Eating Well, Living Well: Nutrition Education for Adult ESL Programs

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In 1978, the Adult Performance Level (APL) study (University of Texas) recommended that adult basic education, including English As-A-Second Language, be functional - that is - focus on the ability to ‘do’ something or perform a task, rather than simply on ’knowing’ how to perform a task. Another way of saying this is that adults need to be ‘competent’ in their everyday lives. Since that time, adult level curricula has been “competency based.” The focus of instruction is on functional skills, such as reading a food label and making an informed choice, rather than academic knowledge for knowledge’s sake, such as understanding the chemical differences between saturated fats and unsaturated fats.

State departments of education have embraced the competency-based approach as reflected in the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) competency list, the Secretary’s Commission on Attaining Necessary Skills (SCANS) competencies and the ‘Equipped for the Future’ adult role maps currently used as the basis for course outlines across the United States.

Over the years, the emphasis on different content areas in ESL instruction has changed due to societal trends. A need for more citizenship classes emerged following passage of amnesty legislation; greater focus on vocational ESL (VESL) grew out of the SCANS report; and recently (2002,) ‘civics education’ has become a priority with the federally funded EL (English Language) Civics program.