Literacy Resources for Adult ESOL and ABE Educators: General Resources
Tips & suggestions, online resources, and physical materials for Adult ESL and ABE educators.
Introduction
This guide is designed to assist both ESOL and ABE educators with their teaching endeavors. Here you will find information on adult learning theory, example lessons, recommended books and websites to aid in preparation, links to professional websites, program directories for learners, and more.
Professional Organizations
- ProLiteracyEvery adult has a right to literacy. We develop and promote adult literacy learning, content, and programs to help adult learners, and we advocate on their behalf.
- TESOL International AssociationFor nearly 50 years, TESOL International Association has been bringing
together educators, researchers, administrators, and students to advance
the profession of teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Featured Book
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm.
Characteristics of Adult Learners
- Adults are goal oriented, meaning that education is related to a specific need or outcome in their lives.
- Adults are not children. They are self-directed and do not learn just to learn.
- Learners must connect literacy to its meaning in their everyday lives and find ways to determine for themselves the conditions under which they will use reading, writing, and speaking.
- Learner Centered Instruction and Shared Decision Making
- A learner-centered approach actively involves the learner in the learning process, helping to decide what he or she will learn based upon needs, interests, learning styles, and abilities. The instructor is more like a coach or a facilitator, rather than a transmitter of knowledge to a passive recipient.
- Collaborative Learning
- Authentic Materials and Authentic Activities
- Try to connect learning to the real world, and to to the situations where it will be used. For example, if your learner is working construction jobs and has trouble reading work orders have the learner bring examples of these work orders so you can practice reading them together. Or if you have an ESOL learner who only needs English to work in a restaurant, practice vocabulary, phrases, and grammar that are relevant to that situation. This is not to say that your learner will not need to learn particular basics or building blocks to arrive at his or her goal. The purpose of authentic materials and activities, though, is to have thematic continuity between real life needs and the learning process in order to maintain relevancy and interest.
- SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely)
- These criteria can help guide you and your learner in deciding upon goals. For example, if your learner tells you that her goal is to pass the GED or HiSet, but she has a third grade reading level, you must honestly and constructively help her to reevaluate her immediate learning goals. By making smaller, more realistic goals with the purpose of attaining the longer-term goal you will ensure that she will see more measurable progress instead of quitting when her original goal isn't met right away.
- Find out what motivates your learners and use this knowledge to inform instruction and bring them back.
- Adult learners bring a wealth of knowledge and a lifetime of experiences to the learning process.
- This background should be valued and built upon.
- Discover the context and situations in which the learner performs well or has positive literacy experiences. Find ways to incorporate this into the learning process.
- Different aspects of people’s abilities to learn can be affected by their age.
- Some Adult Basic Education learners may have undiagnosed learning disabilities.
- Affective Influences
- Feelings, emotions, and self-esteem.
- Priorities and Responsibilities
- Adults usually have urgent learning needs and limited time to devote to learning and studying.
- Adults often have job or family responsibilities that come before learning.
- Each of these priorities can affect consistent or long-term participation.
- Attrition can be attributed to student responsibilities, personality, and appropriateness of instruction to student needs. Although you can control the last part, you shouldn’t take attrition personally.
One of the most well known approaches to adult education comes from the Brazilian teacher Paulo Freire. The Freirean approach to adult literacy education bases the content of ABE or ESOL language lessons on learners' cultural and personal experiences, encouraging a participatory model and rejecting a "banking" model.
If you're interested in learning more, read his classic work Pedagogy of the Oppressed and then the overview of "The Freirean Approach to Adult Literacy Education" for some perspective on how the ideas apply to the BPL's work with adults and English learners, and adult literacy more generally.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by ISBN: 9781501314131Publication Date: 2018-03-22First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. Paulo Freire's work has helped to empower countless people throughout the world and has taken on special urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is ongoing.
If you often worry about having a wide range of levels in your groups or classes, you may find the ideas and best practices in this guide helpful.
Great Sites for Literacy Educators
- Listen WiseYou could use this to center a conversation group around a short listening (you can slow down the speed if you have all low level students), and comprehension questions and discussion questions. It’s especially good for current events.
- Re-imagining migration"Moving Stories" is an app developed by a Boston non profit called Re-Imagining Migration. The app “provides an engaging classroom experience that allows students to explore their personal and family stories and to reflect on our shared experience of migration.” For our purposes, it could be a nice addition to conversation groups, to start a dialogue about immigration and more current events in the US surrounding this issue.
- Many thingsExcellent source for listening and reading, including different audio speeds.
- PBS LiteracyLink - GED Resource CenterPlease note - you will need to set up a free account to access all the material.
- Phonics for adultsLessons, link to the pre-literacy test, and typing practice for students.
- ABE and ESOL literacy scope and sequence curriculumThis link includes the objectives and sequence for both an ESOL and ABE literacy class at a variety of levels. There are no lesson plans, but very clear suggestions for the things a student would need to know.
ESOL Teacher Books
Teaching Adults: An ESL Resource Book by This go-to guide for ESL tutors covers the basics on English language and American culture learning. For use with one-to-one or group instruction—activities include ideas for expanding or adapting to higher or lower levels
I Speak English 5: a Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages- Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing by A guide to teaching English to adult language learners, this research-based revision focuses language learning on real-life experiences.
Teaching Adult ESL by Teaching Adult ESL is the first comprehensive, yet practical overview of adult ESL teaching methodology for teachers and teachers in preparation. The user-friendly guide provides guidance in lesson planning, classroom management, selecting materials and assessment.
Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners by Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners, Fourth Edition, includes a rich assortment of practical strategies aligned to TESOL standards which have been field-tested in diverse classrooms. Each strategy includes a brief explanation, step-by-step instructions on how to plan and use the strategy, and two classroom scenarios demonstrating how the strategy can be adapted for different grade levels and content areas. Herrell and Jordan have included additional language and literacy development strategies, technology strategies, and assessment strategies to support both pre-service and in-service teachers.
HOW LANGUAGES ARE LEARNED by ISBN: 9780194541268Publication Date: 2013-03-21Written by experienced teacher trainers and language learning experts, Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada, How Languages Are Learned relates the theories of first and second language acquisition to what actually goes on in the classroom. It uses activities to explore the practical implications of the ideas presented. Evaluations and case studies are included throughout the book so that you can see a practical context for the research ideas you are reading about. Many of these examples are taken directly from real second language classrooms. Now in its 4th edition, How Languages Are Learned is highly valued for the way it relates language acquisition theory to classroom teaching and learning and draws practical implications from research for the language classroom. It is widely used as a reference book on teacher training courses, and is for new and experienced practicing teachers.
Communicative Language Teaching by ISBN: 9780521281546Publication Date: 1981-03-31The communicative approach is changing the face of foreign language teaching. It provides an introduction to communicative language teaching for practicing classroom teachers. The author gives a single coherent account of the basic communicative ideas, emphasizing those aspects most important in the classroom so that teachers can integrate the new ideas into their own familiar methods. He stresses that a knowledge of grammar remains essential for effective communication.
ABE Teacher Books
Teaching Adults: A Literacy Resource Book by This go-to guide for adult literacy tutors and teachers offers essential background on characteristics of adult learners and advice on how to meet the diverse needs of the learners
Phonics and Word Study for the Teacher of Reading by Phonics and Word Study for the Teacher of Reading is a self-paced, self-instruction program designed to help teachers independently develop a comprehensive background in phonics, syllable and accent patterns, onset-rime, the morphemes that contribute to word meaning, and phonological and phonemic awareness.
Radicalizing Learning by ISBN: 9780787998257Publication Date: 2010-10-19Radicalizing Learning calls for a total rethinking of what the field of adult education stands for and how adult educators should assess their effectiveness. Arguing that major changes in society are needed to create a more just world, the authors set out to show how educators can help learners envision and enact this radical transformation. Specifically, the book explores the areas of adult learning, training, teaching, facilitation, program development, and research. Each chapter provides a guide to the different paradigms and perspectives that prevail across the field of theory and practice. The authors then tie all of the themes into how adult learning for participatory democracy works in a diverse society.
The Adult Learner by ISBN: 9781856178112Publication Date: 2011-07-15How do you tailor education to the learning needs of adults? Do they learn differently from children? How does their life experience inform their learning processes? These were the questions at the heart of Malcolm Knowles' pioneering theory of andragogy which transformed education theory in the 1970s. The resulting principles of a self-directed, experiential, problem-centred approach to learning have been hugely influential and are still the basis of the learning practices we use today. Understanding these principles is the cornerstone of increasing motivation and enabling adult learners to achieve. This update of a pioneering classic contains all Knowles' original chapters alongside a newer second part by Elwood "Ed" Holton and Richard A Swanson charting the advancements on these core principles. A third section includes selected readings from previous editions to illustrate the theory's evolution, as well as important articles from other key experts around the world for a comprehensive view.
