Some of the factors that I think should also be measured and which I did not
see in the survey are,


   - amount of calendar time elapsed from the beginning of the survey, or
   pre-test point, to the end, or post-test point.
   - absences from class as a percentage of course class commitment
   - hours of listening to radio or watching TV in English, as
   self-reported
   - hours of interaction in English with native speakers, as
   self-reported
   - hours spent listening to English on CD/MP3 player, as self-reported
   - hours spent reviewing vocabulary, reading, or studying English at
   home, as self reported


The survey states that
"In 2003-2004 (the year for which the most recent data are available on
students in federally funded programs), 1,172,579 students were enrolled in
federally funded adult ESL classes; 36% of these students attained an
educational level gain after a course of instruction (U.S. Department of
Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 2006)."

Yet Margaret Park reports that
"Our California Department of Education serves 1.5 million students per
year, 75% of whom are enrolled in ESL classes.  The 1.2 million adults
enrolled in all federally-funded ESL classes seems a bit low, however I may
be incorrect in my assumption."

This suggests that there is a much larger group of adult ESL learners in the
US, larger than 1.2 million. To judge by our situation here in Vancouver,
there are long waiting lists for immigrant ESL courses. In addition, many
more who would want to take these course are too busy to do so and do not
apply.

I would like to know the improvement rates for adult ESL learners who do not
go to a course at all, those who, for one reason or another, do not attend
class. I suspect that the number in this "self-study group" is large, and
that their results will be mixed, varying from significant improvement to no
improvement at all. It would be interesting to see the impact of the
different factors I listed above on results.

I would be interest to see what can be done to make the self-study
activities as effective as possible, and how to better integrate them with
the more formal ESL instructional activities. This would mean providing
testing, and other forms of recognition for these informal self-learning
activities, as well as guidance on how to make self-study as effective as
possible, given the obvioius time constraints faced by most adult ESL
learners.

Perhaps this is already being done, I do not know.

Steve
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