Reading and Language Commons^™

Teachers' Perceptions Of English Language Learners And Reading Instruction, P. Pualani Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The growing population of English language learners (ELLs) in an urban school district in the southwest United States has maintained low achievement scores in the K-5 grades. Students who do not attain reading proficiency at least by the end of 3rd grade are at risk of continued academic failure through high school. Research shows that teachers' knowledge and preparedness to teach reading has an influence on student performance. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the readiness of mainstream classroom teachers to teach reading to ELLs. Guided by the sociocultural frameworks of Bruner and Vygotsky, this study explored …

Stakeholders' Perceptions Of English Language Learners Meeting Adequate Yearly Progress In Reading, Susan Calibo Loney

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

English language learners (ELLs) in a Midwestern urban elementary school have not been meeting the local school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) in reading in 3 consecutive years on statewide test scores. Meeting school standards is important because failing to meet AYP for 6 consecutive years can result in the restructuring or closing of any public school in the nation. The rationale for this qualitative case study was to examine the perceptions of stakeholders, 7 parents, teachers, and school administrators, all of whom have demonstrated knowledge of and proximity to the school's AYP decisions, to develop vocabulary strategies that may increase …

Exploring Literacy Coaching As A Form Of Staff Development, Kate Matthews Welborn

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Following a 2011 audit a school district in the south central United States clarified the role of the literacy coach. However, there were still differences among the literacy coaches as to how they were performing their duties. As a result, the purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of the role of the literacy coach in the participating school district. The theoretical foundation of this study addressed adult learning and was based upon Kegan's constructive development theory and Knowles's theory of androgogy. A case study design was used to explore how 5 literacy coaches implemented literacy staff development …

Facilitating Lexical Acquisition In Beginner Learners Of Italian Through Task-Induced Involvement Load, Vanessa J. Natale Rukholm

The Coastal Review

This empirical study explores the facilitation of lexical acquisition and retention through an incidental experiment examining the effect of Involvement Load on Italian vocabulary growth among beginner learners. The experiment, with a pre-test/post-test design investigates the facilitative effects of elaborate processing on L2 lexical acquisition and retention. Participants in sections of the same first-year Italian course were divided into one of five groups consisting of a Control Group and four Treatment groups. Treatment groups were divided based on level of Involvement (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) such that some groups processed target words elaborately (Craik, 2002; Lockhart, 2002) through vocabulary exercises …

George Henry Lewes, The Real Man Of Science Behind George Eliot’S Fictional Pedants, Beverley Rilett

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This paper demonstrates that George Eliot drew on George Henry Lewes’s actual experience as an emerging scientist in her depiction of two fictional scholars, Edward Casaubon of Middlemarch and Proteus Merman, a lesser-known character from the chapter entitled “How We Encourage Research” in her final work, Impressions of Theophrastus Such. After Thomas Huxley published a devastating review of Lewes’s first book of science, Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences, the evidence suggests that Lewes became highly focused on disproving his critics and earning lasting recognition as a scientist, a feat he expected to achieve with his five-volume series, Problems …

Buried In Plain Sight: Unearthing Willa Cather’S Allusion To Thomas William Parsons’S “The Sculptor’S Funeral”, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In January 1905, Willa Cather’s story “The Sculptor’s Funeral” appeared in McClure’s Magazine and shortly thereafter in her first book of fiction, The Troll Garden, a collection of stories about art and artists. In the story, the body of sculptor Harvey Merrick arrives in his hometown of Sand City, Kansas, on a train from Boston, accompanied by his friend and former student, Henry Steavens. Cather criticism has long been concerned with identifying real-world prototypes for characters and situations in her fiction, and two such prototypes have been unearthed for “The Sculptor’s Funeral.” First, the return by train of the …

The Transatlantic Village: The Rise And Fall Of The Epistolary Friendship Of Catharine Maria Sedgwick And Mary Russell Mitford, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In June 1830, the American novelist and short-story writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick used the imminent London publication of her novel Clarence as a pretext for initiating a correspondence with the British author Mary Russell Mitford. In her first letter to Mitford, Sedgwick addressed her as “My dear Miss Mitford,” a violation of epistolary decorum in a letter to someone to whom she had not been introduced (FOMRM, 155).¹ As Sedgwick protested, however, “I cannot employ the formal address of a stranger towards one who has inspired the vivid feeling of intimate acquaintance, a deep and affectionate interest in …

Courtly Connections: Anthony Sherley’S Relation Of His Travels (1613) In A Global Context, Kaya Sahin, Julia Schleck

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This article revisits Anthony Sherley’s Relation of his travels into Persia (1613), reading the text within the larger context of early modern Eurasia. It highlights the ways in which at least one European traveler sought and found not alterity, but commensurable structures, social roles, political ideologies, and personal motivations in the Islamic polities to the east and emphasized these connections to his European readers. Furthermore, in making the case that Sherley’s narrative is informed by local actors in Safavid Persia, it maintains that a certain level of Eastern knowledge is present within Western texts from this period and awaits scholarly …

Networking With Middleton And Jonson: Theater, Law, And Social Documents, Kelly Stage

Department of English: Faculty Publications

In the lines above, the lawyer Tangle seems to be listing the tools of his trade, various legal documents he uses regularly. However, the list names more than just documents; it also labels the stream of blood trickling out of Tangle’s arm as he is forced into a purgative healing. Quieto, a lawyer-cum-healer, prescribes a bloodletting because Tangle’s long association with ink has infected him and the only way to cure him of poisonous legal practice is to drain him. Quieto confirms his diagnosis with the protagonist, Phoenix, who looks into the basin catching the blood and exclaims “This, why …

Courtly Connections: Anthony Sherley’S Relation Of His Trauels (1613) In A Global Context, Julia Schleck, Kaya Sahin

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Despite various attempts by literary theorists and historians to find more integrative ways of studying early modern societies and cultures, fairly essentialist notions of the difference between Europe and the rest of the world continue to persist in scholarship. The assumption of fundamental differences then leads to a search for sundry misperceptions, misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, and other skewed representations in early modern texts, particularly in those produced by European travelers. Similarly, studies on cultural, ideological, religious, and intellectual exchanges have not always been able to transcend approaches that solely focus on encounters, a word that sometimes implies haphazard meetings and difficult …

“I Can’T Relate”: Refusing Identification Demands In Teaching And Learning, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

In literature, composition, and other areas of English Studies, relateability can be an important tool to inscribe marginalized subjects as academic citizens. However, its larger arc reproduces ethnocentric and individualistic ideologies at the national and personal levels that foreclose the true understanding of and engagement with Otherness that defines learning. What are the particular intellectual and other challenges, pleasures, and rewards of refusing the pedagogical imperative to engage and understand through identification? I conclude the article by deploying theorists of difference to ask what it means to understand difference as difference, how this understanding might be facilitated, and what the …

Use Of Student Created Video Podcasts To Promote Foreign Language Grammar Acquisition In Middle School, Sergio Parra

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The use of video podcasts in education has emerged as a phenomenon that has gained a considerable amount of attention over the last few years. Although video podcasting is becoming a well-established technology in higher education, new multimedia instructional strategies such as student-created video podcasts in grades K-12 are under-researched.

The study investigated the effects of video podcasts created by students to promote foreign language grammar acquisition at the middle school level and find how students described such experience. The current investigation was conducted by using the explanatory sequential design, which is a mixed methods research design that occurs in …

Examining The Role Of Corrective Feedback On Learners' Modified Output Of The Spanish Past Tense In Face-To-Face And Telecollaboration Contexts, Arnaldo Robles

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) there has been a demand for further research to look into how corrective feedback (CF) can aid adult second language (L2) learners’ language performance and development. More specifically, to what degree elicitations with prompts (i.e., a form of explicit correct feedback) can affect the modified output of adult learners of Spanish during task performance. Additionally, how face-to-face and telecollaboration environments might play a role in learner’s modified output. Therefore, this dissertation study examines the effects of elicitations with prompts by measuring learners’ modified output in producing the Spanish past tense – the …

The Relationship Between Comprehension Of Descriptive And Sequential Expository Texts And Reader Characteristics In Typically Developing Kindergarten Children, Cheran Zadroga

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have found that children need to be proficient in reading and writing expository text to succeed academically as well as in their future careers. More than ever before, children in primary grade classrooms are being exposed to and expected to comprehend a variety expository text types. However, empirical evidence to support the use of expository texts in kindergarten classrooms, in particular, is sorely lacking. To begin to fill this gap, this study was conducted to investigate kindergarten children's comprehension of two types of expository text structures (i.e., descriptive and sequential) commonly found in kindergarten classrooms. Specifically, the aims of …

Perceptions Of Community College Students And Faculty On Persistence In Developmental Reading, Lisa H. Aofrate

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Attrition for entry-level, non-traditional college students taking developmental reading courses is a concern for higher education institutions. Students need to complete basic developmental reading courses in order to progress in their vocational or collegiate studies. This phenomenological study followed a social constructivist approach to attempt to understand what developmental reading students and faculty experience regarding persistence. The key research question examined the perceptions and understandings of college students and faculty involved in college entry level, non-traditional developmental reading classes regarding the factors impacting student persistence at a local community college. Using interviews, surveys, and participant journals, data were collected from …

Nsu Reading Education Curriculum 2016, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Implementing Clil In Higher Education In Thailand: The Extent To Which Clil Improves Agricultural Students' Writing Ability, Agricultural Content, And Cultural Knowledg, Charinee Chansri, Punchalee Wasanasomsithi

PASAA

The present study aimed to investigate the extent to which a CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) course at university level in Thailand improves undergraduate Agricultural students' writing ability, agricultural content, and cultural knowledge. The study sample consisted of 27 students majoring in Agriculture at a public university in Thailand. Data were collected in the forms of writing, agricultural content, and cultural knowledge pre- and post-tests. The study findings suggested that after attending the CLIL course, the students showed significant improvement in their English writing abilities in both of the two text types: process and cause and effects, with better …

The Impact Of Teaching Communication Strategies On English Speaking Of Engineering Undergraduates, Tiwaporn Kongsom

PASAA

This study investigates the impact of teaching communication strategies on Thai engineering undergraduate students' communication strategy use and strategic competence. Fifty-seven engineering undergraduate students were taught ten communication strategies for ten weeks and responded to a self-report communication strategy questionnaire before and after the communication strategy instruction. In order to elicit the students' use of communication strategies, 12 of 57 students completed four speaking tasks before and after receiving the instruction. Data were collected using a self-report communication strategy questionnaire, four speaking tasks, and a rating form indicating the level of strategic competence. The findings from this questionnaire showed that …

An Analysis Of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Hotel Front Office Personnel In Bangkok, Manachai Inkaew

PASAA

When we consider a strategy for dealing with globalization, it can be seen that intercultural interactions and encounters are very important and appropriate as effective outcomes are expected. Therefore, the need to assess the intercultural communicative competence (ICC) of those expected to achieve these outcomes is worth consideration. This study examined the intercultural communicative competence of front office personnel working in hotels in Bangkok. The study aimed to find out whether or not these hotel front office personnel were equipped with and/or have adequate intercultural competence to deal with interculturally diverse interactions within their workplace. The intercultural competence framework of …

In The Right Place At The Right Time: Asian English Accents In A Listening Test For Healthcare Professions, Khwanchanok Suebsook, Dumrong Adunyarittigun

PASAA

The rise of medical tourism and the increasing number of international patients from Asian countries have led Thai healthcare professionals to serve a lot of Asian patients and to encounter a complexity of language use in their workplace. There is a necessity for these professionals to strive for an understanding of Asian accents spoken by the patients in order to ensure successful communication and subsequently to best provide them with highquality medical services. Therefore, the ability to understand Asian accents has become necessary for healthcare professionals. To enhance test validity and authenticity and promote beneficial washback, English proficiency tests used …

Idea Sharing : Do Students Learn Better Through A More Entertaining Way? The Case Of Taiwan Efl Students, Chin Min Lin, Chita Wu

PASAA

This article aims at sharing with the readers two ways of English vocabulary learning based upon a small-scale study conducted in Taiwan. The participants of this study were one hundred and three university students randomly chosen from universities in Taiwan. They received questionnaires and vocabulary teaching videos through e-mail or Facebook. The distributed questionnaires contained demographic questions and vocabulary pre-tests and post-tests. The videos were composed of two different modalities of vocabulary teaching. In modality one, the vocabulary was presented with an explanation of the roots of the words, similar words, and related words. In modality two, the vocabulary was …

Variable Production Of English Past Tense Morphology: A Case Study Of A Thai-Speaking Learner Of English, Chariya Prapobaratanakul, Nattama Pongpairoj

PASAA

The study investigated variable production of English past tense morphology by an L1 Thaispeaking learner of English. Due to the absence of the past tense inflectional morphology in the Thai language, production of English past tense morphemes poses a persistent problem for L1 Thaispeaking learners of English. Hypotheses have been made in accordance with Lardiere's (2003) Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH), which predicts that the participant possesses the syntactic knowledge of the English past tense morphology. The participant's variability in L2 production of English past tense morphology was not due to a lack of L2 grammatical knowledge but rather the …

English-Thai Code-Switching Of Teachers In Esp Classes, Korawan Promnath, Chamaipak Tayjasanant

PASAA

The term code-switching (CS) that occurs in everyday situations, or naturalistic code-switching, has been a controversial strategy regarding whether it benefits or impedes language learning. The aim of this study was to investigate CS in conversations between teachers and students of ESP classes in order to explore the types and functions of CS usually used in the teaching and learning process, and to investigate the teachers' and students' opinions about CS in classroom practice, particularly in English for nursing and tourism classes.

The Development And Validation Of Willingness-To-Listen In L2 (Wtl) Scale, Ahmet Selçuk Akdemir

PASAA

This study aims to develop and validate a willingness to listen (WTL) scale for second language (L2) contexts. There are several studies on willingness to communicate (WTC) in L2. However, most of these studies are based on the speaking dimension of communication. As an ignored dimension, listening in L2 is underestimated in WTC research. The study is based on the fact that listening, along with speaking, composes an important part of communication in L2 contexts. In order to develop a valid and reliable WTL in L2 scale, a series of analyses has been carried out after creating the items for …

Rhetorical Structure Of Education Research Article Methods Sections, Baoya Zhang, Anchalee Wannaruk

PASAA

This study investigated the rhetorical move structure of the education research article genre within the framework of Swales' (1981, 1990, 2004) move analysis. A corpus of 120 systematically sampled empirical education research articles served as data input for the analysis. The results indicate that the education research article methods section is characterized by structural complexity and rich, nuanced description. Education researchers generally employ three rhetorical moves to realize the overall communication purpose of the methods section: 1) Describing the research design, 2) Describing data collection procedures, and 3) Describing data analysis procedures. While the first is optional and has no …

Conceptualization Of Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge With Academic Reading Comprehension, Md. Kamrul Hasan, Ahmad Affendi Shabdin

PASAA

The present study embodies a conceptual framework, and it studies the concept regarding the depth of vocabulary knowledge. Literature review is employed as a foundation for developing the conceptual framework for the present study. The current study suggests that different dimensions of depth of vocabulary knowledge, namely paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations, analytic relations and morphological knowledge need to be included as integral parts of depth of vocabulary knowledge to examine their correlation and prediction on academic reading comprehension. In addition, different relationships of paradigmatic relations, syntagmatic relations, analytic relations and morphological knowledge with reading comprehension are explored.

Book Review : Exploring Psychology In Language Learning And Teaching, Chamaipak Tayjasanant

PASAA

This book, written by acknowledged experts in the field of psychology and language learning, is a welcomed addition to the EFL literature. Unlike many books in the field of EFL/TESOL which tend to focus on introducing new trends in teaching with little account of psychology, the aim of this book is to encourage language teachers to manage their classrooms with awareness of the feelings and sensitivities that different learners bring to the learning process. Major concepts of social and educational psychology related to language teaching and learning have been carefully selected and discussed in the eight chapters of the book, …

Arabic Teachers' Perception Of An Integrated Approach For Teaching Arabic As A Foreign Language In Colleges And Universities In The United States, Abeer Al-Mohsen

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the perception of Arabic teachers on whether an integrated approach is critical for students’ communicative competence in Arabic. Additionally, the study attempts to uncover what might be potential barriers to the integrated-approach program-wide implementation in the field of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language in higher education institutes in the United States. Although many studies investigated students’ perception of learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) only, few studies focused on teachers’ perceptions of the issue and understanding of what communicative Arabic instruction should entail.

Using a mixed-method study, the researcher conducted the study in two sequential phases: a …

Interview : A Special Interview With Dr Willy A Renandya National Institute Of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Pramarn Subphadoongchone

PASAA

In this issue of PASAA, we are very honoured to have an opportunity to interview Dr Willy A Renandya from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr Willy A Renandya is a language teacher educator with extensive teaching experience in Asia. He has given numerous plenary presentations at regional and international conferences, and published extensively in the area of second language education. His latest publications include Motivation in the Language Classroom (2014, TESOL International), Simple, Powerful Strategies for Student Centered Learning with George Jacobs and Michael Power (2016, Springer International), and English Language Teaching Today: Linking Theory …

The Effectiveness Of Graphic Organizers To Support Executive Function For Ninth Grade Struggling Readers, Elaine Ruth Barry

Doctoral Dissertations

Struggling readers, or students who read below grade level but have strong phonological awareness, may benefit from using instructional tools like graphic organizers (GOs) while reading. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between reading comprehension and teacher-generated graphic organizers (GOs) as they support executive function for struggling readers. The use of GOs to support reading comprehension was grounded in cognitive load theory as it combines with the construction-integration model of reading to highlight the importance and potential weakness of executive function. Although researchers have identified component parts of reading comprehension and different instructional tools for supporting …