A community of learners: Cambodians in an adult ESL classroom

Abstract

This article focuses on the English literacy development of Cambodian adults living in the United States. Using an adult ESL classroom as a context, the researcher describes: how the Cambodian adults, literate in Khmer, participate in each other’s English literacy development; how Cambodian children, fluent though not typically literate in Khmer, participate in their parents’ development of English literacy; and how a Cambodian teacher participates in his students’ development of English literacy. To answer these questions it examines how the participants draw on multiple linguistic competencies to help each other accomplish classroom tasks. In contrast to traditional home-school discontinuity studies, it is argued that people have multiple ways for sharing knowledge and creating environments for learning, especially in the case of immigrant communities that are in the process of cultural change and adaptation.