Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Whole Language Vs. Phonics?: Meaning-First And Code-First Approaches To Reading Instruction, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

This chapter excerpt describes approaches to reading instruction based on two different theoretical perspectives: a meaning-based approach and a skills-based approach. Video mini-lectures are included.

The Impact Of The Summarization/Paraphrasing Strategy, Frayer Model, And Student Engagement On Reading Comprehension, Yolanda Janiece Reilly

Education Dissertations and Projects

This mixed-methods research examined student achievement in reading comprehension as measured by the North Carolina End-of-Grade Test for Reading Comprehension, and specific reading strategies (Frayer Model & Summarization/Paraphrasing strategy) in Grades 6–8 classrooms. The purpose of this research was to determine if a difference exists in student reading comprehension achievement between students instructed using the Frayer Model and students instructed using the Summarizing/Paraphrasing strategy, when used with fidelity, and which reading strategy students found to be more engaging between the Frayer Model and Summarization/Paraphrasing strategy. Engagement is a major factor in education that impacts achievement in the classroom as well …

Employing Cueing Systems To Decode Text And Negotiate Text-Meaning In A Second Language, Timothy A. Rodriquez, Laureen Fregeau, Mary Kay Moskal, Robert Leier

ECTESOL Review

Many educators state that teaching English-Language Learners (ELLs) is just a matter of good teaching. While effective teaching is something that all children deserve, there are some differences between the approach a teacher may have to take with ELLs and with other students. One aspect of this difference is the fact that, while children go through the same stages of language development, ELLs may be at stages typically not found in other students. Based on a case study of an EL and his teacher, this article explains cueing systems and their role in literacy for ELs.

Approaches To Phonics Instruction, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

This chapter excerpt provides a brief overview of synthetic and analytic approaches to phonics instruction. Related mini-lectures are included.

Understanding Teacher Talking Time And Student Talking Time Practices Among Esl/Efl Teachers: A Practicum Design, Cesar R. Bazo Quintana

ECTESOL Review

This practicum design helps future ESL/EFL instructors gain practical understanding of Teacher Talking Time (TTT) and Student Talking Time (STT) practices in the classroom. It provides a deeper understanding of TTT vs. STT application within the Communicative Approach (CA) or Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).

Understanding Saudi Student Integration In The U.S.: A Study On Saudi Students At A Southeastern Institution, Carrie Melius

ECTESOL Review

Over the past decade there has been an increase in the number of Saudi students studying in the United States. Most recently, Saudi Arabia moved from fourth to third in country ranking for student enrollment in the United States. This study focuses on the experiences of Saudi students at a Southeastern institution in the United States by examining the perspectives of Saudi students studying in English as a Second Language (ESL) programs and undergraduate programs. In order to gain a deeper understanding of issues faced by Saudi students, domestic students as well as instructors were also included as participants in …

From The Editor, Laureen Fregeau

ECTESOL Review

No abstract provided.

English Language Competence: Why English Matters In Higher Education In Kenya, Ukaiko A. Bitrus-Ojiambo, Iddah Wayumba Mwaura, Annette Lutivini Majanja

ECTESOL Review

English is an international language, used in many countries for business, tourism, and education (Roy-Campbell, 2014; Crystal, 2003). In Kenya, it is the official language and language of instruction. The country boasts high youth literacy rates 93% (UNESCO, 2012). As university instructors, we have observed that although students have been in the formal educational system for a minimum of 9 years, their output does not match university expectations (KICD, 2016, p. 44; Jayasundara & Premarathna, 2011; Njoroge, 2008). This study assesses English language use in a Kenyan institution of higher education, identifies emergent linguistic patterns, and suggests some solutions to …

Unprepared: Are Educator Preparation Programs Effectively Training Pre-Service Teachers To Teach English Learners?, Lorie Johnson

ECTESOL Review

All students deserve high-quality, strategic instruction, yet pre-service teachers are not always taught best practices for instructing English Learners (ELs), students for whom English is not their native language. Almost 10 percent of the students in American public schools are classified as ELs, yet research indicates most educator preparation programs across the country have not yet integrated best practices for teaching ELs into their pre-service programs in meaningful ways. It is important for educator preparation programs to provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to understand the unique needs of ELs and to learn effective teaching strategies to meet those needs. This …

A Study Of Teacher Talking Time And Student Talking Time Practices Among Esl Instructors At An Intensive English Program, Cesar R. Bazo Quintana

ECTESOL Review

This study focuses on Teacher Talking Time (TTT) and Student Talking Time (STT) practices among ESL instructors at an Intensive English Program in a southeastern public research university. Based on a qualitative case study approach, the study demonstrates that participating ESL instructors were oriented more towards TTT practices while teaching their regular lessons. The study found disproportionate use of TTT. The study has helped participant ESL instructors become more aware of the behaviors that are conducive to both increased TTT and increased STT practices in their classes. This, in turn, can lead to improved teaching practices, which will benefit ESL …

Preparing Today To Empower Future Learners: Pre-Service Teachers’ Experiences Selecting & Evaluating Children’S Literature For Quality And Use In Prek-6th Grade Integrated Literacy/Science Instruction, Carolyn Stone, Deborah Conrad

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

The use of quality texts in elementary classrooms plays a major role in children’s literacy development. Quality children’s literature helps learners develop into skilled readers and writers with increased gains in vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. This paper demonstrates how pre-service teachers gained an understanding of the educational value of evaluating texts for quality. Using a mentor teacher assigned science topic, the pre-service teachers reviewed and evaluated texts and electronic based resources on specific science topics. The data highlights pre-service teachers’ reflections on how quality texts can be a powerful tool in supporting literacy success in their future teaching. It also …

An Examination Of Concepts Of School Readiness Among Parents And Educators In Ireland, Maire Mhic Mhathuna, Emer Ring, Noirin Hayes, Patsy Stafford, Siobhan Keegan, Cathy Kelleher, Martina Ozonyia, Mary Moloney, Deirdre Breathnach, Des Carswell, Des Mccafferty, Anne O'Keefe, Aisling Leavy, Ruth Madden

Reports

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness as they are understood by early years educators and managers, primary school principals, junior infant teachers and parents of children participating in the first Free Preschool Year in Ireland. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving interviews, an online survey and “draw and tell” sessions with children. Representative samples of FPSY settings and primary schools were selected and an online survey based on the findings of the qualitative phase was sent to 500 pre-primary settings and 500 primary schools. In …

Applying Encoding And Retrieval Techniques To Chinese Rhyme Reading In Advanced Placement Chinese Instruction, Nan Wang

The Nebraska Educator: A Student-Led Journal

Learning Chinese as a foreign language is increasingly prevalent in public school districts in the U.S. As ACTFL (2011) reported, an increasing number of enrollments of Advanced Placement Chinese courses indicate a growing demand for Chinese language courses in U.S. public school districts (ACTFL, 2011; ACTFL, 2017). AP foreign language exams indicate that students from the mainstream culture in the U.S. do not perform as well as racial minority test takers (Brown & Thompson, 2016). Therefore, implementing appropriate teaching strategies in a student-centered foreign language environment is a desperate need. This is a pragmatic instructional design proposal, which emphasizes the …

Epistemology Shock: English Professors Confront Science, Ian Barnard, Jan Osborn

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article raises questions and concerns regarding students from the sciences working with faculty in the humanities in interdisciplinary settings. It explores the experience of two English professors facing the privileging of "facts" and a science-based understanding of the world in their own classrooms. It poses both questions and pedagogical possibilities for addressing conflicts around epistemologies, scholarship, and teaching and learning.

The Congruity/Incongruity Of Efl Teachers’ Beliefs About Listening Instruction And Their Listening Instructional Practices, Mohammad Nabi Karimi, Mostafa Nazari

Australian Journal of Teacher Education

While research on EFL teachers’ beliefs and the realization of these beliefs in their classroom practices has recently gained momentum in the field of applied linguistics, the study of teachers’ beliefs as they relate to listening has received insufficient attention in the literature. This study was conducted to investigate Iranian EFL teachers’ beliefs about listening and their beliefs-driven instructional practices. To this end, a listening beliefs questionnaire was administered to a total of 85 teachers (BA= 49, MA= 36), followed by classroom observation of 12 teachers (6 teachers per group) who were given an audio to teach. The results revealed …

Partnering For Professional Development, Jennifer Davis-Duerr

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

Literacy specialists are often overlooked when determining the professional development needs within a school, and yet they are arguably the school’s best resource to empower teachers with professional growth to meet state mandates. How can literacy specialists be supported to increase their knowledge and skills so that all educators’ and students’ needs can be met? This article explains how small-scale school-university partnerships that connect literacy specialists and literacy teacher educators are an innovative way to provide high quality professional development that empowers literacy specialists and classroom teachers.

Measuring Our Impact: What Did Our Attendees Think Of Our Conference?, Louisa Kramer-Vida, Karen Meier

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

Peers evaluated conference presentations at an annual conference that is sponsored by two professional organizations of literacy educators in one geographic location in New York State. Conference sessions dealt with innovations and programs in schools that encouraged literacy learning. Comments from conference attendees indicated that the presenters seemed to be empowered by the ideas and strategies they were disseminating and the conference attendees themselves were inspired to try innovative uses of new technologies and other means of supporting language and literacy development in their own classrooms. All presentations were congruent with the then current New York State Common Core Learning …

Special Education Teachers, Literacy, And Students With Moderate And Severe Intellectual Disability: A Survey, Ann Katherine Griffen

Theses and Dissertations--Early Childhood, Special Education, and Counselor Education

Literacy includes many skills involving the use of language to read, write, listen, and speak. The ultimate goal in acquiring literacy skills is to function as independently, and in as integrated a manner as possible, in a literate society. Literary skills are critical skills for all students, both with and without disabilities. Since the 1990s, literacy has moved closer and closer to the forefront of our collective awareness regarding students who are at risk of not acquiring sufficient literacy ability. However, students with moderate and severe intellectual disability (MSID) have not always been included in this group of students. In …

Developing And Validating The Elementary Literacy Self-Efficacy Survey, Adam Ulenski

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to measure the task-specific self-efficacy beliefs of elementary literacy coaches. In order for this to happen, a synthesis of literature regarding literacy coaching tasks including the International Literacy Association's standards for literacy coaches were used to write several items on the survey. In addition, the Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale and the researcher's experiences as an elementary literacy coach were used to write other items on the survey. Experts in the field of literacy coaching and self-efficacy provided content validity. Construct validity was established through correlation statistics with …

Exploring Effective Professional Development Strategies For In-Service Teachers On Guiding Beginning Readers To Become More Metacognitive In Their Oral Reading, Sharon M. Pratt, Anita M. Martin

Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts

This case study explored professional development centered on explicit teaching strategies with in-service first-grade teachers as they engaged beginning readers to consider stronger self-awareness of their thinking processes as they read. In this paper, we report on how teacher beliefs shifted regarding the impact of explicit versus implicit instructional practices that increased their students’ metacognitive awareness and regulation. Teachers adopted specific instructional strategies over the course of the professional development that positively impacted their students’ achievement, including one teacher’s use of peer coaching. As teachers observed their students doing more than they thought they were capable of, their beliefs about …

Evaluating Student Responses To Young Adult Literature Based On Group Dynamic Within The Literature Circle Setting, Abigail J. Schmitz

Masters Theses

The push of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards encourages teachers to assist students with overcoming personal obstacles in the classroom. In the middle grades, young adult literature can be an outlet for students by allowing them to connect with characters similar to themselves and their life experiences. Within the middle level classroom, literature circles can address SEL needs and state standards while allowing students to work closely with their peers sharing in a discussion format in response to the same young adult novel. This research analyzed two groups of students and their oral and written responses to the …

(Mis)Reading The Classroom: A Two-Act “Play” On The Conflicting Roles In Student Teaching, Christi U. Edge

Journal Articles

This case study examined concentric and reciprocal notions of reading—that of high school students, a pre-service teacher, and a teacher educator. An intern charged with teaching students to read, interact with, and compose texts in an English/language arts classroom constructed her role in the classroom based on her reading the “text” of her internship experiences, relationships, and responsibilities. Using interviews and observations, a teacher educator read and interpreted the classroom “text” the pre-service teacher “composed” during her internship and then constructed a two-act “play” which details the conflict in the intern’s enacting the dual role of student-teacher and her subsequent …

Storying Our Journey: Conversations About The Literary Canon And Course Development In Secondary English Education., Elsie L. Olan, Kia Jane Richmond

Journal Articles

Olan and Richmond present preservice English teachers’ stories about having little experience with canonical texts they are asked to teach in their field experiences.

Teaching In A Mixed Secondary Spanish Classroom: A Case Study Of Strategies And Successes Of Minnesota Teachers, Meredith Gunderson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The population of Spanish heritage language learners is increasing throughout the state of Minnesota. This change in demographics impacts schools in a variety of ways; one such consequence is the creation of classes for Spanish for Native Speakers in locations with high Latino populations. However, in most locations, such programs currently do not exist, resulting in Spanish heritage language learners enrolling in Spanish foreign language classes. These classrooms, called mixed classes due to the combination of second language learners and Spanish heritage language learners in the same classroom, pose a unique challenge to the foreign language instructors. This qualitative multiple …

The Challenge Of Chinese Character Acquisition: Leveraging Multimodality In Overcoming A Centuries-Old Problem, Justin Olmanson, Xianquan Chrystal Liu

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

For learners unfamiliar with character-based or logosyllabic writing systems, the process of developing literacy in written Chinese poses significantly more obstacles than learning to read and write in a second language like Portuguese or Cherokee. In this article we describe the linguistic nature of Chinese characters; we outline traditional and new media approaches to Chinese character acquisition; we unpack how multimodal technologies combined with computational linguistics might be used to provide new types of support for Chinese character learning; and we offer a design that incorporates several of these concepts into a digital writing support tool that could work as …

Efl Teachers’ Perceptions And Practices About Assessment At The Universidad Central Del Ecuador, Evelyn Veronica Almeida Garcia

Research and Development Supported by El Centro

Despite rising interest in understanding how language mastery is assessed, our knowledge of language assessment, alternatives in assessment, feedback, peer and self-assessment, as well as our understanding of teachers’ perceptions of assessment and their subsequent assessment practices is still quite limited. In my experience, language assessment is not always aligned with what and how students learn in their EFL classes. My aim is to conduct a case study of three EFL teachers from the Centro de Idiomas (Language Center) in the UCE and examining how their knowledge and beliefs about assessment influence their practices in class. I will collect data …

Strategies To Support Families Experiencing Difficult Circumstances, Carol M. Trivette

ETSU Faculty Works

One of the most challenging tasks for many early childhood providers is how to support families who are facing tough, difficult issues like death of a parent, PTSD, abuse, and neglect. Not only do these issues impact the family’s overall functioning and well being and the quality of parents’ interactions with their young children but they also affect the relationship between the family and the early childhood providers (e.g., missed appointments and adversarial interactions). Dr. Carol Trivette will cap her yearlong webinar series sharing resources and discussing evidence-based practices that providers can implement when they are working with military families …

Examining The Effects Of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Read 180 Program On Reading Achievement And Self-Efficacy In Middle Schools, Amanda Michelle Cox

Education Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine if improving reading achievement through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s (HMH) READ 180 program impacted a student’s reading self-efficacy. Of the students participating in this study, particular attention was placed on the factors of gender, ethnicity, and the length of time students were exposed to HMH’s READ 180 program.

The setting for this research was three middle schools in upstate South Carolina. The schools sampled were from a combination of urban, suburban, and rural populations. The study’s methodology was quantitative and correlational.

When reviewing the results of the study, the research indicated that there …

Music And Words: Connecting The Love Of Music With Language, Eileen P. Kennedy, Raymond Torres- Santos

Publications and Research

Children from different cultures have a natural affinity for rhymes, rhythm and music. Imagine if students were able, from the beginning of their education and experiences with academic writing and literacy, to access their unconscious and original selves from which to create their writing. The study of music can help to access this aware, inventive side that can enhance anyone’s writing. As an early childhood writing teacher and a composition teacher, we draw on our experiences with young children with words and music. We examine the relationship between music and words in an effort to bring the primitive drive of …

Quality Interactions Between Professionals And Families To Enhance Child Learning, Carol M. Trivette

ETSU Faculty Works

Young children learn through the interactions they have within their environments. These interactions include all of the people who support them (parents, family members, interventionists, therapists, childcare providers, and other practitioners). This session will focus on how practitioners can help parents, families, and other adult caregivers develop the types of interactions needed to have a lasting positive impact on the learning of their young children with disabilities.

Objectives:

1. Explore strategies for helping families understand early communication attempts of children before language is developed or in the presence of a delay or disability
2. Explore how adult-child interactions change to promote children’s …