Problems of adult basic education in the United States, symptomatic of the connection between poverty, poor education, and unemployment, have forged for the disadvantaged adult most of the links in the unbreakable chain of deprivation, frustration, and despair. The problem of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) instruction is complicated by the changing relationship between education and the ability to obtain employment. The treatment of the Mexican-American particularly, in trying to achieve acculturation rather than assimilation, has resulted in the wholesale dropout of two generations of students, now adults, who must be molded into functioning members of society. Compared to children, adults have a much larger native language vocabulary and have already developed abstract concepts in their first language. Also, if they are literate in their own language, they can usually make conscious and deliberate use of grammatical generalizations and apply them to new language experiences. Because of these two factors, the following features of the audiolingual method represent a conflict of learning theory and are pedagogically inappropriate for the adult education student in ESOL: (1) dialog-centered lessons; (2) inductive learning of grammatical patterns; (3) avoidance of the native language; (4) withholding the written form; and (5) natural speed of presentation. (AMM)