“Worldwide there are about 774 million adults who lack literacy skills. One in five adults is still not literate and two-thirds of these are women.” Many of these individuals are L2 learners sometimes learning not only one, but two or more languages. (Tarone, 2009). However, there is still a paucity of literature about the process of second language acquisition with illiterate or limited literacy adult L2 learners. In Aotearoa New Zealand there are many of these L2 adult immigrant learners learning English language in our classrooms in government funded programmes, as they commit to improving their literacy skills.
The goal of these programmes is enhanced literacy/communication skills, which in turn may improve their employment opportunities. There is an on-line assessment tool to measure learners’ progress over time.
This two-year project enquires into the time taken by learners with migrant and refugee backgrounds to make progress. A group of forty learners with 0-2 years of prior education is compared with a group of thirty learners who had 8-10 years of prior education. These seventy participants speak in ten first languages from nine different countries. Their rates of progress in L2 literacy gains will be compared.
A mixed-methods approach is being taken. Early findings will be shared from initial interviews where participants shared their early educational and social backgrounds. Results from TEC online assessments and portfolio collections of naturally occurring evidence will also be shared, as well as early findings from classroom observations.