English Language and Literature Commons^™

Promoting Student Success: Bilingual Education Best Practices And Research Flaws, Lillian Fassero

Senior Honors Theses

This paper first determines the benefits which bilingual education offers and then compares transitional, dual-language, and heritage language maintenance programs. After exploring the outcomes, contexts, and practical implications of the various bilingual programs, this paper explores the oversight in most bilingual studies, which assess students’ syntax and semantics while neglecting their understanding of pragmatics and discourse structures (Maxwell-Reid, 2011). Incorporating information from recent studies which question traditional understandings of bilingualism and argue that biliteracy requires more than grammatical and vocabulary instruction, this paper proposes modifications in current research strategies and suggests best practices for transitional, dual-language, and heritage maintenance programs.

You're A Genius All The Time: Analyzing The Effectiveness Of Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose On Empowering English Language Learners, Robert Casas

Theses and Dissertations

The engineer of the Beat Movement, Jack Kerouac, began his writing career as an ELL. Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose helped him navigate through language acquisition to establish rhetoric in English, and empowered other Beat Writers to expressively develop their thoughts. Spontaneous Prose can also help other ELLs develop their own rhetorical agency. For ELL writers, writing in English often makes them feel disenfranchised, disempowered, and discouraged. However, Spontaneous Prose as a pedagogical tool empowers ELL writers to begin the process of transculturally repositioning themselves in using writing as a form of rhetorical expression. This study investigates the pedagogical effectiveness of Spontaneous …

Teaching Anglo-American Academic Writing And Intercultural Rhetoric: A Grounded Theory Study Of Practice In Ontario Secondary Schools, Amir Kalan

Amir Kalan

This qualitative research project is a grounded theory study of the experiences of five EAL (English as an additional language) academic writing instructors with intercultural rhetoric. Following the academic conversation about contrastive/intercultural rhetoric, this investigation explores narratives of classroom practice in Ontario secondary schools in order to underline L2 writing activities that are sensitive to intercultural rhetoric. This paper includes explanations of the phenomenon of intercultural rhetoric as identified by the interviewed instructors and lists practical strategies employed by the participants. These strategies are organized in three categories: (1) strategies that use the potential of students’ first languages and mother …

A Wood Comes Toward Dunsinane: The Synthesis Of Traditional And Constructivist Methodologies, Randall L. Kaplan

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Education professionals now favor Constructivist and project-based strategies for learning over Traditional methods, which include such frowned upon practices as rote memorization and recitation. The Constructivist approach is being taken to its natural apex by educators like Larry Rosenstock who have created Constructivist utopias such as High Tech High in San Diego, the school put under the microscope in the 2015 documentary film Most Likely to Succeed. Project-based, experiential units of study are effective, exciting, and edifying for both students and teachers. They promise to prepare students for the type of world they will inhabit, a world whose economy …

The Importance Of Using Information Communication Technology For Learning And Teaching The English Language In Kurdistan Of Iraq, Nabaz Noori Kareem

English (TESOL) Master Theses

Kurdistan as a region in north of Iraq has undergone significant changes regarding its educational system, and using ICTs (information communication technologies) for teaching and learning English has been given a great role in the system. There are many researchers who wrote about the benefits and the challenges of using ICTs. As the term ICT includes many kinds of devices and applications, students and teachers in Kurdistan are using various types of ICTs inside or outside of the schools. Students and teachers use ICTs for teaching and learning the skills of the English language such as reading, writing, speaking, and …

Bilingualism And The American Family, Caitlin M. Nickerson

Senior Honors Projects

Bilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language fluently. People of all ages may aspire to learn a second or third language in order to fulfill both personal goals and communicate with a variety of people in different contexts. Irrespective of one’s walk of life or socioeconomic status, being bilingual is a valuable skill. Although English is the language of power in the United States, there are hundreds of other languages spoken in this country.

There are a number of different ways in which children can become bilingual. For example, they may enter the school system speaking the …

Creating A Multiracial Lesson Plan, Clayton Davis

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The purpose of this project is to teach students about multiracial identity issues. Multiracial populations in the U.S. continue to grow and it’s important for educators to address the needs of these students. A 5-E multiracial literature lesson plan was created for second grade that incorporates KWL and Text-to-World teaching strategies. A second grade class were read two children’s picture books, each featuring a biracial protagonist, and were asked to discuss and evaluate the content and commonalities of these stories. Students recorded what they learned in this lesson in their KWL’s. The results reveal that some students understood the problems …

"Y'All And All These Assessments Is A Little Bit Too Much" : The Effects Of High-Stakes Testing On Critical Literacy Pedagogy., Diana Lalata

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

As the United States of America becomes increasingly diverse, there is a need for teachers to embrace multiculturalism within the classroom. Shifting away from the traditional “banking model” of teaching, educational researchers call for a more critical approach—one in which teachers and students challenge dominant beliefs and practices of education. Foregrounded in those aims of cultural competence and critical consciousness, “critical literacy pedagogy” addresses the politicization of literacy education and employs conscious curriculum and teaching strategies to empower marginalized voices. Although a number of case studies on critical literacy pedagogy show considerable promise in disrupting dominant discourse and developing cultural …

Behind The Facebook Façade: Honoring Our Students’ Hidden Lives, Mara Faulkner Osb

Headwaters

No abstract provided.

Review Of Mr. Squirrel And The Moon By Sebastian Meschenmoser, Jessica A. Elder

Library Intern Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

An Autoethnography Of A Novice Esl Teacher: Plato’S Cave And English Language Teaching In Japan, Kevin Lemberger

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This autoethnography documents the author’s one-year experience teaching English in Honjo, Japan. The author details daily life in the public schools and introduces World Englishes. Chapter 1 includes definitions and examples of autoethnography as well as the author’s background, which qualified him for employment in Japan. Chapter 2 is a literature review of research on varieties of English and how they are evolving and being used in classrooms in Japan. The author suggests that Baudrillard’s simulation and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave provide a framework for analyzing current teaching methods and materials being used in the national core curriculum in …

A Triple Case Study Of Two Saudi And One Italian Language Learners' Self-Perceptions Of Target Language (Tl) Speaking Proficiency, Jena M. Robinson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This triple case study examined the diverse ways in which two Saudis and one Italian English language learner (ELL) came to speaking proficiency according to his or her own perceptions and observations. The researcher conducted interviews of the two Saudi ELLs face-to-face and the one Italian ELL through Skype by asking 15 open-ended questions related to their English language learning experiences (narrative inquiry) specifically related to speaking proficiency from their beginning learning through the present. This study was not intended as a contrastive analysis.

The researcher was a monolingual English speaker with beginning experience in Korean and Spanish, and was …

Bell Hooks’ “Enactment Of Non-Domination” In The “Practice Of Speaking In A Loving And Caring Manner”: An Autoethnography Of A Saudi “Widow’S Son”, Braik Aldoshan

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The Prophet Mohammed lost his parents when he was a child, and because he was an orphan, he believed that anyone caring for an orphan would hold a special place in the hereafter. Often when children in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia lose the father, as the author did, there is a stigma attached to the boy with no father, and a tremendous hardship is placed on the family. Having married at age 11 to her third cousin 10 years her senior and giving birth to three children, and expecting another child, his mother became a widow. He analyzes his …

Teaching The Biography Of Pearl S. Buck: Developing Collaborative Reading Strategies For Multilingual Writers, Nichole S. La Torre

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

The present study is action research with a narrative inquiry approach, and seeks to determine the benefits and challenges of using a collaborative method to teach reading comprehension strategies in English 112: Composition for Multilingual Students. As Kenneth Bruffee (1984; 1991), Margaret Mount (2014), Chiu-Hsin Lin (2007) and others have determined, there are many challenges English language learners face when reading college-level texts. This study sought to determine whether the use of collaboration would facilitate the learning of reading strategies and self-monitoring of reading skills.

Ten students participated in this study, including nine undergraduate students and one graduate-level Saudi teaching …

Relevant And Represented: The Presence Of Special Populations In Trade Books, Jessica Krahnke

Masters Theses

This study provides insight into the presence of special populations in trade books. Special populations are defined as a population that has been assigned a label for the sake of educational interventions; in this case, special populations refer to thirteen categories of disability as well as English Language Learners. Past winners of the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award were analyzed for the presence of special populations, how special populations were portrayed, and any significant patterns over time regarding the presence of special populations. Results indicated a lack of characters belonging to special populations, characters in a special population most …