Making the Invisible Visible: A Responsive Evaluation Study of ESL and Spanish Language Services for Immigrants in a Small Rural County in Indiana

This article describes a responsive evaluation study of ESL services and Spanish language services for immigrants in a rural county in Indiana. An ESL specialist led the evaluation of language services in the county from the perspectives of language providers and recipients. The responsive evaluation--a form of action research that uses stakeholders' issues and concerns as bases for evaluating a program and a plan for improvements--identified the services and resources available to new residents in the community. In addition, it identified many of the struggles faced by immigrants and residents in working with limited resources to fulfill language needs. Finally, the study yielded a set of recommendations to add new resources and enhance existing ones to meet the needs identified. ESL specialists are ideally qualified and will be increasingly sought after to undertake evaluation studies such as this one. A SWOT Analysis of RCI's Language Service Framework is appended. (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures, and 2 footnotes.)