  We present a derivation of the low energy effective action of an extended
Nambu Jona-Lasinio (ENJL) model to $O(p^4)$ in the chiral counting. Two
alternative scenarios are considered on how the ENJL model could originate as a
low energy approximation to QCD. The low energy effective Lagrangian we derive
includes the usual pseudoscalar Goldstone modes, as well as the lower scalar,
vector and axial-vector degrees of freedom. By taking appropriate limits, we
recover most of the effective low-energy models discussed in the literature; in
particular the gauged Yang-Mills vector Lagrangian, the Georgi-Manohar
constituent quark-meson model, and the QCD effective action approach model.
Another property of the ensuing effective Lagrangian is that it incorporates
most of the short-distance relations which follow from QCD. (We derive these
relations in the presence of all possible gluonic interactions to leading order
in the $1/N_c$-expansion.) Finally the numerical predictions are compared to
the experimental values of the low energy parameters
