A couple of links for Basic Skills teachers

A correspondent who teaches ESOL in Minnesota strongly recommends this linked paper (you can download it, but it is big).

And as testimony to the site's usefulness, the "related links" feature takes you to The Impact of "Skills for Life" on Adult Basic Skills in England: How Should We Interpret Trends in Participation and Achievement? You can't get that directly from the site, but even the abstract is interesting.

ERIC is back!

I may be late getting this news, but ERIC is back.

Who he? Educational Resources Information Center is the largest largely open-access database of educational research in the world, courtesy of the US Department of Education. A few years ago they pulled the plug on the funding. A couple of sites struggled on, providing access to the database but not adding anything to it, but now it appears to be back in rude health, with over 3200 new resources added in the past month, and new search facilities.

Note that it can't always provide the full-text resources for free, but sometimes it can, and the ERIC "digests" provide superb overviews of selected topics. Bookmark it!