Hi Ron-- Welcome to the list. The SABES organization of Massachusetts 
has done a great deal of work over the last 5 years to develop 
resources for evaluating and helping adult ESOL learners with learning 
challenges. I hope you have contacts with SABES and Maria Gonzalez in 
the Boston Region office. I am currently completing a project with the 
Central Region SABES office on evaluation of ESOL learners for learning 
difficulties. That director is Merrilee Freeman in Worcester at 
Quinsigamond Community College. With Central and also with the 
Southeast Region director ( Sally Gabb at Bristol CC) I have done a 
number of workshops on issues around adult ESOL learners with learning 
challenges and have been mentoring a teacher at Quincy Library as well 
as a team in the Central region in evaluation and training issues.

I would also suggest you be in touch with the wonderful people at 
Cambridge Learning Center, who have grappled with this problem for 
years,
  as has SCALE in Somerville. Both programs have teachers who have 
worked with ESOL learners who struggle and have some procedures in 
place to help them. I am sure there are other programs around the state 
that have used some materials or developed policies that may be of 
use--you could find them through SABES, too.

And finally, in terms of local resources for you, World Education, 
which is located on Farnsworth Street in Boston, developed a manual for 
adult education programs that included a section on evaluating adult 
ESOL learners for learning difficulties. I am not sure who there is 
currently in charge of that--but Maria Gonzalez at SABES Boston would 
know.

As you can infer, the issue of learning challenges in adult ESOL 
learners is my specialization. Unfortunately, there is no one tool that 
will give you the answers as to why someone is having difficulty 
learning. In my work and trainings, I emphasize the need to look at the 
whole learner, paying special attention to cultural issues that may be 
impeding the learner's profiting from instruction as it is offered in 
our classrooms, first language issues ( is it a written language or 
not), health ( including vision, hearing and scotopic sensitivity 
(sensitivity to very bright white light and to black text on white 
pages), and actual level of literacy.

Still, my studies and work, as well as that of a number of people in 
the field at the K-a2 level, have shown that the most critical area to 
evaluate in terms of actual learning of a language and of literacy 
skills are phonological processing skills-- which include phonological 
awareness ( the key to literacy skills in first or any other language) 
and phonological memory ( the key to aural/oral skills). Phonological 
awareness is an understanding of the chunks of sound in a given 
language and the ability to manipulate those chunks. Phonemic 
awareness, which is often touted as "the" skill, is actually a subskill 
of phonological awareness. That is, a person--whether child or adult-- 
learning about the language is not aware of individual letter sounds or 
phonemes ( in English these may involve more than one letter) until 
relatively late in the development of phonolgocal awareness. Also, 
other languages that are either syllablic, ( i.e. Japanese) or 
logographic-- that is one word or phrase is assigned to a character-- 
do not have phonemes as we understand them in alphabetic languages. 
Thus for many of our ESOL learners, the very concept of phonemes will 
need to be taught before hearing and discriminating sounds and building 
grammar orally can proceed. It is important to remember the level of 
phonological awareness that the average child has before tackling 
reading and writing in English. The pre-literacy skills such children 
have must also be in place for language learners before they tackle 
literacy if they are not yet literate.

The good news is for those who ARE literate in any language, becoming 
literate in a new language should not be very difficult. Literacy 
skills have been shown in good studies to transfer readily, no matter 
the first language. (See the work of Dr. Elsa Caredenas Hagan of Texas, 
who recently presented at the International Dyslexia Association 
Conference on her work with Spanish-speaking learners learning 
English). Obviously those who are learning a new writing system may 
take a little longer to come to the English system, but generally all 
literacy skills transfer sooner or later. This does NOT mean, however, 
that persons who are literate in another language use and understand 
text and writing the same way we do in the US. Often cultural barriers 
exist such as different ways of organizing writing--e.g. main ideas--or 
the idea of topic sentence. These conventions are heavily influenced by 
cultural views on use of text.

When a literate person does NOT become literate in English relatively 
easily, then the phonological skills must be assessed very thoroughly. 
This is one of the most diagnostic signs of learning difficulties in 
language learners.

For those who are very low literate or have no literacy, a host of 
other pre-literacy skills must be in place before they are asked to 
tackle text. (Drs. Charles Haynes and Pam Hook of MGH Speech and 
Language Disorders Unit often adress these preliteracy skills in 
workshops around the state and country.)

Another fact to remember in looking at phonological skills is that 
though the skills overlap, they can develop independently or be weak 
independent of each other. This means you may see a learner who is 
quite fluent in English who has great difficulty learning to read 
(Whose phonological memory is strong, but phonological awareness is 
not), or vice versa-- one who reads and writes competently but who 
cannot speak or understand language easily. (CF Leonore Ganschow and 
Richard Spark's work on LD in English-speaking learners learning 
foreign languages, also Esther Geva of Toronto, who studies young 
language learners.)

The lady I mentioned who is from Quincy and the team of teachers in the 
Central Sabes region have been trained to evaluate phonological skills, 
should you care to learn more about this.

If you have not already seen it, take a look at the newest issue of 
Focus on Basics (at NCSALL.net) which addresses many questions around 
ESOL learners. I have an article there which emphasizes the need to ask 
LOTS of questions of your adult ESOL learners to get as clear a picture 
as possible about background--cultural, educational, possible trauma 
issue, etc--and health.

I hope this information is helpful to you. Please feel free to contact 
me if you have further questions.

Robin Lovrien Schwarz, M. Sp.Ed: LD, Specialist in ESOL and Learning 
Difficulties,
Partner, The TLP Group, Columbus, OH

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