Teaching English as a second language (ESL) to competencies requires that the instructional focus be on functional competencies and life-coping skills while developing the spoken and/or written English structures necessary to perform these skills. A step-by-step approach to develop and implement a competency-based approach to ESL for adults is…

The guidelines in this paper were developed to assist Massachusetts Private Industry Councils, social agencies, unions, businesses, and education providers in designing educational programs appropriate to the workplace. The focus is on literacy education. The paper is organized in four sections. The first section briefly examines the background of…

The New Jersey Adult Reading Project was a state project involving more than 500 New Jersey adult educators from 98 adult education programs around the state. The primary objective of the project was to develop a competency-based adult reading management system that would allow program completers to achieve the following goals: continue their…

A demographic and educational profile was constructed of learners enrolled in California employment training programs. Summary data were derived from 47,318 Employability Competency System (ECS) Appraisal answer sheets received by the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) office from 1987 through 1990. ECS provides reading, math,…

This special demonstration project was undertaken to field test and disseminate a curriculum entitled Emergency English for Refugees (EER). Designed to meet the immediate English language needs of pre- and non-literate adult refugees and immigrants, the EER is a 26-unit competency-based English-as-a-second-language (ESL) curriculum that deals with…

This booklet provides descriptions of 16 adult education programs that have been validated as successful by the Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), U.S. Department of Education and that are being promoted by the National Diffusion Network (NDN). Although the programs were developed by individual school districts in response to local needs,…

This resource guide contains learning activities designed to complement existing ABE curricula or become the cornerstone of an ABE curriculum integrating reading, writing, and math skills with practical life knowledge. The guide begins with an introduction, acknowledgments, and an overview of Colorado's Certificate of Accomplishment program, which…

This document contains information from and about Project AchievE (sic), a program that was developed in Pennsylvania's Cumberland Valley School District to enable adults with or without a General Educational Development certificate to earn a regular high school diploma by mastering competencies in the following categories: government and law;…