Adult ESL Education in the US

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by SANS

Adult ESL education in the United States is examined through the field’s current landscape, including the size and characteristics of adult learners, typical instructional settings, and the professional standards, assessment practices, and teacher-preparation pathways that shape instruction. The discussion contrasts three noncredit adult ESL approaches—Functional Literacy, Critical Literacy, and New Literacy Studies—and links them to how adult ESL is funded and positioned within U.S. Department of Education structures. It also highlights curriculum design, technology expansion, and the need for increased visibility and curricular innovation to meet immigrant learning demands.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages30

Reading Time1 h 16 min

AccessFree to download

Identification of Adult ESL Learners

Adult ESL learner settings and scope

Estimating learner population and enrollment gaps

Limited proficiency and literacy measures

Background factors affecting literacy scores

Adult ESL Education in the US This article discusses the state of the art in the field of “adult ESL” in the US. It identifies the size, characteristics, and settings of adult education and discusses relevant professional standards, assessment procedures, and teacher preparation. Three approaches to noncredit adult ESL education will be presented (Functional Literacy, Critical Literacy, and New Literacy Studies), each of which has relevance to current status and funding of adult ESL within the Department of Education. A broader view of curriculum design and expansion of technological applications are recommended to address the growing needs of immigrants from Latin America and around the world. The education of adult English as a second language (ESL) stu dents in the US has come a long way since Leo Rosten’s hu morous description of ESL teaching in New York City in The Education of Hyman Kaplan (1937) . Classes for “Americanization” of immigrants still exist in the form of civics classes, but they are only part of the inspiring array of ESL classes being offered to adults in noncredit adult education programs. Based on a yearlong research project aimed at uncovering and documenting important issues and new developments in adult ESL, this article will paint a portrait of the US adult ESL classroom, foregrounding the Herculean efforts of too few trained ESL instructors teaching a limited few of the potential ESL students in the US. It will begin by identifying who adult ESL learners are, presenting a description of characteristics of adult learners and categories of immigrants within a variety of current ESL settings in order to highlight the complexity of this student population. Following this description is a discussion of the evolution of adult ESL professional standards, assessments, and teacher-training options, which have not been uniform across the nation. Next,“adult ESL” within the infrastructure of“adult education” will be problematized with its consequent status, 120 • The CATESOL Journal 26.1 • 2014 funding, and accountability implications. Then, three competing approaches to organizing ESL curricula will be explored, with a focus on why one of these has superseded the others in recent years. In the next section, the article will discuss relevant new technology applications that may be needed to fill the gap for adult limited-literacy learners in the US. Finally, it will argue for increased visibility, funding, and curricular innovation to responsibly support instruction of these adult ESL learners in a 21st-century global context. Identification of Adult ESL Learners At the outset, it must be acknowledged that adult ESL learners in the US attend classes in all types of settings, including colleges and universities or academically oriented Intensive English Programs. However, students in these academic ESL settings will not be the focus of this article. Those in the practice of teaching recognize that “adult ESL” relates to students enrolled in noncredit ESL education in various settings, which will be the focus of this article. To determine how many of these learners exist, only inferential analysis of disparate data can determine the answer. Foreign-born and non-foreign–born adults possessing relatively low levels of literacy amount to about 93 million in the US (National Council of State Directors of Adult Education, 2009) . If one uses the 2000 US census as a reference, it appears that about 35 million people are nonnative English speakers and 9 million do not speak well. Only 1 million are enrolled in state-administered and federally funded ESL programs—or about 11% of the nonnative English-speaking population (Burt, Peyton, & Adams, 2003) . Thousands are on waiting lists unable to be served (National Council of State Directors of Adult Education, 2009) . Others may be enrolled in private, faith-based, or workplace programs or other communitybased organizations; however, it is difficult to ob

FAQs

What does the article focus on when it discusses “adult ESL” learners in the US?

It focuses on adults enrolled in noncredit ESL education across varied settings, rather than academically oriented programs in colleges or universities.

How does the article estimate the number of adult ESL learners?

It relies on inferential analysis of disparate data sources, including estimates of adults with relatively low literacy and limited English proficiency and how many are enrolled in state-administered, federally funded ESL programs.

What are the three approaches to noncredit adult ESL education presented in the article?

The article presents Functional Literacy, Critical Literacy, and New Literacy Studies, explaining their relevance to the current status and funding of adult ESL.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by SANS