May I ask what 'improvement' means? Is it correct grammatical structure or pronunciation? And where in the report is the idea of fossilization attended to? Firstly I ask because my academic / pre-university students can improve their grammar or vocabulary but still have difficulty 'communicating ideas' clearly. 
I also ask because many immigrants in Canada learn the word/phrases they need (which are not necessarily specific to the plethora of situations they need- compare/contrast; arguing a point; persuading, etc) . Perhaps the class (or online situation) affords them vocabulary but not necessarily a realistic 'case' study. Just a question. How do we ( or students for that matter) measure improvement? 
emma

Emma Bourassa
English as a Second or Additional Language/ Teaching English as a Second Language Instructor
ESL Department
Thompson Rivers University
900 McGill Road. P.O. Box 3010
Kamloops, B.C. V2C 5N3
(250) 371-5895
fax 371-5514
ebourassa at tru.ca


>>> 

From: 	Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>
To:	The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>
Date: 	21/07/2008 8:50 pm
Subject: 	[ProfessionalDevelopment 2396] Re: Critical Thinking-Student Involvement

I gather from Jacquie that the link did not work. The article is quite
relevant to the discussion so I am posting it directly here.

Some background:

People involved in helping immigrants learn English are highly committed but
often have the following attitudes.

1) Only people who are duly accredited and established in the ESL sector
have anything useful to say on the subject.
2) Existing methods and practices, built around the classroom and face to
face teaching, are the only way to go. Rather than looking at ways to
increase the reach and therefore effectiveness of teachers, we demand more
money. ESL is not a matter of results but of entitlement. It is a social
cause first, and an educational objective second.
3) Immigrants are poor, weak, disfavoured and easily fooled.

Language learning cannot be achieved by weak people. I do not believe that
immigrants are weak people, or they would not have made it here. Only
intense study and an intense commitment can bring about the transformation
that is involved in achieving fluency in another language. The learner needs
to like the language, culture and society. The learning environment needs to
be positive.

The means exist today, with the Internet and MP3 players etc. for people to
learn independently, more effectively than ever, while maintaining close
relations with teachers, who can guide them, give feedback, and measure
their progress, in the class and remotely.

I know that many immigrants are discouraged at their lack of success in
language learning, and discouraged at their position in society. The
challenge is how to make them positive about their language learning so that
they take it over. Once they do, they will succeed.

The US Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)  announced its latest
digest,"Effects
of Instructional Hours and Intensity of Instruction on NRS Level Gain in
Listening and Speaking."<http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/levelgain.html.>The
digest reports on a descriptive study examining the relationship
between
student performance ..and class attendance. *..*Results showed that  the
greater the number of instructional hours, the higher the percentage of
students who made an NRS level gain. There was also a general trend toward
greater NRS level gain for students with high levels of instructional
intensity than for those with low instructional intensity. ..

To the people at CAL this is a "seminal report" justifying all their hard
work. But is it really?

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. Here is my analysis based on information contained
in the report.

We are told in the survey that 1.2 million adults are enrolled in federally
funded adult ESL classes in the United States and that 36% of these students
attained a measurable  educational level gain after a course of instruction.The
scale used is here <http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/slspls.html>.  In
a survey of 6,599 adults, 60% showed improvement. Obviously being in a
survey has a big impact on improvement results! The fact is that there are
probably close to 20 million adults in the US who need to improve their
English literacy, just among the immigrant population.

Almost half (49%) of the ESL learners in the survey were at level 0 and 1 on
the 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." So, even the
advanced learners were still at a basic level.

The results appear in tables below. It appears that contrary to the claims
of the Center for Applied Linguistics, 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. 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 t*he rate of improvement  sometimes declines with
increased instruction*.(see tables below)

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 CAL and teachers like to believe. 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 to help these learners it is better to 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. To paraphrase Rubem
Alves<http://rubemalves.wordpress.com/category/a-arte-de-produzir-fome/>,
we need to make them hungry rather than giving them cheese.



Table 6. NRS Level Gain Related to Instructional Hours by NRS ESL
Educational Functioning Level
 Instr.
Hours
Beginning
ESL
Literacy
n=1,720
Low
Beg.
ESL
n=407
High
Beg.
ESL
n=543
Low
Inter.
ESL
n=614
High
Inter.
ESL
n=408
Advanced
ESL
n=252
 Below 60
Hours
n=536
46%
n=112
75%
n=160
72%
n=146
60%
n=96
54%
n=51
50%
 60 to 79 Hours
n=284
52%
n=86
79%
n=85
69%
n=93
51%
n=68
49%
n=44
48%
 80 to 99 Hours
n=247
56%
n=57
72%
n=95
79%
n=105
60%
n=74
58%
n=33
45%
 100 to 119
Hours
n=159
54%
n=34
81%
n=52
81%
n=75
68%
n=42
58%
n=29
64%
 120 to 139
Hours
n=120
62%
n=37
86%
n=52
87%
n=49
66%
n=43
64%
n=30
67%
 140 or More
Hours
n=374
67%
n=81
84%
n=99
83%
n=146
71%
n=85
62%
n=65
66%


 Table 8. NRS Level Gain by Intensity of Instruction
 Intensity
Level
Beginning
ESL
Literacy
n=1,720
Low
Beg.
ESL
n=407
High
Beg.
ESL
n=543
Low
Inter.
ESL
n=614
High
Inter.
ESL
n=408
Advanced
ESL
n=252
 Low Intensity
(<0.50)
n=548
50%
n=116
77%
n=165
75%
n=140
55%
n=121
57%
n=52
49%
 Mid Intensity
(0.50-0.99)
n=935
55%
n=247
78%
n=321
77%
n=386
64%
n=236
56%
n=140
54%
 High Intensity
(>1.00)
n=237
60%
n=44
83%
n=57
83%
n=88
68%
n=51
61%
n=60



Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com 
1-604-922-8514