Education Commons^™

Understanding Libyan Teachers’ Intentions And Classroom Practices In Teaching English As A Foreign Language, Khaled El Mezughi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

International demand for learning English has increased dramatically during the last three decades. The ability to speak English has become an essential tool of global communication in many sectors, including international commerce, science, technology, and entertainment. Little research has been conducted to examine the teaching methods and instructional practices being used in Libyan EFL classrooms and their impact on the students' use of English in authentic situations. Due to the importance of improving both the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Libya, the aim of this study is to understand EFL Libyan educators’ classroom instructional …

Discourses Of Developmental English Education: Reframing Policy Debates, Aaron R. Tolbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

According to the National Educational Longitudinal Study, an estimated 28% of academically underprepared students who take developmental courses (preparatory, not credit-bearing) graduate within 8.5 years (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006), far below the national average graduation rate of near 60% of students for all postsecondary institutions (USDE, 2016). Given these statistics, some conclude that developmental education itself contributes to the low graduation rate of developmental students (Bailey, Jaggars, & Jenkins, 2015). Indeed, the causes of this attainment gap are the focus of vigorous debates by scholars from numerous disciplines, defining whether the problems exist within the organizational structure and …

Text Based Analysis In The Undergraduate Classroom, Katelyn Antolik

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project compromises of both a written and technical portion. I have created an interactive web source for teaches in the undergraduate literature classroom to encourage a dynamic experience with literary text in order to promote active engagement in literature for students at any level of technological experience. Students or teachers are able to input outside texts that utilize graphs, charts, and interactive web tools in order to promote learning skills transferable to both academic and non-academic career paths. By utilizing “The Story of an Hour”, I explore the uses of this software in order to demonstrate the potential of …

An Investigation Of The Effect Of Single-Gendered Instruction On Achievement In Math And English In An Urban High School, Beverly Bacchus

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act, many initiatives have been implemented to increase academic achievement. Single-gender education is an initiative that public schools have adopted with the hope of seeing boys and girls achieve significant gains in their core classes. This study explored the achievement levels of 9th grade girls and boys in their English I and Algebra I classes. After a year of learning in single-gender classes, the students' end of course scores were compared to the previous cohort of students who were taught in a traditional co-educational format by using an independent t-test. Scores …

Expressing Future Time In Spoken Conversational English: A Corpus-Based Analysis Of The Sitcom Friends, Brandon Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Far from being simply will, a survey of English grammar textbooks revealed that a multitude of expressions exists in the English language to express the future time. These expressions include, but are not limited to, will, be going to, the simple present tense, modals, the future perfect tense, and the present progressive tense. With so many choices and with a lack of direct relationship between tense and time, a language learner may certainly have difficulties in choosing which expression to use when attempting to produce a future utterance. A corpus-based approach to analyzing real language has been demonstrated to be …

Examining The Effects Of Linguistic Accommodations On The Colorado Student Assessment Program—Mathematics, Marisol Enriquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act changed assessment for English Language Learners (ELLs). Under the law, states must validly assess ELLs' English Language Proficiency (ELP) and content knowledge. The law shed light on the achievement of ELLs while also creating challenges for states in validating state assessment and accountability systems. Test accommodations are used for ELLs to reduce threats to test score validity and measure academic achievement as accurately and fairly as possible. Since ELLs are working towards proficiency in English, they face linguistic and socio-cultural barriers under the confines of large scale assessment. A limited body of research …

An Analysis Of Tennessee Gateway Exams And The Variables Related To Student Results., Judy W. Webb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the variables that are associated with the percentage of students who pass Tennessee's Gateway exams in high school. Associations were examined between the Gateway exams and variables such as: socioeconomic status, ethnicity, dropout rate, graduation rate, attendance, average daily membership, per-pupil expenditure, teachers' salary, and elementary-school reading scores.

Pearson correlations between school characteristics and pass rates of three Gateway exams were calculated. Schools were divided into quartiles based upon socioeconomic status and ethnicity in order to examine pass rates of the Gateway exams among different quartiles. Independent samples t tests were performed …

An Analysis Of The Academic Success Achieved By Five Freshman Cohorts Through A Community College Developmental Education Program., Nancy K. Gray-Barnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The challenge of underprepared students' entering America's colleges and universities is not new. Because of their "open door" policies, community colleges are more likely to enroll students who are not college prepared. This retrospective study focused on the performance of students who had completed required developmental education courses compared to the performance of students without developmental requirements. The study examined developmental education success measures for five cohorts of first-time degree-seeking freshmen each tracked for a six-year period enrolled at Walters State Community College located in Tennessee.

The success measures compared included grade point averages earned in college-level mathematics and English …