jelt.7.4.13767 THE EXPERIENCES IN PROCESSING POLICIES AND CONTRACTS BY ADULT ESL READERS Evalyn B. Abiog Journal on English Language Teaching 2249–0752 7 4 44 54 10.26634/jelt.7.4.13767 Adult ESL Readers, Legal Texts, Policies, Contracts, Processing Strategies The present study describes the experiences of adult English as a Second Language (ESL) readers in processing legal texts prior to entering a financial agreement. A preliminary survey was conducted to determine the commonly read policies and contracts of adult ESL reader-consumers, which revealed those of banks and life-insurance companies; hence, these two were used as instruments of the study. A bank policy and a life-insurance contract were used as samples of legal texts, which were read by eight adult ESL readers from several cities in Metro Manila. Triangulation was employed to capture the essence of the experiences of the adult ESL readers. The participants' accounts were subjected to qualitative data analysis of transcribing, highlighting statements, clustering related themes, reducing related themes to core themes, and describing the essence of the participants' experience. The study found that, the experiences of the adult ESL readers in making sense of legal texts were influenced by processing strategies. The essence of the participants' experiences lies in their challenging, yet meaningful reading experience. The challenges rest on the complexity of legal texts and on the limited understanding of these readers. Despite these challenges, they recognized the implications of their reading experience to their future financial transactions. October - December 2017 Copyright © 2017 i-manager publications. All rights reserved. i-manager Publications http://www.imanagerpublications.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=13767