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The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore adult immigrant learners' perspectives and motivations for participating in an ESL program through the lens of McClusky's Theory of Margin. Nine adult immigrant ESL students were interviewed about their learning experiences. Creswell's (1994) systematic process informed the data analysis of the study. The findings of the study include adult immigrant learners' perspectives of the ESL program, the challenges (loads) they face in their daily lives in terms of learning and speaking English, the support system (power) that help them navigate through those difficulties, and their suggestions to improve the learning experiences at the ESL program. Implications of this research for policy, adult educators, curriculum, and program developers are explored.
Keywords: immigrant ESL learner, adult learners, learner perspective, refugee learners, Theory of Margin
There has been a growing increase in migration flows in the last decades (OECD, 2020). Migration Report (OECD, 2020) highlights that globally 271 million people have been living outside of their birthplace. The United States has been one of the main destination countries with around 2 million immigrants arriving in 2019. When the aging population and declining birth rate are considered, the increasing immigrant-origin adult population including their U.S.-born children are anticipated to provide an invaluable asset to the economy as a source of talent and almost all labor force growth in the next twenty years (Batalova & Fix, 2015). Immigrants' cultural capital (Lee, 2013) and various abilities benefit U.S. society's social and economic growth (Larrotta, 2019). According to the policy report the U.S. Census Bureau pooled for 2012-2016, more than half of the 44.3 million foreign-born people residing in the U.S., aged 16 and over have limited English proficiency and do not have a high school degree or any degree comparable. However, the reports indicate that fewer than 1.5 million of them used adult education services. Language learning is an essential part of immigrants' integration into various domains of life (AdamutiTrache, 2013; Chao, 2020). Adult education programs could benefit many immigrants and refugees in that sense, but the existing system can only meet less than four percent of the current need (McHugh & Doxsee, 2018). Community-based initiatives such as libraries specifically churches have been trying to bridge the gap in language...