Teaching Reading to Adult English Language Learners: A Reading Instruction Staff Development Program was developed with a federal English Literacy and Civics Education grant from the Office of Adult Education and Literacy of the Virginia Department of Education.

The purpose of this project was to develop and field-test a series of staff development workshops to support instructors of adult English language learners in constructing an understanding of the foundations of reading in a second language and appropriate reading instruction for adult second language learners.

Such an understanding is necessary to implement adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) content standards and to prepare learners for reading assessments. A companion project for reading instructors of adult native English speakers, Introduction to Research-Based Adult Reading Instruction, was completed in 2004.