Providing Adult Basic Education Services to Adults with Limited English Proficiency. Background Paper Prepared for Project on Adult Literacy / William B. Bliss.

The United States lacks a clear policy and firm resolve to provide all adults who have limited English proficiency with the opportunity to learn the language. Significant demographic trends are developing that will make the nation increasingly dependent on a growing language-minority labor force. Various Census Bureau estimates report that between 4 and 6.5 million residents of the United States do not speak English well or do not speak it at all. Recent immigrants to the United States face myriad practical survival issues. Adult education programs operated by local school systems and community colleges account for the majority of English as a second language (ESL) programs offered to adults in the United States. The existing system of delivering ESL instruction is plagued by the following problems: the inadequate supply of ESL instruction, the impact of immigration policy on the delivery of education services, barriers to participation, the part-time teaching force that predominates in ESL instruction, inadequate training of ESL teachers, nonexistent national research and development capabilities, inadequate ESL provision in the public schools, and prevailing attitudes toward immigrants. (This report examines proposed solutions to each of these problems.) (MN)

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