Reading and Language Commons^™

Scipp: An Expanded Community Of Practice - Community Publishing, Juan Delgado, Kelly (Kl) Straight Dortch, Daiana Rodriguez, Alex Avila, William Beshears, Juliana Cruz, Gina Hanson, Frank Houlihan, Lacey Kendall, Larry Light, Cati Porter, Molly Tor, Timothy "Isaac" Pieper, Bianka Sanchez, Sara Trowbridge, Daniel Aguilar, Bernardo Benigno, Arely Bernal, Alejandra Bueno, Emily Campos, Jason Cannon, Griselda Caudillo Gallo, Joshua Clemente, Sarah Coblentz, Diana D'Arcangelo, Georgia Darwin, Mary Grace Deasis, Kaylan Els, Keith Fernandez, Maria Flores, Khiyara Frontela, Anthony Galvan, Monica Galvez, Martin Garcia, Jessica Godin, Freda Guzman, Madison Hall, Diana Huitron Munoz, Jennifer Ledesma, Maria Lias Chacon, Rebekah Linares, Prisma Loya, Elijah Magana, Alberto Mancillas, Lorinda Maya, Jennifer Pimentel, Nancy Ramirez, Angelica Rodriguez, Alexis Ruvalcaba, Sandra Sandoval De Rosas, Emily Stoddard, Andrea Tinajero, Lesly Velez Montenegro, Saulo Velez Montenegro, Matthew Vigil, Sergio Zamora, Marylou Alvarez, Roxanna Cervantes, Tenaya Fuentes, Wendy Moreno, David Valenzuela, Philip Colunga, Augustine "Auggie" Fuentes, Nadia Fuentes, Olive Fuentes, Sophia Fuentes, Miraya Martinez, Diego Mercado, Iker Valenzuela, Roma Valenzuela

Q2S Enhancing Pedagogy

SCIPP redefines and expands the existing notions about what makes for a vibrant and robust community of practice by partnering CSUSB students and professors with K-12 students, parents, and educators, along with committed community partners. SCIPP encourages curiosity in ways that leads to critical thinking, exploration, "risk taking", confidence building, open-mindedness, and other personal traits that equip them with the softskills to be active, critical, and creative contributors to our communities. SCIPP pedagogy embraces our students' collective wisdom and focuses on relational building where multi-directional communication is promoted and students are viewed as equal stakeholders in their own educations. SCIPP …

A Guide To Thesis Book Design, Marcus Peabody, Center For Arts And Language

Thesis Writing

57 pages. "This guide is more basic and specific than other design manuals. Used in isolation it should tell you all you need to produce your book, even without prior graphic design knowledge. It could also be a starting point for a deeper dive into book design: other manuals that deal more thoroughly with elements such as book binding or typography are mentioned along the way for further reference." – from the introduction. "This book is set in Brandon Grotesque and Miller Text. Written and designed by Marcus Peabody (GD MFA 2019). Edited by Jen Liese and Meredith Barrett (A&L). …

Idea Sharing: Analyzing The Principles & Techniques Of English Language Teaching Emphasized In The Crescent English Course For Yemen, Hani Qasem Mohammed Asaad

PASAA

The Ministry of Education in Yemen has utilized several methods for teaching the English language including the grammar translation method, and the communicative language teaching method. This paper presents an analysis and description of the principles and techniques of English language teaching emphasized in the English language textbook "Crescent English Course for Yemen" used for teaching English for the third secondary grade in Yemen. This paper provides also a discussion about the effectiveness and feasibility of the methodology and techniques employed in the textbook. Although the textbook was designed and developed based on the communicative language teaching method to encourage …

La Maraca Perdida, Holly Beber

Open Access Books

La maraca perdida was written and illustrated in 2019 by Holly Beber. The original text was edited and translated by Mackensy Asbell and Madeline Strelec. New, original illustrations were created by Rina Sato.

Flipping The Jane Austen Classroom, Lynda A. Hall

English Faculty Articles and Research

The contemporary Austen classroom might appreciate cultural and racial diversity, examine popular culture’s distortions of the original texts, and consider multimodal ways of reading. This paper reflects on a course that “flipped” the research process in order to “find” Austen and her works in the popular culture and to evaluate our understanding in the twenty-first century. Students discovered the commodification and distortion of “Jane Austen” and conducted research for creative projects to learn more about the social, cultural, and historical contexts of the written texts.

Assessing Oral Proficiency In The Undergraduate Curriculum: Data From Spanish, Ashley Sands

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Students in university second-language programs expect to reach a certain level of oral proficiency by the time they complete their language requirements. Language Testing International (LTI) conducted extensive research to establish timelines regarding the number of hours of instruction required for native English speakers to reach specific proficiency levels in various second languages. Important to note, is that the learners used to establish these timelines differ from typical university students in that they are trained in the second language in very small classes in an intensive (near immersive) environment. Therefore, a comparison of LTI data with learners from typical university …

Handling George Eliot’S Fiction, Peter J. Capuano

Department of English: Faculty Publications

An argument that George Eliot was a novelist intellectually, philosophically, and aesthetically ahead of the majority of her peers thankfully needs no defense two hundred years after her birth. This lofty status, however, does not mean that Eliot was impervious to the cultural preoccupations of her time. Quite the contrary. A central contention of this essay is that Eliot, despite her imposing intellectual reputation, engaged with her culture’s popular interest in human hands in ways that profoundly affected her fiction. As I have argued elsewhere,¹ the Victorians became highly cognizant of the physicality of their hands in large part …

The Syntax Of Sports, Class 1: The Words Under The Words, Patrick Barry

Books

The Syntax of Sports is that course you wish you took in college—even if you aren’t a sports fan. It’s interesting. It’s practical. It’s inspiring. And best of all, it teaches you a skill that is at once highly marketable and potentially transforming: how to become a better thinker and writer.

The beginning of a multi-volume series, this initial book recreates the first day of class as it was taught to undergraduates at the University of Michigan. The examples are compelling. The dialogue is fast moving. The stories are ones you’ll want to return to and retell over and over …

Twisting Facts To Suit Theories: In Defense Of Sherlock, Alicia Defonzo

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

In August 2011, the Albemarle County school board unanimously voted to remove Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet from the sixth-grade curricula. Over twenty students beseeched the board for the book to remain, and they were ignored. Teachers were afraid to voice their opinions on the matter. The novel has not been taught since in Albemarle, on any grade level, nor any other Sherlock Holmes texts.

Implementing Reading Strategies With Ell Elementary Students, Nelofar Khamisani

Masters Theses

This study shows the challenges the English Language Learners face in learning reading at the Elementary level; implementing reading strategies for them; and choosing effective strategies for the students to learn reading more easily. The findings of the study show that teachers use different strategies according to the language proficiency level of the students. ELL students face challenges in communication, pronunciation, sound recognition, and vocabulary. As a strategy to overcome these challenges, the teachers emphasize learning phonics and vocabulary. Observations of three teachers in three mainstream classrooms show that teachers implement nearly similar strategies for teaching phonics and vocabulary. The …

Instructional Reading Practices For Third Grade African American Males, Kimberly Dawn Whaley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American males often struggle to read on grade level. However, 3 East Texas Title I schools demonstrated exceptionally high levels of reading proficiency with this population. This study addressed the knowledge gap of understanding the instructional practices linked to high reading achievement of third grade African American males in Title I schools in East Texas. Guided by Ladson-Billings's theory of culturally relevant pedagogy, which builds upon academic success, cultural competence, and development of critical consciousness, and supported by Vygotsky's theory of social and cognitive constructivism, the reading instructional practices of the 3 schools were investigated. Research questions focused on …

The Attention Crisis Of Digital Interfaces And How To Consume Media More Mindfully, Kristen M. Liu

Scripps Senior Theses

Digital forms of media are monopolizing individuals' attention spans, utilizing visual strategies that demand our interactions. Throughout the history of media technology, mediums have become increasingly immersive, presenting more information than ever before. The user interface designs of digital platforms can damage our ability to focus and distribute attention in meaningful ways. Through analysis of our digital media consumption, this capstone project ultimately proposes mindful practices that help us lead more balanced lives and thrive in the digital age. The second half of this capstone project is a digital zine with digital illustrations, animations, and editorial-style articles. The digital zine …

The Relationship Between L2 Listening Proficiency And L2 Aural Language Processing, Paul Joyce

PASAA

Listening has been widely characterised as a multifaceted process encompassing a range of linguistic and psycholinguistic components (see Rubin, 1994). However, for learners at different levels of L2 proficiency, there is uncertainty over the relative importance of the various sub-skills. To address this issue, a number of linguistic and psycholinguistic sub-skills that are associated with L2 listening proficiency were selected and operationalised. This battery of discrete point measures, as well as two L2 proficiency tests, was administered to 443 Japanese university students. After the data had been subjected to descriptive and inferential analysis, the findings indicated that L2 listening comprehension …

Dramatizing A Northeastern Thai Folklore To Lessen High School Students' Communication Anxiety, Patcharapon Inphoo, Singhanat Nomnian

PASAA

This paper aims at examining the extent to which the English drama inspired by the Northeastern Thai folklore "Pachit-Oraphim" in an English classroom can reduce high school students' classroom anxiety in speaking English. The participants were thirty-six students in the tenth and eleventh grades, who were enrolled in an English class under the School-Based Management for Local Development (SBMLD) program at a local high school in Bua Yai district, Nakhon Ratchasima province. Based on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) questionnaires (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) and focus-group interviews, the results reveal that the participants showed a significant increase in …

The Effect Of Learning Environments On Thai Speakers' English L2 Vocabulary Depth, Sarut Supasiraprapa

PASAA

Second language (L2) vocabulary depth, or how well learners know an L2 word (e.g., Meara, 1996), is a dimension of vocabulary knowledge that assists in L2 comprehension and production (e.g. Li & Kirby, 2014; Qian, 2002). The current study investigated the effects of two types of English L2 learning environments—formal English classrooms in Thailand and English exposure in an English-speaking country—on adult Thai speakers' (N=29) English vocabulary depth. Participants completed the Word Associates Test (Read, 1998), which measured the depth of their receptive vocabulary knowledge, and an elicitation task which required them to supply English collocations in a given context. …

Personality Traits Of Thai Gen Z Undergraduates: Challenges In The Efl Classroom?, Chaisri Sriprom, Atichat Rungswang, Chirawan Sukwitthayakul, Natthicha Chansri

PASAA

It is believed that Generation Z's distinctive characteristics tend to challenge educators and employers in their organizations. To understand this cohort's traits or behaviors and know how to support this generation are key to the effectiveness of teaching, learning and collaboration with other generations. This study therefore aimed at discovering the personality traits of Gen Z undergraduates in Thailand by employing a mixed-method design. The participants in the study comprised 400 Gen Z undergraduate students at a university in Bangkok, Thailand. They were asked to respond to a questionnaire on a 4-point Likert's scale, which was developed based on the …

A Special Interview With Christopher Jenks About Language And Culture, Christopher Jenks

PASAA

In this volume of PASAA, we are very honoured to have an opportunity to interview Associate Professor Dr. Christopher Jenks from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hongkong. Associate Professor Dr. Christopher Jenks is a language teacher with extensive English teaching and research experience in Hong Kong and many other countries around the world. He has given numerous plenary presentations at regional and international conferences, and published extensively in the area of Discourse analysis, global Englishes, translingualism, computer-mediated communication, and language pedagogy. His latest publications include Meat, guns, and God: Expressions of nationalism in rural America (2018, in Linguistic Landscapes), …

Vocabulary Knowledge As A Predictor Of Performance In Writing And Speaking: A Case Of Turkish Efl Learners, Mehmet Kilic

PASAA

This paper reports on empirical research that endeavors to investigate the role of vocabulary knowledge in the writing and speaking performance of 54 B2 level Turkish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The measured aspects of vocabulary knowledge (productive vocabulary size, receptive vocabulary size, and depth of vocabulary knowledge) were all found to correlate significantly with performance in writing and speaking (measured through the writing and speaking components of a proficiency test). Multiple regression analyses showed that vocabulary knowledge accounts for 26% of variance in writing performance and 17% of variance in speaking performance. Therefore, the study offers …

Book Review: Durkheim And The Internet, Andrew Jocuns

PASAA

Jan Blommaert's Durkheim and the Internet: On sociolinguistics and the sociological imagination is a timely reflection on relating one of the great thinkers in sociology to the field of sociolinguistics. One of Blommaert's points throughout this work is how sociolinguistics has done a great job at focusing upon the linguistic aspects of the field, but has often not paid attention to, or not made a stronger contribution to, the field of sociology. This book is a strong theoretical account in which Blommaert introduces some of the main concepts of Emille Durkheim and how those can be applied to sociolinguistics. In …

The L2 Motivational Self System Of Low And High Achievers In A Cambodian Context, Helene By, Chonlada Laohawiriyanon

PASAA

The present study explored the different levels of motivation, the relationship between the three components of the L2 Motivational Self System and language proficiency as well as the reasons behind the students' motivation in learning at two private English schools in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. One-hundred and twenty students with different levels of English, ages ranging from 9 to 21 years old, were divided into low and high achiever groups. They participated in the quantitative data collection phase. Data were collected through an English proficiency test and a questionnaire. The results revealed a significant difference regarding Ought-to L2 Self and the …

Promoting English Fluency Through Peer Feedback And Dialogue Journals In An Esl College Classroom, Sarah L. Stone

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study investigated research methodologies which were proven to be successful in promoting English fluency among ESL students in the college level classroom. The history of second language learning was tied to popular teaching practices, such as journal writing, dialogue journals, peer feedback, and teacher feedback. Due to a lack of cohesion between the above methods and a rising gap in related literature, an experiment was formed to determine whether dialogue journals could be combined with peer feedback to facilitate an accelerated comprehension of English as an L2 language. Over a three-month period, 19 ESL students at Gavilan College were …

Towards A Critical Game Based Pedagogy, Justin K. Egan

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This thesis outlines and examines core concepts of game-based learning as identified by James Paul Gee, and Kurt Squire, among other scholars. These findings are then connected to the contemporary, transformative threshold concepts of composition—as explored in Naming What We Know. This connection seeks to argue game-based pedagogy may be an invaluable tool for introducing critical perspectives to composition students in order to better equip them with critical thinking strategies and cultural critiques, while improving their writing skills. A theoretical framework is presented in the form of four “Pillars” of a Critical Game-Based Pedagogy: Literacy, Identity, Social Learning, and Multimodality—all …

The Phonetics And Phonology Of Lenition: A Campidanese Sardinian Case Study, Jonah Katz, Gianmarco Pitzanti

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper gives a detailed description of the consonant system of Campidanese Sardinian and makes methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of lenition. The data are drawn from a corpus of field recordings, including roughly 400 utterances produced by 15 speakers from the Trexenta and Western Campidanese areas. Campidanese has a complex lenition system that interacts with length, voicing, and manner contrasts. We show that the semi-automated lenition analysis presented in this journal by Ennever, Meakins, and Round can be fruitfully extended to our corpus, despite its much more heterogeneous set of materials in a genetically distant language. Intensity …

The Relationship Of English Language Scores On International Students' Academic Success, Rebekah Shbeeb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

International graduate students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) are not completing graduate programs at the same rate as domestic graduate students. One of the main differences in the admissions process for international graduate students compared to domestic students is the English language test requirement. The purpose of this study was twofold: to test if the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the (International English Language Testing System) IELTS scores have any statistically significant linear relationships to international graduate students' academic success as defined by their cumulative grade point average (CGPA). Secondly, this study sought to …

The Kite And The String: Why Philosophy Needs More Storytellers, Mason James Voehl

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to explore the relationship between philosophy and storytelling as grounded in their shared task of instructing readers in how to live a rich and moral life. Using a combination of narratives and the philosophical theories of Martha Nussbaum, Edward Mooney, and Iris Murdoch, I claim that philosophy and storytelling ought to be natural allies rather than territorial enemies as each reveals and attends to separate but equally important aspects of the good life in community with others. I then extend this claim into the context of environmental philosophy, using the work of writer Jason Mark as an …

Phenomenological Study Of Urban Elementary Teachers With Proficient English Language Learners, Tracy Webley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of fourth grade teachers working in a large urban school district, where the achievement gap between English Language Learners (ELLs) and non-ELLs was smaller when compared to other schools within the district. The problem originated from the need to consider factors beyond teacher training that potentially influenced academic achievement. The research question guiding this study asked: What are the lived experiences of 4th grade teachers who have taught at identified elementary schools, where ELL students have demonstrated proficiency on the ELA portion of the state standards assessment? …

A Lingua Franca Afloat And Ashore: Contact English In American Sea Fiction, 1824 To 1914, Fredrik Reidar Stark

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines how American sea writers between 1824 and 1914 promoted new perceptions of English as a various and expanding intercultural and international language. It argues that presentations of language contact form a critically underemphasized component of American nautical literature. It surveys how such presentations take shape in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) and The Crater (1847), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast (1840). It asserts that Herman Melville’s innovative presentations of contact between pidgins and native varieties of English in Typee (1846) and Omoo …

Reading Perceptions Of Hispanic English Language Learner Families In New York City, Ligoria Berkeley-Cummins

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Historically, Hispanic English language learners (ELLs) in the United States have had low reading achievement and low high school graduation and college entry rates, which has limited their employment opportunities. Although research indicates parental involvement is important to reading success, little is known about Hispanic ELL parents' perspectives on their children's reading development. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand how parental involvement in 3rd grade Hispanic ELLs' reading development, as perceived by their families, may contribute to these students' reading proficiency. The framework for this study was Hedegaard's model of children's learning and development. The participants …

Parallel Pattern: A Familial Legacy Of Care, Diana Antohe

Theses and Dissertations

My work revolves around exploring identity of the in-between, occupying the Venn diagram middle of two cultures. As a Romanian-born, American-raised artist, I want to preserve and broadcast links to the cultures of my upbringing and birthplace. In attempts to ground and define my own “in-between” identity, I look to my parents and grandparents for cues on how they made home for themselves wherever they went, reflecting their experiences with voluntary and involuntary displacement. This text connects the research and influential family practices that shaped its companion exhibition, ranging from the role of portability in emotional transnationalism to the lasting …