New Online Resource out of the U.S. -- Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners

As the adult English language learner population continues to grow, many adult literacy and family literacy programs in states with small ELL populations or with rapidly expanding ELL populations may not be not
fully equipped to serve individuals and families learning English. This is particularly true for many community-based and faith-based providers in rural areas, as well as other small, locally funded programs. Many of these providers may not have experienced staff trained to work with adult English language learners, and they may also lack resources and infrastructure.

In response to this need, the Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners was developed. This toolkit provides needed support and resources to adult education and family literacy
instructors who are new to serving adults and families learning English. The toolkit provides a variety of materials to help practitioners meet the language and literacy development needs of the ELL students they serve. These include responses to Frequently Asked Questions, a first-day orientation guide, lesson plans, research-to-practice papers on English language and literacy learning, and an annotated list of English and Spanish language assessments in use.

On the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition(CAELA) Web site, the Index page at http://www.cal.org/caela/elltoolkit allows you to select and download the entire document or to select and download topics of interest as needed.

The toolkit is made possible by a grant from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE)
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/index.html?src=mr , U.S. Department of Education, through DTI Associates, and is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL)
http://www.famlit.org/ and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) http://www.cal.org.

If you have comments or questions about the Practitioner Toolkit, please contact Lynda Terrill at lterrill@cal.org.

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