The Linguist On Language

1.2 mil ion adults are enrol ed in federal y funded adult ESL classes in the United States. Only 36% of these students attained a measurable educational level gain after a course of instruction. In a survey of 6,599 adults, 60% showed improvement. Obviously being in a survey has a big impact on improvement results! (There are apparently close to 20 mil ion 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 minimal y if at al 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 stil at a basic level.

It appears 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% stil managed to improve. For those who had between 140 and 512 hours of instruction, or at least three times as much instruction, the percentage who improved only went from 75% to 84%. The report also says that 78%, or almost four out of five of these Low and High Beginner learners improved regardless of the number of hours of instruction.

The largest group, those with essential y no English skil s (49%), as wel 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 or the fact that the rate of improvement sometimes declines with increased instruction.

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% stil 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 real y matters is what the learner does outside the classroom. As the report says, an adult ESL learner has limited time to spend, "typical y 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.

CHAPTER XI: LITERACY INSTRUCTION

There are many people, even in affluent societies, who do not read well. This is a serious handicap, professional y and personal y. A great deal of money and effort is expended on trying to raise literacy levels in al countries. This is a concern both in our schools, and in the field of adult education.

Literacy education, like much of language teaching, is dominated by people who are often more interested in the social implications of literacy, than in helping people read better. I do not believe this is helpful to solving what is a major problem.

To read better, just read more

Literacy means, to me, the ability to read and write. It is real y quite simple. What a person does with the ability to read is up to them. The most literate people are those who use the language well. Somewhere between 10 and 40% of the population in developed countries, (depending on definition) struggle to read and write well . People who have limited literacy skil s are now cal ed functional y ill iterate.

Literacy skill s are very closely related to professional success in a society. Some people cannot decode letters either because they did not learn to do so at school or because they have a learning disability. This is the minority. Most poor readers simply do not read enough.