We Have Arabic At This School?: The Impact Of Neoliberalism And Orientalism On Arabic Education In The United States, Ella V. Pastore

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research examines Arabic education in the United States at the undergraduate level, highlighting the question: How do forces such as Orientalism, globalization, and neoliberalism affect the way that the Arabic language is taught and recognized in the United States? The Arabic programs of three highly accredited American universities are presented, in relation to their Japanese programs. While Japanese is a language that faces its own Orientalisms and imperial history with the West, Japan is currently not a country that is prioritized through national security interests, with Arabic being designated as a “Critical Language”. Through examination of the advertisement of …

Meet Me In The Middle: A Scoping Review On Understanding Adolescent Needs In Climate Communication, Gwendolyn Monica Hoff Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

The greatest effects of climate change are likely to be felt by youth. Young people are disproportionately affected by climate change due to their critical developmental stage and lack of power, and they experience both higher severity and prevalence of mental health issues related to climate change. Strong emotions have long been recognized as potential catalysts for action, or they may lead to paralyzing feelings of being overwhelmed. Climate communication is a critical tool to spark climate concern and encourage action. Activism, in turn, may help youth manage their anxiety about climate change. This scoping review examines emerging evidence on …

Enhancing The Communicative Competence Of Filipino Immigrants In America, Zsanel Aranas

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field project focuses on enhancing the communicative competence of Filipino immigrants in America through developing a workshop program. The Filipino immigrant community in America is diverse and they struggle to overcome language barriers and adapt to their new environment. This project aims to solve these struggles by providing valuable skills and resources for successful communication. The workshop program is a four-unit modular material that covers areas relevant to speaking and communication, such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, writing, speaking, and cultural competence. By enhancing their communicative competence, Filipino immigrants can engage in meaningful conversations, develop public speaking skills, and create …

When Culturally Responsive Practices Meet Social-Emotional Learning: A Guide For Educators, Sharon Ju-Ting Cheng

Master's Projects and Capstones

Many educators hope to give their students quality and well-rounded education while balancing all the contents they need to learn. Social-emotional learning (SEL) and culturally responsive teaching, however, are two areas that teachers seem to struggle with (Stark et al., 2021). Teachers have encountered situations where it was difficult for them to support their students due to the cultural differences between the teacher and student (Heineke & Vera, 2021). This lack of professional development in the culturally responsive aspect is concerning.

The shortfall of training leads to failure to apply these practices into schools. For newcomer students, who are usually …

English Pronunciation Skills And Intelligibility Of Native Russian Speakers, Zoia Palgova

Master's Projects and Capstones

The rapid growth of the native Russian-speaking population in the United States created an urgent need to improve their pronunciation skills and increase their second language speech intelligibility. The purpose of this field project was to present a research-based curriculum, with the use of embedded technology, that can be utilized to improve the American English pronunciation skills and intelligibility of native Russian speakers.

The body of analyzed scholarship demonstrated that speech intelligibility is the primary goal of second language pronunciation teaching, justified the importance of research-based pronunciation teaching, emphasized the significant role of technology in pronunciation research and teaching, and …

Put Down That Book! Producing Poetry To Center Students As Organic Intellectuals, Jacqueline E. Boland

Master's Projects and Capstones

Schools are often sites of hegemony, where certain knowledge and voices are prioritized over others. This hierarchy frequently discounts students as producers of their own knowledge, ignoring the wisdom gleaned from their lived experiences, diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and cultural communities. While the study of literature inside a high school English classroom can be fruitful for students to acquire empathy and perspective, it is only effective when it is equitable. Educators must implement diverse representation in narratives, characters, authors and texts to represent students whose identities exist at the margins. Positioning work by Women of Color in the classroom …

Decolonizing The Brazilian Efl Classroom: Creating Space For Afro-Brazilian Students Of English, Robyn Diane Mosely

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

Afro-Brazilians constitute the majority of Brazil’s total population. When compared to White Brazilians, Afro-Brazilians are more than twice as likely to live in abject poverty. These striking disparities have significant implications for this community and the socioeconomic well-being of the entire country. Securing access to quality secondary education is imperative for the Black communities of Brazil to ascend out of poverty and hardship.

Completing a foreign language program, typically English, followed by successfully passing a rigorous competency exam, is a prerequisite to obtaining a postsecondary degree in Brazil's university system. This assessment can present a dilemma for Black Brazilians …

Remembering The Bracero Program: Decolonizing Community Spaces & Expanding Migrant Representation In Children’S Literature, Ariadna Santoyo Zarate

Master's Projects and Capstones

This applied project explores the history of Bracero workers in the United States. This history of Braceros serves the purpose of deepening immigrant farm working communities’ understanding of who they are. This research study aims to expand narratives of the migrant experience by highlighting the Bracero program and addressing the lack of diverse representation in children’s books. This research gathers the personal experiences of Braceros through the book ‘OUR GRANDFATHERS WERE BRACEROS AND WE TOO’ by Abel Astorga Morales & Rosa Martha Zarate Macias and explores articles teaching us about decolonizing frameworks and indigenous ideologies. I’m writing a book that …

Teaching American English Pronunciation In A Spanish Speaking Context: A Guide For Efl Teachers In Chile, Martin P. Quarto

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field project addresses the lack of education surrounding pronunciation teaching, and it specifically responds to the opportunities available within English as a Foreign Language settings. This project is especially relevant to English language teachers who would like to study pronunciation teaching and its history. The objective of this research is to inform educators of the validity of teaching pronunciation and to teach educators effective strategies that can be used. Theories of Contrastive Analysis and Error Analysis form the foundation of this project, as well as theories of Interlanguage and Markedness. The literature review includes extensive research into the subject …

Runaman Tukuy: Language Revitalization Strategies For Runasimi Heritage Learners, Allison B. Bejar

Master's Projects and Capstones

The legacies of colonization remain a pervasive force in society and actively work against Indigenous communities and their right to their languages, knowledge systems, and cultural practices. More specifically, the colonial legacy of linguicide has endangered and marginalized thousands of Indigenous languages all over the world. This field project focuses on Quechua language revitalization and aims to better understand and contribute to Indigenous language and identity scholarship. This field project is informed by a brief qualitative study through participant interviews with six Quechua heritage learners and educators. The study explores the limitations and possibilities of formal Quechua language learning, reiterates …

Understanding The Perspectives, Practices, And Expectations Of Korean American Parents Toward The Heritage Language Education Of Their Children, Yunhee Choi

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study, conducted with parents of a Bay Area Korean school, was to explore how Korean American parents perceive, practice, and expect from the heritage language education of their children. The parents shared their experiences as Korean immigrants in raising their children in two languages. First, a survey was distributed and collected to apprehend the demographics of 24 Korean American parents in a West Coast metropolitan area who sent their children to a Korean heritage language school on weekends. Then one-on-one in-depth interviews were conducted with seven of these parents. Seven themes emerged from the data: …

The Relationship Between Metacognitive Strategies And Listening Comprehension Proficiency In Intensive-Korean-Foreign-Language Setting, Gumok Seo

Doctoral Dissertations

The study investigated the relationship between a metacognitive-listening strategy and listening proficiency and gained insights into students’ perceptions of listening-strategy use among Korean-as-a-foreign-language learners in an intensive-language setting in Northern California. Little research has been carried out in a Korean-as-a-foreign-language (KFL) setting, and investigation in a different context of an intensive-language program is needed where good study habits, such as metacognitive strategy, self-regulation, and autonomous learning are required. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between metacognitive-listening-strategy use and listening proficiency outcomes by more- and less-proficient students among KFL adult learners and their perception of metacognitive-listening-strategies.

To achieve the …

Collateral Damage: How Expanding Public Charge Policy Influences Adult Esl Enrollment, Allison M. Eckert

Master's Theses

This study used statistical analysis of enrollment records for ESL programs at community colleges throughout California from 2015-2019 to determine whether adult immigrants’ participation in public ESL programs was reduced under President Donald Trump. Immigrant families’ lesser use of public education services and means-tested federal benefits has been widely documented in the wake of Trump’s expansion of the public charge rule, which counted immigrants’ use of a wider array of public benefits against their case for residency in the United States than had any previous iteration of the rule. Failing the public charge test can block an immigrant’s entry into …

Creating An Engaging Environment For Adult Esl Learners In E-Learning Settings: Reducing Affective Filters And Cognitive Overload, Qian Liu

Master's Projects and Capstones

Countless online ESL programs targeting adult learners have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially since the unemployment crisis made people start thinking about self-improvement. This emergence of online education is a life-changing chance not only for the ESL education industry and teachers, but also for countless learners. This field project includes appropriate background, a review of relevant literature, and ultimately presents a free, online self-training session for novice online ESL teachers who teach adults.

Research that informed the creation of this project indicated that online second language education programs that use technological tools can lead to positive learning outcomes. Adult …

Facilitating Adaptive And Dynamic Learning Transfer Using Genre-Based, Translingual, And Multimodal Pedagogies In L2 Composition Instruction, Raina Levesque

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ensuring that students can transfer the knowledge and skills they learn in L2 composition classes to future personal, academic, and professional contexts outside of the classroom is perhaps the most important goal of L2 college writing instruction. However, while research shows that pedagogies based in adaptive and dynamic learning transfer, defined as the repurposing or innovation of knowledge to negotiate new and unfamiliar writing contexts, are more successful in preparing students to transfer their knowledge to future contexts than pedagogies based in similarity learning transfer, defined as the matching of knowledge across comparable known contexts, many L2 college composition instructors …

Hey Google: How Can We Build Critical Media Literacy?, Wilson Wang

Master's Theses

The year 2020 spotlighted problematic media coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic. Conflicting narratives of the origin of the “China virus” (Campbell & Park, 2020), the silenced journalistic freedoms (Davidson, 2020), and the impact on communities of color (Williams, 2021) created mass confusion during the global pandemic. To help address our understanding of media, teaching civic online reasoning (Wineburg & McGrew, 2017) and critical media literacy are two potential points of emphasis. Building critical media literacy helps resist the echo chamber effect of social media and cable news, which results in polarization and difficult mediation between parties (Bexley & Tchailoro, …

The Effect Of Teaching And Learning Vocabulary In Lexical Chunks On The Listening Comprehension Of Adult Learners Of Arabic, Bassam Al-Maqtari

Doctoral Dissertations

This study aimed to investigate how teaching and learning Arabic vocabulary items in multiword form (i.e., chunks and phrases), rather than in single form (i.e., one word at a time), affects learners’ ability to comprehend Arabic listening passages and to examine the relationship between students’ auditory knowledge of words, and that of phrases and listening comprehension. Data sources included three types of tests: the Arabic listening comprehension test, the single-word auditory knowledge test, and the multiword auditory knowledge test. The sample consists of 39 students (experimental group=20, control group=19). The study was separated into a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest portion (Phase 1) …

Equity In Language Programs: Revitalizing Indigenous Languages In Secondary School In Anchorage, Alaska, Betsy Watson (Paskvan)

Doctoral Dissertations

"Wherever there is a situation of domination and subordination between any two groups, whatever their color or religion, this will be reflected in the language relationship: one language dominating the other." —wa Thiong’o (2011, p. 244) Indigenous language and culture education efforts in Anchorage, Alaska are limited by omissions in the public school curriculum. One of the many reasons for this is that policy makers believe there is not sufficient demand for Alaska Native languages in public schools. Further there is a perceived lack of language teacher-leaders and experts to build programs for Alaska Native language instruction. This study used …

Using Contextualized Materials To Teach English Grammar, Jingyi Yang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Grammar learning is the foundation of language learning. Despite its importance, many ESL adult learners consider grammar learning a challenging part, and the effectiveness of grammar instruction has been evaluated low. This is because of inappropriate teaching approaches and the lack of contextualized learning materials. Inappropriate teaching approaches include traditional PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production), which hinder the effectiveness of research-based teaching approaches. Decontextualized and meaningless grammar forms are additional underlying challenges of grammar learning. This field project uses task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a theoretical framework. The three literature review themes explore the importance and challenges of grammar, grammar instruction …

Financial Literacy For Latino Immigrants: A Guidebook For Esl Teachers, Anna Braden

Master's Projects and Capstones

Latino immigrants face many financial challenges in the United States. Language barriers exclude them from jobs as well as financial and consumer markets. Lack of familiarity with the U.S. financial system or bad experiences with financial systems in their home countries can create mistrust and lead to Latino immigrants being unbanked or underbanked. Consumer vulnerabilities may also be exploited as immigrants turn to nonbank financial services such as predatory lenders (check cashers, payday lenders, etc.). Lack of access to jobs and marketplaces results in lower income and less wealth accumulation. Over time this results in wealth inequality between Latino immigrants …

Promoting 21st-Century Learning: Online Collaboration Through Design Thinking Framework For Today's Esl Students, Hande Yildiz

Master's Projects and Capstones

Learners of the 21st-century engage and learn differently than ever before. Policymakers and teachers are now challenged to makeshift into the 21st-century education model and adapt their approaches to better prepare the students for the future work world. 21st-century ESL classrooms should reflect this learning model through a more engaging, collaborative, and student-centered approach. Collaboration and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills are vital in 21st-century learning. Research shows that ESL learners can benefit from collaborative activities and the use of technology improves students' language reception and production. However, due to the lack of understanding of the paradigm shift in …

Competent And Confident: Empowering English Language Learners Through Pronunciation Instruction, Faith Pellas

Master's Projects and Capstones

Compared to other language skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, pronunciation is often neglected in ESL and TESOL curriculum planning and material design. Moreover, many English language teachers lack training in pronunciation instruction, therefore these techniques are not often addressed in class. Learning pronunciation is a top priority for many English language students because it enables them to communicate clearly, have better opportunities, and integrate well into Anglophone communities. The literature review discusses second language acquisition and the determining factors of accented and non-accented speech. It also addresses accent discrimination and the obstacles English language learners (ELLs) face …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Thompson’S (2105) Survey Of Language Usage And Spanish Of Heritage Learners Placement Program Exam At The High-School Level, Elizabeth Villanueva

Doctoral Dissertations

Language placement test serve with multiple purposes to measure the language abilities and performance of language learners to place them in the most appropriate language course with curriculum that best meets the language needs. There is the need to assess appropriately the Spanish heritage language learners’ (SHLLs) abilities at the high-school level. Therefore, this mixed-method study investigated how Thompson’s (2015) modified Yes or No 10-question Survey of Language Usage (Survey) and the three part Spanish for Heritage Language Learners Placement Program Exam (Placement Test) could be used effectively with three Spanish class levels of HLLs at the high-school level to …

Enhancing Accessibility, Diversity, And Literacy Of Heritage Language Maintenance In Our Community: A Proposal For Public Libraries With A Focus On The Korean Community, Sooyoung Yang

Master's Projects and Capstones

In contrast to the U.S. emphasis on producing English monolinguals, the needs of world language fluency and education have become more evident than ever as society becomes more globalized and potential bilinguals and even multilinguals are transformed to important human resources. However, even now, linguistically diverse communities often experience significant heritage language loss after immigrating to the U.S. due to the still long-held undervaluation of heritage languages and the push for rapid assimilation to the new society. Research has revealed the many benefits and advantages of heritage language development and maintenance, but unfortunately, the formal education system in the U.S. …

Teaching English To Refugees And Immigrants With Low Literacy In Their Native Language And Limited English Proficiency (Using The Language Experience Approach), Jacqueline Hill

Master's Projects and Capstones

Immigrants who enter the United States come with varying degrees of education. Some immigrants come with a bachelor’s degree or higher, and some come with very limited schooling or no schooling at all. Yet many immigrants or refugees that come to the United States with low literacy in their native language, and limited English proficiency never enroll in an ESL class. There are many causes attributed to this lack of enrollment: learners’ embarrassment and anxiety to admitting their lack of literacy, class scheduling conflicts, long waiting lists, and the English-only approach taken by most ESL classes in the United States. …

Effective Ways To Lower Muslim Immigrant Students' Anxiety In Esl Classes: A Handbook For Educators, Mehrnaz Ayazi

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

This field project is a handbook for educators that recommends effective ways of lowering Muslim refugee students' anxiety in ESL classrooms. Schools are challenging for refugee and immigrant students as they have to navigate school systems that do not accommodate their unique needs. As a result, Muslim refugee students are often discriminated against, marginalized, and bullied in schools. They suffer from low self-confidence, high anxiety, and lack of motivation. Research concludes that educational institutions in host countries are ill-equipped in creating an equitable education and school environment for Muslim refugee students due to the lack of educators’ training and …

Self-Directed Learning Practices In Esl: How Beginning Adult Latinx English Language Learners Can Increase Learning Outcomes, Jessica Parisi

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field project investigates the self-directed learning (SDL) practices that could increase learner outcomes in English language acquisition for beginning adult English language learners (ELLs), and presents on a website designed for the learner, the practices and local resources to engage them. Non-credit English as a second language (ESL) courses in community colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area have high enrollment and low levels of advancement, especially beginning levels. Latinx adult ELLs face unique challenges that contribute to their low rates of advancement, including linguistic isolation, and work and home duties that often prevent learners from attending classes the …

Using Graphic Novels To Teach English And American Culture In Japanese Middle Schools, Jenna Pollack

Master's Projects and Capstones

English proficiency in Japan has historically been lower than other Asian countries despite students learning English as a core subject beginning in elementary school. To help address this, Japan has brought thousands of assistant language teachers (ALTs) from native English-speaking countries through both government and private companies to help teach English and promote foreign cultural exchange. These teachers often experience cultural misunderstandings and microaggressions from both colleagues and students yet must continue to respectfully teach culture as cultural ambassadors. The purpose of this project is to design a handbook that guides ALTs working with middle school students in how to …

Centering Community Voices Through Children's Literature: Co-Authoring An #Ownvoices Picture Book For The Maine Migrant Education Program, Melanie Shelton

Master's Theses

Since its inception, the field of migrant education has been characterized by a tension between honoring the subjectivity of migrant families and positioning them as victims. This same tension exists in the analysis of children’s picture books that depict the daily lives of migrant farmworkers. In response to Eve Tuck’s (2009) call for a moratorium on damage-centered research in the field of education, this report describes the collaboration process between a representative of the Maine Migrant Education Program and a migrant

farmworker and her family to write, illustrate, and present an autobiographical picture book. Las aventuras, travesuras, y peligros del …

Conquering Esl Students' English Listening Barriers, Dan Wu

Master's Projects and Capstones

Many students learning English as a Second Language (ESL) have some English pronunciation barriers in their listening and speaking, consisting of incomplete explosion, liaison, weak forms. The project aims to help ESL students find effective ways to conquer these common English pronunciation barriers in listening comprehension. At the same time, ESL students will learn the standard pronunciation habits of English sentences. This project is designed to use specific listening practice to assist in conquering ESL students’ English listening barriers of incomplete explosion, liaison and weak forms. By using the materials in this project, ESL students can learn to find their …