at a good pace.  
So I figured I’d take him on weekends if that was all he could do.
At nova, you see many foreign students of Asian and Hispanic dissent.  
A few who applied either were bad readers or you could not understand them with accents. 
So after careful thinking I selected a few, one of which is this adult reader I’m describing.  He is not actually a student, but heard the job through his wife; he struck me as very mature in the interview.

Now I have to pick from a handful of backup people; I hope they are still available; we will see.

What did you do about unreliable readers?  Just get new ones?  Why is it that people cannot be up front about their schedules and other life commitments in the interview?  I don’t understand why this guy volunteered to read at my home as opposed to driving over to school, when he had to watch a kid twice a week and he knew I had class Wednesday night!

Is there any way to judge reliability and dependability in the interview?
Also, do you have them read more than one short sample?
Maybe I should; the problem I see with one sample is they  may find that subject easy because they studied a similar class or they don’t see difficult words.  
Do you ask them to demonstrate any ddirection skills in reading?  I mean things like asking them to skip something, skim for Joe Smith or something, or look up a concept from the index?
Do you all use readers to research?  Perhaps helping you skim articles for relevance?
If so, how do you know which of your readers can search databases well or has the skill to skim matterial?

Okay, just had to rant some. This is not the first schedule conflict with a reader, but its irritating.
I also had a reader with schedule conflicts because of her sport or other job.
I ask when they are available in the interview and let them know my schedule too.  I also try to bbe a little flexible about times to read but I want to do it certain days I can get to campus, preferabily days I’m already there.

Ashley