Immigrants in their later years can succeed at learning English and becoming citizens if they have access to instruction that considers their particular interests and stage of development, including their distinct cognitive, physical, and psychological profiles. Step One, a new age-friendly curriculum, helps older newcomers take the first steps in…

Although the role of grammar instruction is still highly debated within the field of second language acquisition and language pedagogy (Nassaji, 2017), explanations have emerged as fruit-bearing interactional phenomena that can illustrate the "how" of explicit grammar instruction (Fasel Lauzon, 2015; Hudson, 2011; Majlesi, 2018;…

Online learning and assessment have become a major concern for educators in the field of education due to the many challenges they present. The coronavirus lockdown has profoundly affected the instruction and evaluation processes for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the perspectives of EFL…

All around the globe, the development of digital skills is considered a priority because individuals are increasingly asked to interact with digital information. Digital literacy is required to communicate effectively and accomplish social and work-related tasks. Although there is a significant body of literature on the development of digital…

Researchers and practitioners have long been interested in the role of learner agency in the emergence of learning opportunities. However, despite the growing number of studies, few of them have empirically been able to demonstrate how such moments can create learning opportunities. Based on 12 hours of videotaped data, this study describes the…

In this article, adult English language learning is historicized and situated within the context of globalization and empire building. The purpose of this article is to link adult English as a second language (ESL) learning with imperialism and globalization, but also reveal that there is great radical potential within spaces of adult ESL for…

The practice of narrow listening was introduced almost 30 years ago (Krashen, 1996), but has not received enough attention from English language teachers and researchers. Past research has placed a focus on the combination of this method and narrow reading, or the use of this method in teaching languages other than English. This study explored…

For decades, the majority of educational research has been preoccupied with understanding as a "product"--as various "learning achievements" and "subject mastery" to be measured and subsequently represented as statistics or test scores. This preoccupation is also observed in the field of second language education,…

Translanguaging, defined as "the deployment of a speaker's full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages" (Otheguy et al., 2015, p. 281), has great potential to play a key role in English as a Second Language (ESL)…

This article reports a case study of older adults learning English in China. It indicates how, founded on consequentialist ethics, risk analysis, and safeguarding, it was decided to use covert research, drawing on the confluence of risk analysis, risk evaluation, risk management, safeguarding, research ethics, and important contextual and cultural…

This technical assistance paper provides policy and guidance to individuals with test administration responsibilities in adult education programs. There are four important reasons for creating a data-driven accountability system for adult education programs: (1) WIOA mandates that states develop a data-driven accountability system to establish and…

Integrating research on both linguistic and semiotic resources of translanguaging practices, this research was carried out using a case study design to understand how translanguaging was used by both ESL teachers and adult language learners in the ESL setting, what functions translanguaging performs, and how teachers and students understand their…

This essay describes the decline in the number of participants enrolled in federally-funded adult basic education (ABE), adult secondary education (ASE), and adult English Language (EL) programs. Enrollment data since 1965 indicate a steep and consistent downward trend in the number of adults enrolling in these programs since the 1990s.…

Learning a language is a lifelong process and requires motivation, patience, a great deal of effort to continuously observe, reflect, and apply the acquired knowledge and skills in practice. Building on an experiential learning approach to support lifelong learning offers a wide range of ways in which instructors can create and deliver engaging…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore adult immigrant learners' perspectives and motivations for participating in an ESL program through the lens of McClusky's Theory of Margin. Nine adult immigrant ESL students were interviewed about their learning experiences. Creswell's (1994) systematic process informed the…