Increasing attention is being paid to the teaching of languages to adults. Communications improvements, tourism, immigration and international commerce are all contributing factors. Emerging third-world states often require a European language for internal and outside communication. Close contact among European nations demands knowledge of a second language for professional use. Several studies have been made to ascertain language needs in various European countries, revealing great diversities according to country, age, class, occupation and language required. Various European groups are examining adult learning possibilities in permanent and recurrent education. Several studies note the trend in language learning objectives toward a learner-centered, needs and motivation-based approach, exemplified in a Council of Europe objectives model. Languages may be learned for general communication or for special vocational purposes requiring specific technical vocabulary. Several papers note techniques and problems in this type of instruction. Immigrants and migrant workers form a special class of adult language learners - often disadvantaged, with social-educational problems. Both adult language teaching methodology and testing techniques have been closely examined. Following this survey article is a classified bibliography on adult language learning and a classified index to abstracts related to adult language learning published in this journal. (CHK)