Adult ESL Learners

Annotated Bibliography

Baer, John, et al. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences. (2009). Basic reading skills and the literacy of America's least literate adults Washington, DC. Retrieved from .

After conducting the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) with over 19,000 American adults, the U.S. Department of Education published this statistical analysis of America’s adult literacy in 2009, with the last survey of its kind last published in 1992. The amount of time that passed between the two surveys says a lot about where literacy lies on the American government’s priorities list. The study gave an initial background questionnaire, followed by some core literacy tasks comprised of seven questions which, if not answered correctly, led to a second round of more intense testing.

The assessment participants would be given either the Main Literacy Assessment or the Adult Literacy Supplemental Assessment (ALSA), depending on their scores in the initial phases of assessment. Then all participants were given the Fluency Addition to NAAL (FAN), which measured basic reading skills. There were four levels in which participants could score: Below Basic, Basic, Intermediate, Proficient. Almost half of all adults that scored Below Basic could only read fewer than 60 words per minute. That is only the highlighted amount of words on this page. The participants who scored Proficient could read 106 or more words per minute. It was also interesting that the results were interpreted through the divisions of “English, Spanish, and Other Languages”. I thought it was unfair to not even count other groups’ languages as separate categories – the conductors of the assessment just lumped all other languages besides Spanish and English together.

Bakhari, Maqsud Alam, et al. (2010). Evaluation of adult literacy programs in psychological perspectives/evaluation des programmes d'alphabetisation des adultes en perspectives psychologiques. Canadian Social Science, 6(5), Retrieved from .

Bokhari, et al, problematize adult literacy programs and then present a case study they conducted in an adult literacy program environment to prove their theories. The researchers emphasize the necessary consideration of adult educational psychology and how it differs from child psychology in a school environment. Adult learners should be treated differently than children in a learning environment, especially on the level of power distance and authority. In their case study, researchers found that the adult learners felt that their teachers thought they were superior to their students – which the teachers confirmed as true.

There was also an emphasis on using curriculum material that is relevant to the learners’ lives – which should be a rule in every learning environment. If the curriculum is irrelevant to the learner, than the learner’s motivation to learn dramatically decreases. Most learners in the study wanted to learn English to develop skills that would help them get a well-paying job, but they were not using material that would help them do that at all. The curriculum and teaching must be meaningful to the students. Other issues involved the irregularity of the same teacher and teachers’ rude behavior toward students. There have been studies that show if you have the same teacher – and there is an amicable teacher-student relationship – for a longer period of time, it significantly helps the student to learn.

Bleakley, Hoyt & Aimee Chin. (2004). Language skills and earnings: evidence from childhood immigrants. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(2), Retrieved from .

Bleakley and Chin conducted a statistical analysis on the effects that age of arrival has on the correlation between language skills and earnings. In accordance with individual immigrants accounted for in a 1990 U.S. Census, there was a positive effect English language skills had on wages. Their findings suggest that timing of migration and its effect on English language skills are incredibly important to a variety of different outcomes – and they suggest that policy makers should be mindful of this. English language skills increase to higher levels through longer years of schooling, and Bleakley and Chin suggest that adult English classes may be inadequate in assisting immigrant wages to converge with those of natives. They also suggest that programs aimed at middle and high school students would be more beneficial and effective.

For my research, I thought a study involving the correlation between English language skills and earnings would be relevant since I am tutoring immigrant adults in English. I was, however, surprised that the researchers of this study suggested that it may be better to focus on middle and high school students’ English language classes to better help even out the wage difference between immigrant and native workers. It sounds as if the researchers are implying that supplying efforts toward teaching adult immigrants English is a waste of time because they are too old to learn anything. I know the children are more likely to pick up a new language quicker than adults, but that does not mean that people stop trying to teach those adults altogether.

Condelli, Larry, et al. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Educational Sciences. (2010). The impact of a reading intervention for low-literate adult ESL learners. Washington, DC: Retrieved from .

The U.S. Department of Education presents a study of the adult literacy in America, involving an intervention that conducted a study on the basal reader Sam and Pat, Volume I for adult ESL learners. In accordance with the 2008 program year statistics from the U.S. Department of Education, the executive summary states that 44% of the 2.4 million students attending the government funded adult education program in the U.S. were ESL students. Of these ESL students, about 185,000 were at the lowest “beginning literacy” ESL level. The executive summary acknowledges and names other home languages that are spoken in the States other than English and Spanish, which I was glad to read. It is also acknowledged that there is “little rigorous research that identifies effective instruction” for adult ESL learners.

The definition of a systematic approach to literacy development for adult ESL learners included the following items: “(1) a comprehensive instructional scope that includes direct instruction in phonics, fluency, vocabulary development and reading comprehension, (2) a strategic instruction sequence, (3) a consistent instructional format, (4) easy-to-follow lesson plans, and (5) strategies for differentiated instruction” (p. vi). This is a good list to follow, but I think that it is very general, as well as very similar to what a teacher would want to do in any classroom. There should be more studies conducted that address the specific needs of adult ESL classrooms/programs.

Hanson, F., Lomax, R., & Perlman, R. (1984). A structural equation model of second language acquisition for adult learners. The Journal of Experimental Education, 53(1), 29-39. .

Although this article from The Journal of Experimental Education is older than most of these other articles, it is significant because it marks the beginning of an evolving curriculum for adult learners in ESL programs. The article reports a study done in an adult ESL classroom where researchers evaluate a model of second language acquisitions for adult ESL learners. In their study, the researchers consider these variables: sociocultural background, cognitive ability (in the first language), functional language proficiency, cognitive language proficiency, attitudes, motivation, and instructional approach. The results of the study show that an integrative approach toward second language instruction was more effective than a strictly behaviorist approach.

The fact that an integrative approach was more effective further illustrates that adult ESL learners are not empty vessels waiting for a teacher to deposit information into them – adult ESL learners are people who should be treated as whole learners. Additionally, adult students are evaluated by their cognitive abilities in their first language, which is an aspect of students that is often overlooked. If a student does not have a linguistic foundation laid in their first language, that completely changes the game when they need to learn a second language.

Judkins, David, et al. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Educational Sciences. (2008). A study of classroom literacy interventions and outcomes in Even Start. Washington, DC: Retrieved from .

This U.S. Department of Education publication is about the Even Start Family Literacy Program, which was established in 1989 “to help break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy for low-income families, by improving the literacy skills of parents and their young children” (p. iii). Even Start offers four different types of programs: Early Childhood Education, Parenting Education, Parent-Child Literacy Activities, Adult Education.

There were two previous studies of the Even Start Program that showed no better literacy outcomes in parents and children who participated in Even Start than those in a randomly assigned control group that did not go to Even Start. However, in the recent 2008 study, there was significant improvement in the following: support for print knowledge and literacy resources in the classroom, the amount of parenting education time spent on child literacy, parent interactive reading skill and parent responsiveness to their child, and child social competence. From having no significant impact on its participants, to this list of results named, I would say that Even Start has begun to have a significant impact on its learners. Not only is the impact significant, but is also positive in that it takes a different approach toward adult ESL instruction than almost all other programs that I have seen in my research so far. It involves the whole family and caters to the needs of the parents, as well as the children. By having the parents become involved in their children’s literacy, it spurns knowledge that will hopefully end the cycle of poverty in low-literacy families in America.

Kahn, Lawrence M. (2004). Immigration, skills and the labor market: international evidence. Journal of Population Economics, 17(3), Retrieved from .

This article, by Lawrence M. Kahn, uses the 1994-1998 International Adult Literacy Survey to compare cognitive skills and immigrant employment in four different countries: Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the U.S. Immigrants had lower cognitive test scores than natives in each of the four countries – the largest gap in the U.S. and smaller gaps in New Zealand and Canada. Male immigrants in the U.S. were as likely to work as natives, and in other countries, the male immigrants were less likely to be working. As for female immigrants, they were less likely to be employed in each country than the natives, with a particularly large gap in the U.S.

Kahn states that “raising skill standards for immigrants in the U.S. would have the likely effect of raising the relative supply of skilled labor and thus would also likely reduce wage inequality generally, although the magnitude of these effects is uncertain” (p. 527). Raising skill standards would probably bring in more skilled labor, BUT that does not necessarily mean the immigrant skilled workers would have a pay raise. Receiving immigrants with more skills does not necessarily mean less prejudice or racism against those immigrants. Also, raising the skill standards for immigrants in the U.S. means that unskilled refugees will have an even greater disadvantage, creating an even bigger gap between the obscenely rich and the obscenely poor in America. And what kind of skills are they looking for exactly? They have pharmacists, accountants, and social workers coming to the U.S. from other countries, but their educations are valued at zero because they do not speak fluent English.

Keenan, Cheryl. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education. (2009). Statement by Cheryl Keenan before the house education and labor subcommittee on higher education, lifelong learning, and competitiveness. Retrieved from .

Cheryl Keenan is the Director of Adult Education and Literacy at the U.S. Department of Education. She gave this statement in 2009 to address the issues involved in adult literacy education, including lack of funding. She emphasizes the large role that funding adult literacy programs could play in the economic recovery of America. Keenan also includes that increasing adult education will not only help adults increase their literacy skills in English, but also will help them transition to post-secondary education and retain jobs that will pay enough to support a family.

Keenan also emphasizes that if immigration rates remain at their consistent growth, by 2015, half of the American population will be composed of immigrants. After stating this point, she describes how adult immigrants need education and English skills not just for keeping a job, but for participating in civic events that are essential to life in the United States’ democracy. Keenan’s statement is significant to my research because of the statistics she presents about adult literacy programs and the benefits she presents for providing more funding for adult education.

Menard-Warwick, J. (2005). Intergenerational trajectories and sociopolitical context: Latina immigrants in adult esl. TESOL Quarterly, 39(2), 165-185. Retrieved from .

Menard-Warwick conducted this ethnographic study in 2002, in which she contrasts the lives of two Central American immigrant women in a family literacy program in the San Francisco Bay area. From what she gathered of life-history interviews and classroom observations, the author argues that these learners’ second language and literacy development can only be understood within the larger sociopolitical context over time. She draws on the participants’ life-history narratives to position their experiences of studying the English language within the greater sociohistorical landscape of immigration in California and the intergenerational educational backgrounds in their families.

Significantly, these narratives discuss participants’ perspectives on how language learning opportunities are mediated by factors such as parents’ messages about education, participants’ previous experiences of schooling, America’s immigration procedures, economic downturn in the U.S., and availability of bilingual education for children. The author concludes by arguing that to meet the incredibly diverse needs and goals of these learners within their classrooms, ESL educators (in and out of the American school system) need to integrate specific sociocontextual issues that these adult ESL learners are confronted with in their everyday lives – making the curriculum relevant to the learner creates meaning and encourages life-long learning.

Metz, Steve. (2010). Literacy 2010 (and beyond). The Science Teacher, 77(1), Retrieved from .

Metz’s article focuses on what the definition of literacy is, while arguing that the current definition may be inaccurate. In the time of the Civil War, Metz emphasizes that a literate person was someone who could sign his or her name. He includes that, in a statement made in 2008, the United Nations’ provided this definition of a literate person: “someone who can ‘read and write, with understanding, a short, simple statement related to his or her daily life’”. In 2003, 27-30 million adults in America had below the basic literacy skills and, what’s more, 46 million adults scored below basic in another “quantitative literacy” assessment.

Metz continues to say that the skills to read and write “should be a baseline expectation for all”. I agree with him in his statement that competently reading and writing is only the beginning of real literacy. A person must continue on to complexify and critically analyze what they read and be able to write out those thoughts. In addition, there are multiple literacies in our world today that people need to be competent in – qualitative, quantitative, scientific, media, technological. The American population has come a long way from considering literacy as the ability of a person to write his or her name – but the current definition from the U.N. in 2008 seems to be outdated as well. Literacy has evolved into something much more than just being able to read and write a sentence about personal life.

Perry, K. (2009). Genres, contexts, and literacy practices: Literacy brokering among sudanese refugee families.Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3), 256-276. Retrieved from .

Perry conducted an ethnographic study to examine “literacy brokering” among a group of Sudanese refugee families in Michigan. Literacy brokering occurs when individuals seek out informal assistance with “unfamiliar texts and literacy practices.” Data collection in this study included participant observation, semi-formal interviews, and the collection of artifacts over a period of 18 months. Three different Southern Sudanese refugee families participated in this study. Current notions of the brokering were challenged, showing that brokering was not merely a matter of translation and that the issues of different genres were also significant.

Many people acted as brokers for the refugees in the study, including the children of the adults in the families – these children were just learning English literacy themselves. For the children, literacy brokering allowed the children to help their parents while also gaining literacy knowledge themselves. This study is significant because it observes how adults outside of an adult ESL program try to cope in their new U.S. context. They need to learn the English language, but do not have the means or access to take an adult ESL course – so, they begin literacy brokering. It is an interesting take on adult immigrants outside of the education system context.

Scales, J., Wennerstrom, A., Richard, D., & Wu, S. (2006). Language learners' perceptions of accent.TESOL Quarterly, 40(4), 725-738. Retrieved from .

Scales et al. conducted a study that analyzed the perceptions of different accents among a group of 37 English language learners and 10 American undergraduate students. Each participant listened to a one-minute passage read by four different speakers with different accents of English: 1) General American, 2) British English, 3) Chinese English, and 4) Mexican English. Participants attempted to identify each accent and stated their preferences and opinions about each of the accents. Each participant also provided their background information and included their reasons for studying English and their goals of pronunciation. In addition, 11 participants were interviewed individually about the different accents they heard. More than half (62%) of the learners stated that their goal was to sound like a native English speaker, however, only 29% were able to correctly identify the American accent!

Interestingly enough, no strong correlations were found between the ability to identify the different accents and the amount of time spent learning English or being in America. However, an almost perfect correlation was found between the accent that was voted the easiest to understand and the accent that participants preferred over the rest. The lack of consistency in accent identification may mirror an idealized notion of what the native accent aspired to actually sounds like. The findings in this study and the immense priority put on listening comprehension imply that there is a need for a more comprehensive consideration of accent in ESL programs.

Stevens, G. (1999). Age at immigration and second language proficiency among foreign-born adults. Language in Society, 28(4), 555-578. Retrieved from .

Stevens suggests that sociologists typically assume that the acquisition of English as a second language for immigrants follows the motivations and opportunities to actually become proficient in English. However, many linguists argue that second language acquisition could possibly be governed by constraints of maturation, which could be biological and are tied to the age at onset of learning a language. The author uses the U.S. census data to analyze the relationship between the age at onset of second language learning and the levels of English skill and proficiency among adults born outside of the U.S. The conclusion is that proficiency in an L2 among adults is strongly correlated to the age at immigration. Part of the correlation could be attributed to social and demographic aspects tied to age at entry into the new country, as well as constraints of maturation.

Stevens research is significant because it indirectly reports that the way adults and children learn is completely different because of age of entry into the country or socioeconomic reasons. This observation is critical to understanding adult ESL learners in a classroom setting. Adult brains learn differently than children brains – therefore, they need to have a different curriculum that focuses on things that are meaningful to them in their learning.

United States Government Accountability Office. (2009). English Language Learning: Diverse Federal State Efforts to Support Adult English Language Learning Could Benefit from More Coordination. Report to the Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Children and Families, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, U.S. Senate. Retrieved from .

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) created this document to show the benefits of coordination between different government departments to adult English language learning. The GAO suggests that more coordinated information sharing across different types of adult education programs would have multiple benefits. In particular, the GAO states that coordinated information sharing might help agencies better appraise the service demand and find better ways to give those services.

In addition, the GAO states that information sharing between different adult literacy programs might help identify the inadequacies in agency operations, which could lead to making improvements that could reduce program costs and increase the number of people being served. This sharing of information could also bring improvement in the quality of services by better understanding more effective ways to deliver services. In the GAO’s conclusions on this matter, they suggest that the Secretary of Education work with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Labor, in addition to other agencies, to develop a synchronized approach for regularly and methodically sharing information that can help on the federal, state, and local levels in attaining efficient service provision.

Skinner, Curtis, et al. (2010). English language proficiency, family economic security, and child development. National Center for Children in Poverty, Mailman School of Public Health, Colombia University, New York, New York. Retrieved from .

One of the first things this publication points out is that since 1980, the amount of U.S. inhabitants who speak a language other than English in the home has more than doubled. This is an incredibly significant statistic to the American education system, as well as the government. Along with the increase of other languages, there has been an increase in the number of residents with low English proficiency. The authors also point out that there is a strong correlation between low English proficiency and poor healthcare choices – implying that the reason parents with low English proficiency choose not to take their children to the doctor is out of embarrassment or judgment. English proficiency is significantly related to family economic security and the well-being of children. The authors also include that “English language profiency among parents is an important economic asset that is associated with increased workforce participation, significantly higher earnings, and economic mobility” (p. 6).

There has also been a lag in public funding for English language education which may contribute to the lack of service capacity for different ESL programs and institutions. A case study example on New York is provided to demonstrate their findings related to ESL programs and those people who need them. In their recommendations, the authors list a few things that need to be addressed. First, they suggest that there should better coordinated efforts and information-sharing between federal agencies, such as the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Second, they basically state that so much good has come from the ESL programs and legislation instituted in schools for children, now it is time to do the same kind of thing for adults. Third, they suggest that if bilingual interpreters were in more healthcare facilities and if there were more culturally and linguistically competent facilities to go to, then there would be more: “improved adherence to medical regimens, reduced emergency care visits, and increased physician office visits among patients with limited English language proficiency” (p. 9).