Addressing the Needs of Specific Groups of Learners

The previous section of this Toolkit, Adult English Language Learners and Learning Disabilities, discusses strategies for working with adult English language learners with disabilities. Adult English language learners may, however, face other barriers to program participation and learning as well. Learners with the following characteristics may need special attention and may take longer than others to learn English:

• They may be elderly.
• They may be deaf or hard of hearing, visually impaired, or they may have other physical challenges.
• They may have no schooling or limited formal education (less than seven years).
• They may be incarcerated.
• They may be suffering effects of political torture and trauma.
• They may have a disrupted education due to war or other political crises.
• They may come from a culture where the native language is not yet written, is in the process of being written, or is written in a non-roman script or alphabet.
• They may have cultural backgrounds and educational perspectives different from those of the dominant U.S. culture.

This section presents the challenges and strategies related to meeting the needs of learners with these characteristics. Any one learner may fit into several of these groups. For example, an elderly Kurdish learner may be hard of hearing, have limited formal education and limited literacy in a language that does not use the Roman script, and suffer from the effects of political torture. A younger learner from El Salvador may have limited education due to disruption caused by war, relocation, or may be incarcerated.

Elderly Language Learners

Elderly immigrants and refugees learning english may experience memory loss and have difficulty concentrating. An appropriate learning environment can compensate for factors that can affect performance and progress, such as perceptual acuity, psychomotor coordination, and memory. English classes can decrease the older person's isolation and increase their access to services and community activities. The learning environment should be physically comfortable (e.g., with sufficient lighting and size-appropriate desks and tables). Instruction should include topics and activities that are relevant to the learners' experiences, concrete tasks that make use of many different senses (e.g., hearing a text read aloud and carrying out activities related to it in addition to reading it), and reviews of content presented with increasing complexity of ideas and language. Learners' anxiety can be reduced by helping to create supportive relationships within the class. Slowing the pace of instruction and putting the emphasis on receptive rather than productive skills (i.e., allowing them to just listen at times rather than always having to respond orally) will assist all elderly learners. (for more information, see allender, 1998).