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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Applied Linguistics
Black Lives Matter In Teaching English As A Second Language!, Kristin Lems
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.
“Life Is Splendid Here In The U.S.”: Intercultural Learning In Contemporary Chinese Students’ Academic Adjustment, Karolina Achirri
“Life Is Splendid Here In The U.S.”: Intercultural Learning In Contemporary Chinese Students’ Academic Adjustment, Karolina Achirri
The Qualitative Report
The increasing numbers of Chinese learners studying at American universities and the high mobility across borders have recently challenged prevailing stereotypes of Asians in education. While studies of Chinese students are abundant, there has been scant research on how intercultural learning unfolds in these students’ adjustment to both academic and social settings. To address this research gap, I center my case study around six of my former students from China and examine their progress at different U.S. institutions. Data from their journals were coded and analyzed qualitatively. In tracing my participants’ first semester trajectory and their strategies to adapt to …
Financial Literacy For Latino Immigrants: A Guidebook For Esl Teachers, Anna Braden
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 …
Khmer Phonetics & Phonology: Theoretical Implications For Esl Instruction, Alex Donley
Khmer Phonetics & Phonology: Theoretical Implications For Esl Instruction, Alex Donley
Senior Honors Theses
This thesis develops an approach to English teaching for Khmer-speaking students that centers on Khmer phonetics and phonology. Cambodia has a strong demand for English instruction, but consistently underperforms next to other nations in terms of proficiency. A significant reason for Cambodia’s skill gap is the lack of research into linguistic hurdles Khmer speakers face when learning English. This paper aims to bridge Khmer and English with an understanding of the speech systems that both languages use before turning to the unique challenges Khmer speakers must overcome based on the tenets of L1 Transfer Theory. It closes by outlining strategies …
All About The American Flap, Kristin Lems
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)
Project On Designing Activities For Teaching Grammar, Sunny Hyon
Project On Designing Activities For Teaching Grammar, Sunny Hyon
Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy
This document outlines a project for a course in second language acquisition taken by undergraduates who intend to be high school or university teachers/professors. The project asks the undergraduates to design a sequence of activities for teaching English language learners (ELLs) a particular English grammatical construction, and to connect those activities to reading or writing assignments in their future classrooms. The students also must explain how their activities will facilitate ELLs' grammatical learning, drawing on research on language acquisition presented in the course.
Evaluation In Moderation: Evaluative Adjectives In Student Academic Presentations, Alla Zareva
Evaluation In Moderation: Evaluative Adjectives In Student Academic Presentations, Alla Zareva
English Faculty Publications
Evaluation is inherent in academic discourse and fundamental to shaping college students’ critical thinking and ability to assess the status of discipline-specific information. The current study focused on the use of evaluative adjectives in native English speaking (L1) and English as a second language (L2) college student academic presentations (N = 40). The goal was to find out how the two groups of presenters compared on their frequency, referential choices, variability of evaluative adjectives, patterns of adjectival structures, and level of sophistication of the adjectives they used and also to identify common trends for both groups along the categories. The …
Lessons Learned: Insights Into One Teacher’S Experience Working With Karen Refugee Students In The United States, Daniel J. Gilhooly
Lessons Learned: Insights Into One Teacher’S Experience Working With Karen Refugee Students In The United States, Daniel J. Gilhooly
Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement
This study is informed by funds of knowledge and culturally responsive teaching studies that aim to explore and legitimize the cultural knowledge immigrant children bring to their communities and schools. Consequently, this paper specifically addresses issues related to the educational experiences of Karen children and their parents from one American teacher/researcher who has worked with the Karen for the past four years. In aggregate, this paper addresses issues germane to Karen education including; (1) background information on Karen educational experiences prior to resettlement, including a review of their journey from Thailand to the U.S.; (2) important characteristics of Karen culture; …
Transitioning To English-Only In A University Intensive English Program: A Phenomenological Study, Alan Broomhead
Transitioning To English-Only In A University Intensive English Program: A Phenomenological Study, Alan Broomhead
Alan Broomhead
This qualitative research study investigated how students in university English as a Second Language (ESL) programs experience the transition to English-only methodology. When students move from English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, where the first language is usually integral to teaching and learning, to university English as a second language (ESL) programs in the U.S., they may encounter a significant difference in the approach to teaching, an approach which excludes reference to their first language and obliges them to use only English. While the question of the first language (L1) in second language teaching and learning has been explored …