Steve,
I appreciated that elaboration of the statistics,
which I had not gotten around to reading.  About what
the students do outside the classroom, in my
experience it is the ESL learners with absolutely no
English who really need the classroom TIME.  Most of
the students I taught in this category, whatever their
national background, had minimal exposure to English
outside the classroom, and what they had was passive
(TV, whatever they heard on the street).  If they
worked, it was in a setting of their native language
(a Mexican worker in a tortilla factory, a Chinese
person in a Chinese kitchen) and their interactions
were with others who spoke their native tongue.  So of
course they benefitted from classroom instruction, as
it was the only time they used English.  On the other
end, advanced students benefit because they already
are aware of what they need to know and can take what
they learn in class and augment their abilities. 

Another factor is the students' academic background. 
Students with no English who had little or no
schooling in their own country (many Mexicans, and
most Hmong) progressed slowly in any testable manner
(but perhaps quickly in learning to communicate
important things orally).  Students with no English at
all, but a high school education (some Chinese
students fit in here) progressed quickly in the
classroom and soon moved up to higher level classes.

Jillian



--- Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com> wrote:


> More hours of classroom instruction, and more

> intense instruction, should

> lead to better results, otherwise why bother? The

> real question is how much

> improvement is required to justify the time and

> money expended by learners,

> teachers and tax-payers.

> 

> 1.2 million adults are enrolled in federally funded

> adult ESL classes in the

> United States.  36% of these students attained a

> measurable  educational

> level gain after a course of instruction.  In this

> survey of 6,599 adults,

> 60% showed improvement. Obviously being in a survey

> has a big impact on

> improvement results!

> 

> Almost half (49%) of the ESL learners in the survey

> were at level 0 and 1 on

> the SPL scale, i.e. "no ability whatsoever' or

> "functions minimally if at

> all in English." Almost 20% were Low and High

> Beginner level learners (2 and

> 3 on the scale). Level 3 is described as

> "understands simple learned

> phrases, spoken slowly with frequent repetitions".

> At the other end of the

> scale 7% of the adults surveyed were Advanced or

> level 6 on the  scale,

> described as " can satisfy most survival needs and

> limited social demands."

> Even the advanced learners were still at a basic

> level.

> 

> >From the tables in the report,it appears that the

> biggest factor affecting

> grade improvement was not hours of instruction but

> the level of the learner.

> Beginner learners (level 2 and 3 on the scale)

> improved the most and were

> the least affected by the amount of instruction. Of

> those Low and High

> Beginners who had the least amount of instruction (

> between 2 and 60 hours)

> almost 75% still managed to improve, whereas this

> only went up to 84% for

> those who had between 140 and up to 512 hours of

> instruction, i.e. probably

> at least 3 times as many hours of classroom

> instruction . We are told in the

> report that 78%, or almost 4 out of 5 of these Low

> and High Beginner

> learners improved regardless of the number of hours

> of instruction.

> 

> The largest group, those with essentially no English

> skills(49%), as well as

> the most advanced group (7%), showed the lowest

> level of improvement, but

> seemed to benefit the greatest from instruction. The

> report does not explain

> this nor the fact that the rate of improvement 

> sometimes declines with

> increased instruction.(see tables)

> 

> Intensity of instruction does not have a great

> affect on results. The

> largest group ( 57%) studied an average of 4.5 hours

> per week and 61% of

> these learners showed measurable improvement on the

> scale. However 31% of

> the survey group had less than 2.8 hours per week of

> instruction and yet

> 56%  still managed to improve. The intense group,

> roughly 12% of the

> learners, studied more than 9.3 hours per week.

> Despite more than double the

> hours of instruction, compared to the middle group,

> the percentage of

> learners with measurable improvement only increased

> from 61% to 66%. Again

> it was the Low and High Beginners who improved the

> most, with the least

> impact from instructional intensity.

> 

> To me the conclusion is that class instruction

> obviously does help but not

> as much as is often assumed. Instead, I suspect that

> what really matters is

> what the learner does outside the classroom. As the

> report says, an adult

> ESL learner has limited time to spend, "typically 4

> and 8 hours per week".

> Surely we should focus on finding ways to enable

> these learners to create

> more time for learning. In other words we should

> find ways to make it easier

> and more effective for them to learn outside the

> classroom, and to encourage

> them to do so, instead of trying to justify bringing

> them to class.

> Classroom time does not seem to have  a decisive

> impact on their

> improvement.

> >

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