Reading and Language Commons^™

“I’Ll Take Commas For $200”: An Instructional Intervention Using Games To Help Students Master Grammar Skills, Sue Burzynski Bullard, Nancy Anderson

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Effective writing requires mastering grammar. For journalists, this mastery is critical because research shows poor grammar erodes media credibility. College writing instructors say students do not understand basic grammar concepts, and greater numbers of students are enrolling in remedial writing classes. This quasi-experimental mixed methods study examines whether using games to teach basic grammar skills helps college students understand and retain grammar concepts. It also examines student perceptions of learning.

Styles, Strategies & Tasks: Are They Related?, Urarat Parnrod, Pornapit Darasawang, Wareesiri Singhasiri

PASAA

This qualitative study aims at investigating the relationship among cognitive styles, learning strategies and task. In order to determine the dominant cognitive styles of the subjects, questionnaires designed by Kolb (2005) were distributed to 778 engineering students. From the data analysis, it was found that two cognitive styles - 'diverger' and 'assimilator' are the dominant styles. This paper, therefore, focuses on two cases - one is a diverger and the other is an assimilator. The data show how engineering students from different dominant styles dealt with different subtasks, namely, note-taking, writing a story, and oral presentation under a 'Story Telling …

Investigating The Impact Of Personality Factors On The Perceived Communication Mobility Of Non-Native English Speaking Thai Professionals In International Companies, Olga A. Marina, Krich Rajprasit

PASAA

Communication mobility has been suggested as an element of the complex construct of professional communicative competence, with a shared core of English in the oral mode, for professional international communication. This study aims (1) to investigate the possible correlation between the perceived level of communication mobility, and the influence of the personality factors of non-native English speaking Thai professionals in international companies, and (2) to identify the conditions in which this desirable quality may be developed. The researchers are interested in gauging the level of communication mobility, as well as looking for the possible relationships between its development and the …

A Study Of English Acknowledgements Written By Efl Thai Learners, Kandaporn Jaroenkitboworn

PASAA

This research investigates English acknowledgements in dissertations written by Thai PhD students, particularly the generic structure and linguistic patterns of gratitude expressions used in the acknowledgements. Following the line of the move analysis in acknowledgements of Hyland (2004), this article analyzed 70 acknowledgements accompanying PhD dissertations in the area of English language study. The study result shows that the generic structure comprises 3 moves: thanking, announcing, and signing-off. The first move is obligatory whereas the other two are optional. Various gratitude expressions are used in response to different assistance forms. Also, the study result reveals the aspects of politeness, social …

Enlivening Efl Discussion Classrooms With A Problem-Based Learning Approach, Tanisaya Jiriyasin

PASAA

This is a semester-long experimental study aimed at investigating the effects of a PBL (Problem-based Learning) approach on the English oral language performances of English major students in one of the private universities in Bangkok. For the purpose of the study, a systematic PBL model for English language classrooms was implemented. Furthermore, the subjects' opinions towards learning with the PBL approach were also explored through the use of questionnaires and interviews. The findings showed that the mean scores of the posttest were significantly higher than those of the pretest. Their English oral performances were more fluent and accurate. Moreover, they …

An Investigation Of The Use Of Listening Strategies And Listening Performance Of Proficiency And Non-Proficiency Language Learners, Chatraporn Piamsai

PASAA

This study was an attempt to investigate how proficient and non-proficient learners used listening strategies to complete a listening task. 65 third-year Chulalongkorn University Commerce and Accountancy students participated in the first stage of the quantitative data collection. 18 students were randomly selected from the group for more indepth data. The instruments included the strategy questionnaire adapted from Oxford's (1990) and listening tasks. Descriptive statistics, the independent t-test and the think-aloud technique were used to analyze the data. The findings showed a significant difference between the two groups' report of their use of the strategies in certain areas. Also, they …

Idea Sharing: Assessment In A Cooperative Learning Class, Siti Mina Tamah

PASAA

In Indonesia, it is common to see current classroom practices that incorporate the cooperative learning paradigm. In fact, there is a tendency to regard negatively a classroom without the label of 'cooperative learning' in which students are put into small groups. The current instructional practices then often make use of group work to encourage students to learn from one another in which they help and seek assistance from their fellow students besides from their teacher.

Idea Sharing: Introducing English As An International Language (Eil) To Pre-Service Teachers In A World English Course, Flora Debora Floris

PASAA

Today, English is truly regarded as an international language. It is the lingua franca in various international situations; it is also the most widely-learned and spoken second or foreign language in many countries. In recent years, the number of second and foreign language speakers has far exceeded the number of first language speakers of English. In fact, in 2008, the number of speakers of English reached a third of the world's population (Crystal, 2008).

True Blue: A Narrative Inquiry Exploring Instructional Practices Used During Reading Instruction In A Title I, 2010 National Blue Ribbon School In New Mexico, Debra Yvonne Kerney

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Over the past 32 years, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program, a trademark of excellence and success in academics, has recognized nearly 7,000 American schools in which students have demonstrated high academic performance and achievement (U.S. Department of Education, 2012). Previous studies of National Blue Ribbon Schools have largely centered upon leadership characteristics (Carney-Dalton, 2001; Copeland, 2003; Kushner, 2000; Lyles, 2009; Maslyk, 2012;Sapone, 2001), but studies have not focused on the particular instructional practices that are used within these schools. Since 1982, 36 out of 862 New Mexico schools (NCES, 2013) have achieved National Blue Ribbon status (United States Department …

“All Data Is Credit Data,” Or, On Close Reading As A Reciprocal Process In Digital Knowledge Environments, John Hunter

Faculty Journal Articles

The new knowledge environments of the digital age are often described as places where we are all closely read, with our buying habits, location, and identities available to advertisers, online merchants, the government, and others through our use of the Internet. This is represented as a loss of privacy in which these entities learn about our activities and desires, using means that were unavailable in the pre-digital era. This article argues that the reciprocal nature of digital networks means 1) that the privacy issues that we face online are not radically different from those of the pre-Internet era, and 2) …

Effective Reading Interventions For Spanish-Speaking English Learners With Reading Disabilities, English Learners Who Struggle With Reading, Or Both: A Meta-Analysis Of Second Through Fifth Grades, David Stephens

Doctoral Dissertations

This meta-analysis synthesized research on effective instructional practices and strategies in second through fifth grade for Spanish-speaking English Learners (ELs) who have reading disabilities and English Learners who struggle with reading. The central research problem is the dearth of research addressing literacy instruction for ELs with reading disabilities, making identification of effective reading interventions difficult. The inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis resulted in 15 quasi-experimental or single-subject empirical research studies that used reading interventions to improve the reading comprehension performance of ELs. The overall average effect size for the meta-analysis, not based on homogenous studies, was 1.15. When outliers were …

The Effectiveness Of An Academic Literacy Intervention To Help University Freshmen Recognize And Resolve Inconsistencies Across Multiple Texts, Patty Baldwin

Doctoral Dissertations

Students must independently complete academic literacy tasks--including reading analytically to identify problems, resolving problems that arise, and using writing to demonstrate advanced knowledge acquisition--if they are to be successful in courses across their university careers. However, a significant portion of students arrives at the university underprepared to meet these expectations for academic literacy.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an instructional intervention to help developmental-level freshmen acquire the academic literacy skills that experienced academic readers demonstrate in order to promote independent learning. The four-week instructional intervention focused on two aspects of advanced academic literacy: 1) …

Teachers Adapting Common Core Informational-Text Writing Instruction For Students With Mild To Moderate Disabilities, Diana Hawley

Doctoral Dissertations

With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, students must now become skilled at using different types of writing to help them critique text and process information. They also are required to write informational text. Informational-text writing is challenging for students with mild to moderate disabilities, including students with language-learning disabilities, who often struggle with aspects of language necessary for learning to read and write. These students show striking challenges with productivity, grammatical and spelling accuracy, and sentence complexity, with differences in performance by genre (Koutsoftas & Gray, 2012; Scott & Windsor, 2000; Troia, Lin, Cohen, & Monroe, 2011). …

The Politics Of Normativity And Globalization: Which Spanish In The Classroom?, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

This articles explores linguistic ideologies in teaching Spanish in the United States. It focuses on debates surrounding questions of normativity and correctness in the Spanish language classroom and curriculum design.

Comparative Literature In Chinese: A Survey Of Books Published 2000-2013, Miaomiao Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, And The Humanities, Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Comparative Literature, (Comparative) Cultural Studies, Aesthetic Education, and the Humanities" Sonja Stojmenska-Elzeser discusses comparative literature in the context of cultural studies and aesthetic education. Her starting point is the complexity of comparative literature as an academic discipline propelled by intellectual curiosity for what lies across the barriers which stand in the way of understanding and enjoying creative acts of all kinds everywhere and at all times. Literary and artistic investigations which focus on aesthetic values lead us towards general aesthetics, analyses which situate the arts and literature in context with little regard for aesthetic criteria take us …

European Comparative Literature As Humanism, Bernard Franco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "European Comparative Literature as Humanism" Bernard Franco presents an epistemological reflection on comparative literature in the context of the evolution of the relationships between different forms of knowledge. Franco argues that in the late nineteenth century the notion of the "humanities" replaced that of the "human sciences," but that we have recently returned to a humanist concept of knowledge linked to ethics. Franco focuses on the origins of this critical reflection about the nature of knowledge and on the debate in the Romantic period between rational and non-rational forms of knowledge. The idéologues (Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, …

Introduction To World Literatures From The Nineteenth To The Twenty-First Century, Marko Juvan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Greek, Latin, And The Origins Of "World Literature", Alexander Beecroft

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Greek, Latin, and the Origins of 'World Literature'" Alexander Beecroft argues that while it is hardly new that the models of contemporary comparative and world literature(s) are Eurocentric in their origins and structures, the precise nature of Eurocentrism is less discussed. Beecroft argues that far from representing (as Goethe had wished) the end of national literature, the era of comparative and world literatures has, from its beginnings, been structured specifically around the notion of "national literatures." Beecroft explores the national basis for the study of comparative and world literatures in the nineteenth century with particular attention to …

World Literatures In Temporal Perspective, David Damrosch

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "World Literatures in Temporal Perspective" David Damrosch discusses the vexed problem of how to shape a literary history into definable and meaningful periods without simply projecting old Western patterns onto new ages and distant areas of the world. This problem becomes acute when one seeks to create a genuinely global literary history. Damrosch surveys some early periodizations according to patterns of infancy, growth, maturity, and decline, and discusses the often unrealized persistence of biblical and classical models in modern accounts of the literary histories of Egypt, Mesoamerica, and India.