Work/Leisure. Some parents may feel that they work to live and that leisure is considered essential for a full life. Other parents may feel that they live to work and leisure is the reward for hard work.

Competition. Teachers/tutors may find parents from a culture in which personal competition is avoided, while others come from cultures where it is important to prove oneself in competitive situations.

Time. Some parents may come from cultures in which time is a relative concept and deadlines are flexible. Others may believe that deadlines and commitments are firm.

Instructional Approaches

In order to develop a curriculum that supports learners' goals and that relates to their lives outside the educational setting, programs should select approaches appropriate for program needs, student needs, and program intensity. The following approaches are widely used today. (See Crandall & Peyton, 1993, for a detailed discussion of these approaches.)

Competency-based approaches stress the importance of learning the language in order to accomplish real- life tasks (also known as life skills or survival skills), such as completing applications, reading schedules, and asking for information.

Freirean and participatory approaches start with real issues in the learners' lives and develop the curriculum and language skills to address those issues, such as advocating for children, speaking up on the job, or dealing with legal problems. These approaches are based on the work of Paulo Freire. (See http://cal-org.wdi.net/caela/digests/freireQA.htm for more information.)

Integrated, theme-based approaches link language learning to topics of interest to the learners, such as cultural comparisons, health practices, or citizenship attainment.

Language experience approaches use shared events and experiences from learners' lives as starting points for creating stories. The language experience approach builds on learners' experiences and oral language to develop reading texts. Typically the teacher elicits a story from students by asking them questions about an experience they have had together, or that they have shared knowledge about, and that they have the language to talk about (e.g., a class field trip, shopping for food, coming to the United States). The teacher writes the story on the board, a flip chart, or an overhead transparency; reads the story to the students; and works with the students so that they can copy and read the story. (See Language Experience Approach, and Teaching with the Language Experience Approach, for a more detailed description and examples of activities that can be used with this approach.)