Language learning by immigrants and functional illiterates

Abstract

Abstract Learning a language is an indispensable prerequisite for participating in both public and working life. Adult education, also in Germany, is currently facing a great challenge in the area of language teaching: In addition to language teaching for migrants and refugees, a key problem is the alphabetization of German and non-German speaking functional illiterates. This paper looks at the conditions for successful language learning by the adults here in focus in organized teaching and learning settings as identified by research across different disciplines. A systematic literature research was conducted, using relevant databases (FIS-Bildung, ERIC), upon which 314 publications were identified and subjected to a content analysis. The literature research focuses on three questions: First, how is adult language learning in organized teaching and learning settings discussed in the field of adult resp. further education and other disciplines. Second, which research questions were pursued during the years 2010 and 2016. And third, what suggestions are proposed to adequately support teachers and learners. To illustrate the wide scope and heterogeneity of the reviewed research on language teaching and learning, this paper presents and discusses examples of different topics. The results indicate that research in language teaching and alphabetization is predominantly conducted within the fields of adult education, psychology and linguistics, applying a broad variety of discipline-specific methods. The review also shows that within the span of the analysis only few studies produced reliable results regarding the effectiveness of successful language acquisition.

Keywords

• Language acquisition
• Language learning
• Teaching and learning