Hi everyone:
The following is a summary of the academic session for the adult special
interest group at TESOL.
It's a bit long.
Miriam

________________________________


ESOL in Adult Education: Perspectives on the Adult Immigrant Experience
Today

Presentations in this session focused on the adult immigrant experience
and implications for adult ESL instruction.

 

Research on adult immigrants in Australia and New Zealand. Former TESOL
president, Dr. Denise Murray, a professor at Macquarie University, Ryde,
Australia, pointed out that recent immigrants in Australia and New
Zealand face similar issues to those of immigrants in the United States.
One of the most difficult challenges is balancing family, work, and
responsibilities while learning English. Teachers of this population
face challenges of teaching classes of students who have diverse prior
learning and life experiences, addressing learning differences between
older and younger students, and responding to unrealistic expectations
of some students. An additional issue raised was that many adult ESL
teachers attempt to be very friendly and supportive. Ironically, this
leads some students to question the seriousness of learning in adult ESL
classes. Of great interest to the participants in this session was the
fact that Australian immigrants and refugees are allowed to take up to
500 hours of instruction before being required to go to work. 

 

Language, culture, and families in Ontario, Canada. Constantine Ioannou
of the Ottawa -Carleton District School Board (Canada) spoke about
working in family literacy programs in Canada and gave the following
suggestions for those working in these programs:

*	Encourage the use of native language (L1) at home and at school.
*	Meet with parents at their convenience and invite them to
contribute to the education process in ways that are comfortable for
them.
*	Recognize the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students by
providing multilingual and multiracial literature.
*	Be advocates for minority languages and for a curriculum that is
responsive to the needs of minorities.

 

Immigration, naturalization, and citizenship in the United States. Linda
Taylor of CASAS and Lynne Weintraub, a consultant in Amherst,
Massachusetts, spoke about issues related to immigration. Ms. Taylor
gave figures about recent immigrants including the following:

 

*	12% of the U.S. population are non-naturalized immigrants (35.7
million people) 
*	71% of these non-naturalized immigrants have documents or are
here "legally;" 29% are "unauthorized" 
*	In comparison with U.S. citizens, the education level of legal
non-naturalized immigrants is as follows: 

      18% have some higher education vs. 29% for all native-born U.S.
citizens

      15% have less than 9 years of education vs. 2% for all U.S.
citizens

*	8 million of the 35.7 million non-naturalized immigrants (less
than 25%) are eligible for naturalization (Passel, J.S. 2005.
Unauthorized migrants: Numbers and characteristics. Washington, DC: Pew
Hispanic Center. http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf) 

Ms. Weintraub described issues related to the naturalization process.
More than half of the immigrants polled in a recent survey cited the
following reasons for wanting to become citizens (Farkas, Duffett, &
Johnson, with Moye & Vine, summer 2003, "Now That I'm Here: What
America's Immigrants Have to Say about Life in the U.S. Today," American
Educator,
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/summer2003/immigrants.
html.

*	To get the right to vote
*	To have better legal rights and protections
*	To show commitment and pride in being an American
*	To avoid worry about immigration status
*	To make it easier to get certain jobs
*	To make it easier to travel in and out of the United States

 

The survey also found that barriers to naturalization include the cost
of applying; lack of information on the process; inability to miss work;
need for legal representation; lack of access to instruction; and
logistical barriers such as transportation, childcare, and scheduling

 

Research on adult English language learners. Miriam Burt of the Center
for Adult English Language Acquisition reminded participants of the
importance of research in an era in which teachers must demonstrate that
they use evidence-based practices in their instruction and must show
that students are making gains in language proficiency. She noted that
"evidence-based instruction" is generally linked to empirical evidence
from experimental studies in which subjects are randomly assigned to
experimental and control groups (No Child Left Behind Act), and that
there are significant challenges to conducting this type of research
with adult English language learners. Specifically, these challenges
are:

*	Adult learners are not a captive audience - they move in and out
of programs.
*	Adult learners often receive few hours of instruction.
*	Adult learners have family, work, and other demands on their
time and attention.
*	There is little funding for experimental research with this
population

 

Nevertheless, both large- and small-scale research is being done, and
three studies are particularly important.

 

The What Works Study of literacy students conducted by American
Institutes for Research (Condelli, Wrigley, Yoon, Cronen, & Seburn, in
press) found that students learn more when

 

*       connections are made between the classroom and life outside the
classroom,

*       the native language is used at appropriate times,

*       instruction takes students' interests into consideration, and 

*       there is a lot of interaction in classes but still some routine.


 

The Adult ESL Explicit Literacy Impact Study, being conducted by
American Institutes for Research, is going to test the impact of
explicit literacy intervention (explicitly teaching bottom-up processing
skills) on the success of low-literacy adult English language learners.
More information is available on this at
http://www.air.org/news/documents/AERA2005%20ESL.pdf. Research underway
at the Portland State University Lab School in coordination with the
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL)
has two threads -a study of interactions among students and the effects
of instruction and teacher presence on such interaction and longitudinal
studies of the second language development of beginning level adult
English language learners. More information on this research is
available at http://www.lsal.pdx.edu/ The number of small-scale research
studies-often of a more qualitative or ethnographic nature-is
increasing, particular if one looks at unpublished masters theses and
doctoral dissertations. Though challenges remain, the overall picture
seems to be one of an increasingly vibrant research field. 

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