I Want To Learn English

It started, as these things often do, with the need to acquire better teaching materials. I needed more effective tools for differentiating lessons and supplementing what multilingual English learners need to address their language challenges. Then, back in 2007, I asked a simple question: What if I taught sounds, not just sentences and context, to adult English learners? In the fluorescent hum of a Baltimore classroom, my class wrestled with words like kind and sauce, their brows furrowed, their fingers tracing vowels as though touching sound for the first time.

Fast forward to 2025, and the Journal for English Learner Education (University of Central Florida) published my findings that confirmed what instinct (and years in the classroom) had already revealed to me: when phonics is taught intentionally to beginners, not in isolation but within real-life contexts, something remarkable happens. Learners not only decode words; they begin to understand the English language itself. Their comprehension expands, and their interests intensify because sounds and words merge cohesively. And the numbers simply don’t lie.

My research, conducted with adult multilingual learners at Baltimore City Community College, examined the integration of phonics instruction into a contextualized Level 1 curriculum. I, along with a few other instructors, used standard tools and a textbook-based set of assessment focusing on short and long vowel sounds. Like many programs, we relied on CASAS pre- and post-tests to quantify the impact of our instruction. I asked the college director for permission to act on my hypothesis: that infusing phonics with contextualized instruction to beginners would render greater listening, reading and overall comprehension scores. And the proof would be in the CASAS assessments. He didn’t hesitate. Probably out of curiosity or perhaps genuine interest.

The outcomes were not merely promising; they were definitive. Students in the phonics-integrated cohort showed consistent gains in English proficiency and improved course completion rates compared to peers in traditional instruction models. The director was beyond pleased. Over time, I put together a binder to keep track of what worked best. I got feedback from students to learn what images resonated with them, what activities they found most interesting and what they liked about the lessons overall. This went on for years. And then, the data chart kept climbing upward. The director asked me to do a workshop for the other instructors in the college to share with them the model I was using.

The room full of instructors were wowed by the results. They asked many questions. It was as if they couldn’t believe the difference phonics was making. I kept going back to the data, showing them the stark differences between the classes that used my model and those that did not. But the numbers, as always, tell only part of the story.

What those assessments couldn’t capture was the subtle transformation in the room. I shared with my colleagues, that the woman who had once whispered her name now greeted classmates aloud. The man who had arrived silent and skeptical stayed after class to ask, “How do you spell ‘apartment’?” Phonics, contextualized and demystified, became a bridge. Not just to reading, but to voice. It kept my students engaged and kept them coming back. The data made the higher ups very happy, sure, but the one set of numbers that made all the suits smile was the amount of retention. My students stayed throughout the course. They advanced, and the next group did the same. The program was humming at full throttle.

That bridge that changed things for the multilingual program at BCCC is the spine of that binder I carried to each class, and the contents of that binder became the textbook I Want To Learn English, a curriculum born directly from the research published in JELE. I wrote it, not in a vacuum, but in dialogue with the findings, guided by the rhythms of the classroom and the documented benefits of phonemic awareness. The textbook is built around the belief that adult learners deserve instruction that is both structured and human, rich in repetition, but never rote; steeped in real-life vocabulary, but attentive to sound.

Each unit of I Want To Learn English is anchored in a phonics principle, yes, but also in the lived realities of its learners. A lesson on the long /e/ is not abstract. It’s part of a building of confidence in conversations. A unit on short /a/ leads into a Q&A at the doctor’s office. I pair language fundamentals with social function because the adult learner’s time is sacred, and every word must earn its place. Moreover, the curriculum is designed to honor progress in all its forms. Not every learner may master digraphs by week six, but if she speaks her name without hesitation, if he reads a street sign unaided, these are triumphs, and the structure of our instruction must make room for them.

In many ways, this work is my response to a systemic silence. For too long, adult English learners, especially those at the beginning level, have been handed either outdated grammar drills or advanced ESL texts full of idioms and assumptions. We needed a middle path. We needed a resource backed by data, tested in the field, and shaped by empathy. I Want To Learn English is my contribution to that need. Because those older multilingual students were just like my mother, struggling and embarrassed to speak. That weathered face was similar to my father’s, who worked so late he couldn’t take night classes to learn English in a classroom. This was personal. Those countless students streaming in and out of my classrooms over the years were someone’s son, someone’s aunt, someone’s dad, someone’s mother, and they pinned their hopes on my class. I wasn’t going to let them down.

And so this is more than a report from the front lines of language acquisition. It is a call to action. If you serve adult learners, whether in a community college, a literacy nonprofit, or a faith-based program, I invite you to consider phonics not as a relic of early childhood education, but as a potent tool of equity. When grounded in context, when offered with respect, phonics instruction affirms that no learner is too old to begin again, to sound it out, to make meaning of the world. In the end, my research said something that every teacher already knows in their bones: when we teach with intention, when we meet learners where they are, they rise.

Let us rise with them.

Here is the link to my research in the Journal for English Learner Education –> CLICK HERE. And order the textbook I Want To Learn English from this website at a discount. CLICK HERE for the textbook. And be sure to share this with colleagues. Thank you for all you do and NEVER give up on them.