To get around the city is often a challenge for non-literate persons because urban environment is overloaded by prints, many graphic forms, different semiotic representations of space (Lynch, 1960, Barthes, 1985, Mondada, 2000). To move through the urban area on its own requires social skills. Among functional aims of linguistic training for adult migrants, development of literacy specifically oriented to urban mobility is central. In the ECAEST project of research, we study modes of representation (Kress, 2019 ; Jewitt, 2017), modes of negotiation (Traverso, 2012) and modes of didactisation (Adami, 2020) of urban spaces. Thus, we collected data from a group of adult migrants in a 60-hours training module of French Second Language and Literacy Acquisition realized by two professionals in SLA and literacy teaching in Lyon.The learners are various by languages, nationalities, administrative statute, level of oral skills, but they have all a common feature : they have never been to school themselves. We collected 30 hours of training video to observe practices of training in French language and literacy. Other data are didactical supports used during the course, and two lengthy and comprehensive interviews of non-literate learners, useful to identify their strategies in urban mobility. The aim of our presentation is to show how to develop functional literacy for a pragmatic use of reading and writing in everyday life. We analyze two didactic activities, one focused on letter consciousness and the other focused on word consciousness. Especially, we highlight on the method « step by step » used by the teachers, that consist to segment, multiply, expand, take back, in the different contexts and with different documents, some linguistic and cognitive components of literacy skills in development, to enhance knowledges and skills for urban mobility. This presentation provides an empirically based perspective on the contribution of literacy acquisition of adults.