Results of English Literacy Needs Assessment Survey

Marilyn Fehn, Iowa English Literacy Pilot Project Director,
Kirkwood Community College

The results of the recently completed Iowa community college based English Literacy (EL) Needs Assessment Survey for program year 2002 (July 1, 2001-June 30, 2002) are summarized. These results will provide the database for the development of the Iowa English Literacy Pilot Project.

• The adult EL population in Iowa is mainly comprised of Hispanic students. They are mainly immigrants from Mexico as well as many different Central and South American countries. Other significant populations are the Bosnian, Sudanese, and Somalian refugees. There is also a population of Asian students being served by our programs.

• By far the biggest employers of Iowa's EL population are the meatpacking plants, the poultry plants, and hog confinement operations. All 15 areas reported students working, or having worked in the meatpacking industry. Other types of employment are factory work, service jobs, manual labor, casinos, and nursing homes.

• Most programs report that the majority of their students are at beginning to intermediate levels of English language proficiency. Many of the instructors report that most of their students have not had much formal education or any form of English language instruction prior to coming to the U.S.

• Students give the following reasons for needing to improve their English language skills: To improve job skills, to move to a higher wage job, to be able to adequately converse with co-workers; to improve general life skills, to take part in community living, to be able to talk with doctors and to their children's teachers, to obtain a GED or to work toward citizenship.

• Instructors reported that their students need instruction in all areas; speaking, reading, listening, writing, but specifically singled out improvement of oral language skills as crucial to meeting learner goals.

• Programs reported a very wide variety of curricula in use in their classrooms. The following textbooks are mainly what are being used: Crossroads, Side by Side, Azar's Grammar books. Also used are Jazz Chants, Oxford Picture Dictionary, Life Prints, journaling, newspapers, tapes, videos, the Bill of Rights, language games, one on one tutoring with native language speakers, and teacher created materials. Some computer based instruction is being used, mainly Rosetta Stone. Some programs report only using a grammar text, with little supplementary material, while other programs reported using quite a comprehensive list of materials targeted at incorporating instruction in all language skills. A minority of programs specifically listed using curriculum designed to improve oral language skills.

• Programs are also reported using a wide variety of assessment tools. Some programs report using no formal assessment at all at this time, while others report that they currently only use informal oral assessments. Many instructors report using textbased assessments, others are using self made assessments and portfolios. Both CASAS and the CAL assessments are being used in varying degrees.

• Programs report a wide range of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the adequacy assessments they are currently using. The most common complaint of instructors is the difficulty of doing formal assessment, specifically progress testing in open entry/open exit programs.

March 14, 2001