Many of us were taught to teach in environments where the students are typically well-educated. The first book that anyone new to adult ESL should read is Approaches to Adult ESL Literacy Instruction, a collection of essays edited by JoAnn Crandall and Joy Kreeft Peyton of the Center for Applied Linguistics. Each essay has been written by an expert in the particular approach it covers, and the book is the primary source for all instruction in this area. Through this approach students learn those basic life skills associated with survival in a new country, such as language associated with how to obtain food and shelter or how to ask for directions. In Savage's use of this approach, it can also include how to take notes for a lecture or how to function in a work-place situation.
Savage does a good job of providing a rationale for the approach.
She also provides a comprehensive history of the approach, including the objections made by some people to the sometimes too-narrow approach that can occur. Her response, in essence, is that it is not the approach that is too narrow, but rather the application of that approach by some practitioners. The topic of chapter 2 is the use of a whole language approach to teaching adults. In this chapter, Rigg and Kazemek provide the theoretical underpinnings for whole language as well as a sense of how it is used in the classroom. It is important to understand that the originators of this approach do not view it as a method, but rather as a way to view language.