Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition : Proceedings of the 4th Symposium Antwerp 2008

Abstract

The language and literacy development by adult learners with little or no schooling in their native country continues to be a relatively new and almost unexplored domain. The fourth LESLLA symposium in Antwerp brought together researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners from various countries with the common aim of accumulating findings and sharing them to improve instructional practice and educational policy with regard to low-educated adult immigrants. Recurrent themes at the symposium and in the papers of this bundle are: bringing the outside world into the classroom, how long does it take to become literate, assessing adult literacy learners, and language technology in the literacy class. New at LESLLA was a panel on African literacies. This theme provides important insight into the background of many LESLLA learners as in most African countries, it is quite normal to learn to read and write, not in the mother tongue but in a second language. The papers provide a multi-country and multi-target language overview of recent developments in the various disciplines of the field of LESLLA.