California. Dept. of Education. Adult Education Division

Administrative History

In the 1970s, California adult education's already large population of immigrant students who required English as a second language education was increased dramatically by an influx of Southeast Asian refugees. The State Department of Education used federal funds to develop life-skills oriented curriculum that was suited to the needs of the new residents. This collection contains samples of two of the most widely used curriculum projects and of two other more obscure projects developed during the period.

The Asian Project was a complete curriculum developed to meet the needs of immigrants with beginning and intermediate language skills by the largest school district in California, Los Angeles Unified. The principal developer was Sadae Iwataki. The Asian Project was piloted and marketed under several names including Bridging the Asian language and cultural gap, and most prominently as ESL: a new approach for the 21st century. The materials were published commercially by Modulearn Inc. and were somtimes referred to as the Modulearn materials. Ultimately they were distributed by DELTA Systems Inc.

The ICB-VESL (integrated competency-based vocational English as a second language) was sponsored by the Chinatown Resources and Development Center in San Francisco. The curriculum combined CBAE with bilingual vocational ESL and included cultural notes translated into four languages. ICB-VESL was extensively piloted in California. Materials developed from ICB-VESL were published by Scott Foresman under the title English That Works. The project director was David Hemphill and the principal developer was K. Lynn Savage.

The more obscure projects are Basic Reading and Language Development and Project ABLE. The introductions in the materials indicate that they are pilots developed in San Diego, but no information has been retained regarding uses or outcomes.