Church-Based ESL Adult Programs

Abstract

This multi-sited ethnographic study examines the ways in which Latino and Asian immigrant parents’ English learning through two church-based ESL programs in a Southeastern U.S. city affects their family literacy and home language practices. It demonstrates that the parents’ participation in the programs is an empowering experience promoting ESL acquisition and funds of knowledge, which in turn advances their family literacy. This study also finds that the programs do not promote linguistic assimilation, devalue or erase immigrant parents’ home language. Instead, they facilitate the parents to reclaim their home language and support children’s home language development. The “family literacy ecology of communities” framework is proposed in this study. It indicates that church-based ESL programs as social mediators for situating immigrant adult English learners within real-life communities, empowering their family literacy, accessing communities of power, and having a voice in the larger society. Implications for ESL adult programs and future studies are presented.