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Full-Text Articles in Education

Black Lives Matter In Teaching English As A Second Language!, Kristin Lems Oct 2021

Black Lives Matter In Teaching English As A Second Language!, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

The Winter 2020 issue of theIllinois Reading Council Journal published a special issue focusing on “action for equity,” with thoughtful articles and abundant family and classroom resources. This issue of the “wELLcome”column, which is dedicated to topics regarding English language learners (ELLs), continues in that same vein. In this issue, we place the spotlight on ELLs of African descent, their teachers, and their schools.


Truly, Madly, Deeply: Adverbs And Ells, Kristin Lems Oct 2020

Truly, Madly, Deeply: Adverbs And Ells, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

In this issue’s column focusing on adverbs and English language learners, columnist Kristin Lems explores some of the basic but not-so-obvious features about adverbs that readers and writers need to learn in order to take advantage of these powerful levers of language. The odds are very good that your native English speakers will also benefit from this information—and you might learn a thing or two as well.


All About The American Flap, Kristin Lems Oct 2019

All About The American Flap, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

In this column, I am going to talk about the American flap, a phonological feature of the American English dialect. Those of us with backgrounds in ESL/EFL learn about this in our master’s programs, but I have found that even teachers who have taken a course in linguistics may not be aware of the flap and its important implications for listening, reading, and spelling in English (Lems, Miller, & Soro, 2017)


Learning English Through Music In The Digital Age, Kristin Lems Jul 2016

Learning English Through Music In The Digital Age, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

Three simple ideas for music activities that work well in the English language learning classroom. Although there are innumerable methods and techniques, I have selected three techniques that involve use of video because of the focus of this newsletter.


Scaffolding In L2 Reading: How Repitition And An Auditory Model Help Readers, Etsuo Taguchi, Greta Gorsuch, Kristin Lems, Rory Rosszell Apr 2016

Scaffolding In L2 Reading: How Repitition And An Auditory Model Help Readers, Etsuo Taguchi, Greta Gorsuch, Kristin Lems, Rory Rosszell

Faculty Publications

Reading fluency research and practice have recently undergone some changes. While past studies and interventions focused on reading speed as their main goal, now more emphasis is being placed on exploring the role prosody plays in reading, and how listening to an audio model of a text while reading may act as a form of scaffolding, or aid, to reading comprehension. This article explores how two elements unique to repeated reading (RR) practices likely provide scaffolding for L2 learners’ reading comprehension: repetitions in reading a text, and having learners read along with an audio model of the text. Scaffolding is …


Towards An Assumption Responsive Information Literacy Curriculum: Lessons From Student Qualitative Data, Rob Morrison, Deana Greenfield Jan 2015

Towards An Assumption Responsive Information Literacy Curriculum: Lessons From Student Qualitative Data, Rob Morrison, Deana Greenfield

Faculty Publications

This chapter will describe how the collection of data on college student assumptions impacted the development and revision of credit courses in digital information literacy. Drawing on qualitative data from pretests, assignments, questionnaires, reflection journals, and student evaluations, the authors will detail their teaching experiences and the development of an assumption responsive curriculum which challenges students to draw connections between new material and prior questions, concerns, and beliefs. We will also discuss the impetus for the development of our pretest survey tool, thoughts on why student assumptions matter in the classroom, and provide excerpts from the qualitative student data that …


Unpacking The Language Of Stem For English Language Learners, Kristin Lems, Jason Stegemoller Jan 2014

Unpacking The Language Of Stem For English Language Learners, Kristin Lems, Jason Stegemoller

Faculty Publications

This article is a follow-up to a workshop we presented at STEMTech 2013 entitled “Unpacking the language of STEM for English language learners.” We chose this topic because, in our roles as co-directors of the ESL STEM Success Grant (a 5 year national professional development grant from the Office of English Language Acquisition, U.S. Department of Education), we have been exploring ways that teachers across the grade levels can rise to the challenge of more effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs) in the STEM disciplines. (STEM, of course, stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.) When teachers embed their understandings …


A Biliteracy Dialogue Approach To One-On-One Writing Instruction With Bilingual, Mexican, Immigrant Writers, W. Jason Stegemoller May 2013

A Biliteracy Dialogue Approach To One-On-One Writing Instruction With Bilingual, Mexican, Immigrant Writers, W. Jason Stegemoller

Faculty Publications

This interpretive study explores the writing and writing experiences of 2 bilingual, Mexican, immigrant undergraduates at a US university. Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester’s (2003) continua model of biliteracy situates writing interactions to understand how students explore and draw on their bilingual and bicultural resources as they develop academic writing in English in the university. Data include questionnaires, literacy history interview-conversations, text-based conversations, student writing, course syllabi, and assignment sheets. Biliteracy dialogues demonstrate how students approached writing. The 1st student, Diego, focused on negotiating what he perceived as appropriate to include in his writing, while the 2nd student, Nicolas, connected to academic …


A Review Of "Pragmatics: Teaching Speech Acts", W. Jason Stegemoller Apr 2011

A Review Of "Pragmatics: Teaching Speech Acts", W. Jason Stegemoller

Faculty Publications

Book review of Pragmatics: Teaching Speech Acts.


A Comparison Of An International Student And An Immigrant Student: Experiences With Second Language Writing, W. Jason Stegemoller Nov 2004

A Comparison Of An International Student And An Immigrant Student: Experiences With Second Language Writing, W. Jason Stegemoller

Faculty Publications

This study is a comparison of an immigrant student and international student’s experiences with L2 writing acquisition. The study examines a teacher of a basic writing course at a community college in the US and two of the students in the class. The students are one female Korean student who attended high school in Korea, and one male Korean student who attended high school in the US. To explore these issues, this study utilized a modified version of analytic induction and a combination of qualitative methods. The findings indicate that some differences exist between the two students. Some of these …