According to workplace instructors of English as a Second Language (ESL), such classes are essential if employees have little exposure to English off the job; ESL instruction enables learners to observe others' language-learning strategies and fulfills varied needs: standard English, language attack skills, and a forum for clarifying and…

Living in an age of communication, literacy is an extremely integral part of our society. We are impacted by literature during our infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. "Literacy for the New Millennium" includes information from specialists in the field who discuss the influence of popular culture, media, and technology on…

Investigates issues of empowerment and language learning for English-as-a-Second-Language workers (in workplace literacy projects) making the transition from one type of workplace culture to another. Describes the project and participants, how workplace structures and linguistic hierarchies disempowered second-language learners, benefits of…

Three issues of this newsletter (Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter), produced by the Project in Adult Immigrant Education at the Center for Applied Linguistics, provide information from the field of adult immigrant education, highlights of programs in a particular industry, "promising practices" in training and development, new resources, and…

This document contains three workplace education curriculum frameworks that provide the underlying rationale and competencies for workplace education classes in communication, English as a second language (ESL), and literacy. The frameworks contain basic information about the content of the course, the competencies the students need to master,…

This publication is an update of an earlier Ohio Literacy Resource Center workplace literacy bibliography and contains 20 resources from 1993 to the present. Items have been selected based on a number of criteria: they had to be of high quality, have practical use, and be readily available to a wide audience of workplace literacy practitioners.…

Through a partnership between Detroit Diesel Remanufacturing West, a business, the Asian Association of Utah, a community-based organization, and the Utah State Office of Education, this workplace literacy project taught literacy skills to 35 adults with limited English proficiency. The workers spoke Vietnamese, Lao, and Cambodian. The project…

This curriculum guide contains lesson plans and students handouts for a 12-week (24-class) course on presentation skills. The course has the following objectives: encourage nonnative English speakers to become more expressive and persuasive in their communication; empower students to set and achieve goals; enhance students' ability to convey…

This learning module is intended as a worksite-specific example of a curriculum that addresses the specific job-related language needs of nonnative speakers of English. The module, which is designed to be presented in three 10-week sessions, focuses on different parts of the work orders typically encountered by workers in two different departments…

This task analysis for positions at the ENRO shirt and tie manufacturing plant in Louisville, Kentucky, was developed to help teach English as a second language in order to improve communication in the workplace and prepare all employees for a total quality management model. The task analysis includes information about workers in the Raw…

A study was conducted to describe, discuss, and evaluate a workplace curriculum process in which teachers were actively involved in both constructing and teaching curricula. This process was developed by the Consortium for Worker Education (CWE), a group of 22 New York City labor unions through which 15,000 workers attend more than 300 classes at…

This packet of materials from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner's English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) workplace literacy program, defunct since the newspaper's closing, contains the following items: an overview of the program; a list of units and subunits; two sample lesson plans; teacher guidelines about evaluation and progress; lists of specific…

A JTPA/FEL (Job Training Partnership Act/Family English Literacy) demonstration project is reported that involves a partnership between the Lao Family Community (LFC) of Minnesota, the City of St. Paul, and St. Paul Public Schools/Adult Basic Education. The goal is to provide workplace literacy instruction to refugees with limited English…

One of a series of workplace education modules, this module includes assessment instruments and classroom activities for teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in the workplace. First, an overview is provided, describing issues unique to teaching ESL in the workplace. Five levels of difficulty are then described for module activities (i.e.,…

Mercer County Community College (MCCC) in Trenton, New Jersey, and two local companies (The Trane Company and The Hibbert Group) collaborated on a job-focused, competency-based curriculum to develop literacy competence and English communication capability among native English speakers and speakers of English as a second language (ESL) working at…