Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

An Intensive Esl Camp Curriculum And Excursion Activities For International High School Graduated / College Students, Ying Chen

Master's Projects and Capstones

There are many factors for students’ poor command of English among international students in the native language institutions. One of the factors is the students’ negative attitude and low motivation in English learning. Another aspect to lower students’ English learning motivation is the inappropriate use of the learning materials. Moreover, learners still lack a chance to immerse in the real language environment and the authentic cultural background to improve their comprehensively intercultural and communicative competence. For the sake that the second language instruction provided in regular schools is limited in time, many students even do not have enough time to …

Teaching English In China’S Shadow Education Settings Where Communicative Competence Is Left Out, Bei Ye

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

English shadow education, whose curriculum in the shadow mimics the curriculum inside the school (Zhang, 2014) has become increasingly prevalent in China. The fact that English shadow education simply serves for dealing with examinations without developing learner autonomy and communicative competence is a problem that needs to be solved. However, the huge demand for shadow education is derived from deep-rooted traditional values and the current education system. Also, many contextual realities such as high student-teacher ratio, overloaded curriculum, and teachers’ limited English language proficiency (Nunan, 2003; Yu, 2001; Zhang & Watkins, 2007) stop teachers applying the Communicative Approach and …

Understanding The Body Paragraph: A Handbook For Efl Teachers & Students, Terpsithea P. Papadopoulos

Master's Projects and Capstones

English learners have a significant gap in their English language learning in that they have difficulty writing paragraphs. This difficulty appears to be the result of a combination of factors: foreign English language teachers’ lack of training and support to teach writing, the manner in which English is taught abroad, and students not learning or understanding the logical flow of a paragraph in English academic writing. This project aims to reduce the gap in students’ inability to write effective body paragraphs and foreign English language teachers’ knowledge of paragraph writing. The handbook created in this field project provides supplementary materials …

Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification Training: Developing Materials For Second And Third Grade Classes In Mandarin Chinese Immersion Programs, Xiaoyi Zhang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Among all the different perspectives of Mandarin teaching, Mandarin tone teaching and practicing has been largely ignored. The lack of attention and materials for Mandarin tone teaching is why many students speak, read and listen without the correct tone pronunciation, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding. This field project is a curriculum of Mandarin tone teaching. This project is for second grade and third grade teachers who teach Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language in immersion programs in the Bay Area. This curriculum will enable students to speak and read Mandarin with correct tone pronunciation and distinguish different tones …

A Curriculum For Improving Chinese Elementary School Students' Listening Comprehension Skills Through Video Games, Ming Cheng

Master's Projects and Capstones

English has been a compulsory subject in Grades 3-9 in China since 2010, English is also a compulsory subject at the secondary level and widely used at the postsecondary level as well. However, Chinese English teachers spend more time teaching English grammar and vocabulary translation while ignoring the instruction of listening and speaking. The importance of teaching listening has been ignored while listening skill is primary to the acquisition of the other language skills. Chinese students’ incompetence of listening and speaking has become a common phenomenon. Also, due to the exam-oriented education system in China, students are under intense pressure, …

Effective Teaching Techniques And Study Strategies For English Language Learners In Esl Community College Classes, Dorothy M. Steiner

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this field project, Effective Teaching Techniques and Study Strategies for English Language Learners in ESL Community College Classes, is to provide guidance to the busy instructors who work with adult ESL students, particularly in non-credit programs. This field project can also be used by instructors of credit community college ESL classes, Adult schools, or (Community Based Organizations) CBOs. The handbook is designed to be a resource on the many areas that present common challenges in the ESL classroom such as diverse needs, low literacy levels, building academic rigor and vocabulary, communicative language teaching, increasing engagement and …

Empowering Students To Develop L2 Identity - Supplemental Online Lessons, Laura Espino

Master's Projects and Capstones

As an immigrant, learning English is part of acculturating to the new culture. From this process, a new identity emerges in the context of the new language and culture. Currently, identity issues and intercultural competence are explicit objectives in language learning. The implications of neglecting identity formation in second language acquisition include vulnerability to culture shock, mental health issues, and the inability to thrive. The unique set of needs, motivations, and strengths of immigrant English language learners should inform language instruction design in order to achieve sustainable and equitable successful language learning and acculturation. Explicitly designing instruction that incorporates issues …

Teaching English In China’S Shadow Education Settings Where Communicative Competence Is Left Out, Bei Ye

Master's Projects and Capstones

English shadow education, whose curriculum in the shadow mimics the curriculum inside the school (Zhang, 2014) has become increasingly prevalent in China. The fact that English shadow education simply serves for dealing with examinations without developing learner autonomy and communicative competence is a problem that needs to be solved. However, the huge demand for shadow education is derived from deep-rooted traditional values and the current education system. Also, many contextual realities such as high student-teacher ratio, overloaded curriculum, and teachers’ limited English language proficiency (Nunan, 2003; Yu, 2001; Zhang & Watkins, 2007) stop teachers applying the Communicative Approach and should …

Teaching Idioms To Chinese International Students Through Multimedia, Wenrui Wang

Master's Projects and Capstones

Native speakers tend to use idioms to express specific meaning and make language vivid. However, using idioms sometimes causes problems for ESL learners to understand, because the idioms always have figurative meaning. It is necessary for international students to strengthen their ability to understand and use idioms, because the idioms also contain many culture meanings. This project explores research in vocabulary teaching and using multimedia in ESL learning to create a handbook of learning idioms for the target group of college level Chinese international students. It contains idioms selected from visual and audio materials, such as movies, documentaries, pop songs, …

Thinking Outside The Box: Incorporating Critical Thinking Strategies In Esl Reading & Writing Instruction, Johanna Carranza

Master's Projects and Capstones

ABSTRACT

ESL students in the United States avail the resources of community college to achieve their goal of academic excellence. However, many community colleges struggle to prepare their students for mainstream four-year institutions. Aside from reading, writing, and speaking, learning a second language requires the development of critical thinking skills which are not emphasized enough for many ESL students in contemporary American academia.

As such, there are two major problems that this project aims to address. The first is that English as a Second Language (ESL) and English instructors have different expectations for ESL students. ESL instructors do not focus …

Crosslinguistic Influence Of Chinese Efl Learners On English Acquisition, Weijia Tang

Master's Theses

This thesis introduces both positive and negative crosslinguistic influence of Chinese EFL learners on English Acquisition. Most Chinese EFL learners have difficulties in English acquisition due to the negative crosslinguistic influence caused by the differences between mother tongue and the target language. In order to help Chinese EFL learners to tackle this problem, comparative analysis is done between English and Mandarin Chinese in terms of phonetics and phonology, morphology, part syntax, and pragmatics.

The focus of this thesis is to investigate both the positive and negative crosslinguistic influence phenomena in the process of English acquisition conducted by Chinese EFL learners …

Multilingual Families Homeschooling: Reasons, Goals, And Challenges, Georgina J.J. Aubin

Master's Theses

This study examines homeschooling among multilingual families by providing insight into multilingual parents’ motivations, goals, and challenges in homeschooling, along with their perception of the role their diverse language background plays in their homeschooling experience. Through the LangCrit framework, this study explores the intersection of language and parental involvement in the identities multilingual parents live as they homeschool their children. Findings demonstrate that parents’ goals and challenges center on academic and social concerns, rather than language issues. Rather, the influence of their language background emerges in descriptions directly focused on language and culture. The fluid dimensions of their identities are …

Nuestros Conocimientos: Life Lessons And Cultural Knowledge For A Successful College Transition, Yesenia Mendoza Muller

Master's Projects and Capstones

For the past 40 years, first generation college students have been the topic of scholarly research aiming to improve college persistence models. Because of the shifting ethnic demographics, an increase in underrepresented minority students continues to diversify the population of first generation college students. The debate ensues when existing dominant persistence models fail to address the multidimensional challenges students from underrepresented backgrounds experience when transitioning to college. The focus of dominant persistence models is in encouraging first generation students to assimilate by leaving their old identity to gain a new identity and learning the “ins and outs” of how to …

Vocabulary-Learning Strategies Of Students Learning Chinese As A Foreign Language In An Intensive-Training Setting, Yan Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

Compared with the research on vocabulary-learning strategies in the field of teaching English as a second or a foreign language, the research on the strategy use of Chinese-as-a-foreign-language (CFL) students, especially CFL students in an intensive-training setting, is scarce. The relationship between CFL students’ vocabulary-learning-strategy use and their learning outcomes remains underresearched. Therefore, this mixed-methods study was conducted to investigate the strategy use of CFL students in learning Chinese vocabulary words in an intensive language program and its relationship to students’ learning outcomes.

A total of 137 beginning to advanced students enrolled in the program participated in the study. The …

H.E.L.L.A.: A Bay Area Critical Racial Affinity Group Committed To Healing, Empowerment, Love, Liberation, And Action, Farima Pour-Khorshid

School of Education Faculty Research

Despite repeated pleas for diversifying a predominantly White U.S. teacher workforce, a significant teacher diversity gap persists in almost every state of the country (Boser, 2014). Teachers of Color who enter the profession with commitments to social justice, in particular, face an array of racist structural and interpersonal challenges often leading to their burnout and in some cases push out from the field (Kohli & Pizarro, 2016). In response to neoliberal, color evasive, and apolitical approaches to teacher support, educators and organizers have reclaimed and reframed their pedagogies through critical professional development (Kohli, Picower, Martinez, & Ortiz, 2015) to center …

Critical Peace Pedagogies At The American Center For Civil And Human Rights And The Canadian Museum For Human Rights: A Comparative Case Study, Ion Vlad

Doctoral Dissertations

The struggle for racial equity in the United States and Canada is ongoing. Troubled historical legacies in both countries have present-day implications. African Americans and Indigenous Canadians are still two of the most marginalized populations from the standpoint of socioeconomics and political representation (Giroux, 2013; Vickers, 2012). In order to redress these problems, human rights and peace education have to pose structural questions and expose systemic unbalances. In the recent past, neoliberalism has had a major influence on the organization and content of American and Canadian formal education, obscuring some of these structural questions (Ravitch, 2013). In this context, human …

Exploring Factors Influencing The Willingness To Communicate Among English-As-A-Second Language University Students, Chi-Fang (Michelle) Chang

Doctoral Dissertations

This present study anchored its inquiry in English oral communication and learning English as a second language. The purpose of the study was to explore the factors that influence the willingness to communicate (WTC) of ESL university students from the perspectives of both the students and their oral communication professor. Since the 1980s, WTC among ESL university students has attracted increasing attention because helping them communicate authentically is essential. WTC is correlated with overall English language proficiency because of its equal weight with the other language skills. Therefore, ESL students have targeted WTC as a vital skill. However, research on …

Empowering Refugees Through Self-Education, Ayanna Osborne

Master's Projects and Capstones

This project focuses on how to create easier access to education in refugee camps. This is discussed through the ideas of self-directed learning and cooperative learning. As well, the current need for education is explored. Several case studies are provided demonstrating that people without a formal education have successfully been able to seek information and teach themselves. As well, studies are discussed in which individuals have been shown to efficiently seek information and teach one another.

My website provided is still under construction as of 01/2018. It will be completed by the end of the year. Anyone is welcome to …

Privileging Autistics Of Color: A Human Rights Approach To Applied Behavior Analysis (Aba) Therapy, Rebecca Rubey

Master's Projects and Capstones

This field project examines the social construction of autistic people of color through the pathology paradigm and the associated human rights violations. The purpose of the project is to disrupt the pathology paradigm by privileging voices of autistic people of color in professional development workshops for ABA therapy providers. The workshops aim to help ABA therapy providers understand the historical context of ABA, how it fits into the wider systems of white supremacy and ableism, and how these dynamics are re-enacted in every day practice with autistic people of color.

Creating An Energetic Classroom: A Handbook For Esl Teachers, Lusha Sha

Master's Projects and Capstones

Low classroom energy is a common problem in English language teaching. This field project discusses the problematic low-energy classroom from both the student side and the instructor side. The first aspect explored is the silence of students. Because speech shows the process of language acquisition and is also the precondition of language acquisition, it is crucial to discover and understand the reasons for some students’ unwillingness to speak (Baran-Lucarz, 2014). The project explains the willingness to communicate and the cultural variations in learning. The second aspect of a low-energy classroom in this project is the ESL teacher lack of enthusiasm. …

Practical English For Chinese Newcomers: A Handbook For Teachers, Li Li

Master's Projects and Capstones

When new Chinese immigrants first arrive in the United States, they face challenges related to both language barriers and acculturative stress. Language barriers and acculturative stress mutually reinforce each other. Furthermore, they significantly inconvenience new Chinese immigrants in terms of living, working and studying. Incorporating cultural information into English as a second language (ESL) teaching is thus important from a sociocultural and intercultural perspective. Therefore, the underlying purposes of this project is to enhance English communicative competence and American cultural adaptation among new Chinese immigrants by immersing them in authentic, situational, and practical communication in the United States. The project …

Can Addressing Language Skills For Fifth Grade Ells In A Multiplication Curriculum Help Address The Achievement Gap In Math? A Multiplication Workbook For Big Kids, Michelle Douglas

Master's Projects and Capstones

Currently, the state of California has 1,332,405 students from grades k-12 who speak a language other than English at home (Caledfacts, 2016). When I started my first year teaching fifth grade with 95% of my students being English language learners (ELLs), I was surprised to see an achievement gap of two to three years in my student’s reading and math skills. I found that my student’s developmental language and math skills contributed to a lack of engagement during math time. Upon further research, I found that these three factors play a role in the wide achievement gaps between ELLs and …

Teaching Efl/Esl College-Level Learners Through Current Global Topics: Integrated Lessons For Efl/Esl Teachers, Chaiyeon Sylvia Lee

Master's Projects and Capstones

The importance of educating effective English users competent in communicating and interacting in a variety of social settings is highlighted in today’s highly globalized world. Being able to understand and discuss complex global topics related to current cultural, social, and business issues and events has become an integral skill of English learners to achieve greater international connectivity. Unfortunately, many EFL/ESL college-level students, specifically Korean EFL students, do not seem to have sufficient preparation to build English communicative competence and cultural awareness necessary to cope with various situations in which they need to communicate meaningfully and purposefully as effective English users. …

Falling Up: Building Language Use And Cultural Awareness Through The Implementation Of Humor In The Esl Classroom, Glen Kovar

Master's Theses

This study examined the importance of explicitly teaching humor to upper-intermediate and advanced adult English language learners (ELLs), and filled in the gap that exists in studies and literature by examining the use, and implementation of humor in English as a second language/foreign language (ESL/EFL) curricula. Humor is an important human behavior, playing a crucial role in communication, social interactions, and comprehension of a second language (L2) culture. High-level ELLs often lack the linguistic and cultural awareness necessary to effectively communicate. Language courses often accentuate test-taking and language strategies, and courses that explicitly engage with and teach humor to students …

Life Being An International Student In The United States: Acculturation, Culture Shock, And Identity Transformation, Lai Yan Vivyan Lam

Master's Theses

The population of international students at community colleges in the United States has increased significantly over the past decade. International students play a big role in building the cultural diversity on campus by bringing over different cultures and sharing their global perspective to the local community. However, they often face challenges adapting into American culture due to cultural differences in education system, language, lifestyle, etc. By looking into the acculturation process of international students to analyze the culture shock and cultural identity changes they experienced, this paper intends to seek ways to help this group of students to ease their …

No More Games: A Pronunciation Guidebook For New Efl Teachers Working In Asian Countries, Chiara A. Coombs

Master's Projects and Capstones

Many cram schools in Asia and online TESOL certificate programs often do not include training focused on pronunciation instruction. Consequently, teachers lack confidence and skills to teach pronunciation. The area of instruction is commonly ignored, and a need exists for instructional materials designed for new EFL teachers to support their students. This guidebook is a tool for inexperienced pre-service or in-service EFL teachers who plan to teach abroad. The overall purpose of the project was to raise the level of pronunciation training for inexperienced teachers, give them confidence to include it as a part of their curriculum, and to instill …

Neighborhood Strategizing: Understanding Community Collaborations Within California Bay Area Public Schools, Windi Hazzard

Master's Projects and Capstones

For the better half of a century, education policy has been guided by economics and profit. One after another, every U.S. president since the 1960s has championed legislation that reflects neoliberal ideals of competition and profitable skills. Through the standardization of the public school system, education has become a marketplace rather than an environment for cultivating empowered learners and critical thinkers. The purpose of this field project is to show how communities are challenging the current education system in order to influence education policy in San Francisco, California. I interviewed four participants from two organizations that advocate parents’ rights as …

Increasing Access To Aba Intervention For Children With Developmental Disabilities In Taiwan, Noel Hsu

Master's Projects and Capstones

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) uses a behavioral approach to help clients and their behavioral challenges. This treatment has been proven to be a highly effective intervention for children with developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorders. It is widely practiced in the United States and many other developed countries; however, this intervention is not widely available in Taiwan. This phenomenon requires our investigation because it raises questions about the available supports and interventions for children with special needs in Taiwan. This project is to explore factors that influence the development of ABA intervention in Taiwan. The goal of this project …

Cultivating Student Voice: Writing As A Tool For Multilingual And Multicultural Students To Develop Language, Identity, And Cultural Competence, Gaeun Lee

Master's Projects and Capstones

The importance of using writing as an educational tool to English learners cannot be understated. It is critical for youth learning English as their second language to be encouraged to value their first language, culture, and identity by writing. Unfortunately, many teachers overlook the significance of the writing activity, which can be greatly helpful to develop the English learners’ language and cultural competence and their identity, specifically for multilingual and multicultural youth.

This project is developed with the purpose of cultivating student voice by using writing as a tool. The project is based on the two theories: the affective filter …

Creating A Curriculum For Preschool Educators In Asia: How To Teach Kindergarteners Speaking And Listening Skills In English Through Games, Yue Kuang

Master's Projects and Capstones

There is a rapid development of science and technology, and international information exchanges have become increasingly frequent as well in 21^st century. English learning is becoming a requirement of career success, especially in Asia (Graddol, 2006). So people are beginning to pay more attention to English education, especially early childhood English education. However, most Asian kindergarten teachers prefer to pay more attention to teaching English reading and writing skills, while ignoring the teaching and practices of English listening and speaking (Wang, 2016). Most 3-6 age children do not have the attention span of adults (Garba, Yusuf, & Busthami, 2015), …