An overview of recent research with adult Learners with limited literacy

In August of this year I attended the LESLLA conference in Pittsburgh, USA to show findings from a 2-year research project conducted in my hometown in New Zealand. Hamilton, a city of 178,000, receives regular intakes of former quota refugees through UNHCR. My research was with 60 of these learners who had limited or no print literacy in their L1. The participants came from Wintec, a tertiary educational institution, and a partner organisation, English Language Partners New Zealand, who provide tutoring in homes and ESOL Literacy classes for their 7000 learners. The research investigated whether there were differences in rates of learning between two groups of adult former-refugee participants: refugees that had 0-2 years of prior education and those that had 8 plus years of prior education. An online digital assessment, developed by the Tertiary Education Commission New Zealand, tracks students’ learning progress and was administered at the beginning and end of every programme. Learners’ receptive/listening skills and recognition and selection of 30 familiar vocabulary items were captured over four sessions over 18 months. The results showed that those who had more years of prior learning learned at a slightly faster rate than those with little or no prior education