This manual provides an overview of the concepts and issues involved in the assessment of prior learning in the context of the increasing numbers of older, nontraditional students returning to higher education. Section 1 gives background information about prior learning assessment (PLA) and defines PLA as assessment by some valid and reliable…

This article addresses the learning of second language (L2) writing skills to show how pictures can be used as an effective guided writing tool to facilitate students' writing process and to improve their writing proficiency. A study was conducted with 53 university students who had a prior knowledge of Spanish in secondary school. All students…

The monograph provides a systematic explication of the underlying standards and principles that have been developed to help adult learners articulate what they know and can do, to clarify their claims to creditable achievement, to help assessors improve the reliability of assessment, and to save assessor time. Ten academic and administrative…

A study investigated what conscious listening strategies second language learners use when listening to authentic texts. Subjects were six college students of intermediate Spanish. They listened to three authentic audio and three authentic video texts. The introspective commentaries of the subjects on one of the video texts are discussed here.…

Two college courses, one in literary analysis and one designed to help students apply prior learning, were redesigned to incorporate time for students to tell the class about their own learning experiences. It was found that the narratives enriched faculty and students' understanding and awareness. (MSE)

A study investigated the hypothesis that topic familiarity and assessed difficulty of a second language text correlated positively with performance on reading comprehension tests in languages for special purposes (LSP). Subjects were 177 advanced students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at Ben Gurion University (Israel). Faculty from the…

A variety of special financial aid practices that colleges have created to meet the needs of adult students are described, based on a 1983 survey of financial aid directors from more than 100 colleges. Information is provided on campus-based sources of financial aid such as: credit for prior learning programs, financial and career information…