Education Commons^™

Analyses Of Language And Culture Beliefs And Reported Practices Of Pre-Kindergarten And Kindergarten Teachers Working With Dual Language Learners, Giselle Sanchez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the underlying factors involved in the Language and Culture Questionnaire (LCQ), a measure of lead pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers' (n = 119) beliefs and best practices for working with dual language learners (DLLs). The LCQ was found to have suboptimal reliability and all results herein should be interpreted with caution. The exploratory factor analyses suggested the LCQ weakly captures two factors, beliefs and practices. Frequencies of teachers holding the appropriate beliefs and implementing best practices were reviewed. The beliefs and practices scores exhibited a degree of relationship between each other. Finally, multiple regression designs were utilized …

Middle School Transition: How It Affects The Achievement Of Hispanic Students Relative To Ell Status, Socioeconomic Status, Gender, And Previous Test Scores, Kevin D. Gordon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the phenomena of middle school transition and achievement as it relates to Hispanic students. According to the 2000 U.S. census, there are more than 35 million registered Hispanic citizens. Of those, 3.6 million are public school students. The literature indicated that there was a marked regression in student achievement during the transition to middle school.

Through the use of descriptive statistics and regression analysis, sixth grade Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) reading and math developmental scale scores (DSS) were analyzed to determine if the mean achievement improved or declined after the transition …

Perspective Shifting In Relative Clauses By Elementary-Aged Spanish-English Bilinguals: A Cross-Linguistic Study, Xigrid Tayri Soto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language-specific theories of sentence processing suggest that individuals interpret sentences based on the characteristics of their native language (e.g., Bates & MacWhinney, 1989). As such, competing linguistic cues are taken into account (including word order, morphology, and animacy) and the cue selected is most likely to yield a correct interpretation in the native language. However, research in this area has produced conflicting results. MacWhinney (2005) has proposed that examining the role of perspective shifting in sentence comprehension may demonstrate how cognitive and syntactic factors work together to facilitate sentence comprehension. The aim of the current study is to investigate the …