Language and Literacy Education Commons^™

Nalmiwh Miky'iwyul, Muriel Ammon, Michaela Artavia-High, Hilaria Cruz

Mother Language: Chatino, Ojibwe and Hupa Children’s Books

Originally produced by students in the Winter 2018 "Language Revitalization" course at Dartmouth College, taught by Hilaria Cruz, Neukom Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics and Anthropology.

Gjr Volume 41 Number 2 Winter 2018, Lina B. Soares

The Georgia Journal of Reading Archive

The Georgia Journal of Reading's Winter 2018 issue includes:

Letter from the Editor by Lina B. Soares (pg. 4)

President’s Page by Davetta Grigsby (pg. 5)

Teaching to the Test from a Parent’s Perspective by Amy Kettle and Melinda Miller (pg. 6)

Reimagining the Traditional Pedagogy of Literacy by Virginie Jackson and Kinsey Shrewsbury (pg. 11)

Engaging Strategies for Developing Reading Competencies by Renee Rice Moran, LaShay Jennings., Stacey J. Fisher and Edward J. Dwyer (pg. 24)

Taming the Beast: How I Took Back Guided Reading by Laura Sandling (pg. 30)

Reading Curriculums And Interventions, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

This paper describes some ideas for designing and implementing research-based reading interventions for struggling readers (mild, moderate, and severe).

Creating An Interactive Virtual Community Of Linguistically And Culturally Responsive Content Teaching For English Learners In A Tesol Program, Sujin Kim, Kim Song, Sarah Coppersmith

Educator Preparation & Leadership Faculty Works

This qualitative case study was framed by an experiential learning approachorganized around video resources and linguistically and culturally responsivecontent teaching. The study explored an overarching research question: How didteacher-learners in a grant project interact with a multimedia learning platformthat combined teaching video and VoiceThread presentation, called VT project,designed to enhance their linguistically and culturally responsive content teaching(LCRCT) for English learners (ELs)? Data included participants’ VT projects,online and face-to-face class discussions, survey results, and final reflective papersin two TESOL courses as part of a National Professional Development grantprogram in a Midwestern University. Analyses demonstrated that the technologyassistedcourse design generally promoted a …

Developing Students' Grammar Skills, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

Learning about grammar doesn't have to be boring and meaningless. This paper starts by dispelling some myths, other wise known as silly grammar ideas. It ends by describing seven activities that can be used to develop students' ability to use conventional grammar.

Mathematical Abilities In Children With Developmental Language Disorder, Alexandra M. Cross, Lisa M.D. Archibald, Marc F. Joanisse

Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Publications

Purpose. The present paper provides a scoping review of the literature on mathematical abilities in developmental language disorder (DLD). Children with DLD typically struggle with learning in school, however the mechanism by which DLD impacts academic success is unclear. Mathematics involves demands in the multiple domains, and therefore holds potential for examining the relationship between language and academic performance on tasks mediated by verbal and non-verbal demands.

Methods. A scoping review was performed via computerized database searching to examine literature on mathematics and DLD. The 21 papers meeting inclusion criteria compared children with typical development or DLD on various tasks …

Pedagogical Approaches To The Teaching And Learning Of Formulaic Language, Ana Pellicer-Sánchez, Frank Boers

Education Publications

No abstract provided.

Communication Skills: Listening And Speaking, Andrew P. Johnson

Elementary and Literacy Education Department Publications

Human communication involves reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The short article describes how to use two of these, speaking and listening, in any subject area.

Teaching Global Literature To “Disturb The Waters”: A Case Study, Kelly K. Wissman

Literacy Teaching & Learning Faculty Scholarship

Within this qualitative case study, I describe how a fifth-grade teacher in an affluent and culturally homogenous school attempted to “disturb the waters” through teaching global literature. Framed by transactional theories of response and critical language awareness, I identify three central pedagogical moves that supported disruptions of students’ assumptions and beliefs: (1) inviting students to share their aesthetic transactions, (2) privileging multiple perspectives and genres, and (3) calling attention to language choices as a central line of inquiry. I argue that both transactional and critical approaches to literacy and language are necessary in order to move students beyond disinterested and …

Freshman Composition Final Portfolio Assignment, Laura B. Rizzo, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

Throughout the course, students are encouraged to reflect on their writing practice. As a …

The Effectiveness Of Retrospective Miscue Analysis As A Reading Intervention For A Secondary Functional Academic Student, Drew Cumming

The Graduate Review

"Jack" is a ninth-grade functional academics student with multiple disabilities. His oral intelligibility can be challenging for unfamiliar listeners, but his expressive vocabulary is actually very strong for a student his age. Jack most recently scored below the 10th percentile among same-aged peers on standardized fluency and pseudoword-decoding tests but scored above the top 90th percentile on tests of receptive vocabulary and listening comprehension. Considering this vast discrepancy between subskills, it can be hard to determine when his below-grade-level reading performance has been disrupted by intellectual challenges, by a lack of confidence, or by a lack of motivation, or perhaps …

Effect Of X-Word Grammar And Traditional Grammar Instruction On Grammatical Accuracy, Sue Livingston, Andi Toce, Cyndi Casey, Fernando Montoya, Bonny R. Hart, Carmela O'Flaherty

Publications and Research

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar texts over a three-month period of time for 20% of their class time. Essays written at three different times were analyzed for the correct and incorrect use of sentence patterns and verb constructs. Results demonstrated that improvement (writing with less error) was larger in both categories for the X-Word Grammar group and …

The Effect Of Project-Based Poetry Writing Intervention On Writing Attitudes Among Students With Severe Learning Disabilities, John M. Bonanni

The Graduate Review

Writing attitudes of three learners with severe disabilities were surveyed in a substantially separate special education classroom within a public school in Massachusetts in order to determine the effect on learners’ writing attitudes after a project-based creative writing intervention in poetry. Writing skills were measured using teacher-created rubrics and attitudes were measured using pre and post survey data. Primary diagnoses of students involved included Intellectual Impairment, Autism, and Traumatic Brain Injury. Findings indicated that the intervention was most successful for the student with autism, moderately successful for the student with Traumatic Brain Injury, and not successful for the student with …

Artistic Expressions About Community-Based Literacy, Caitlin Hall, Diane Lewis, Christopher Schrock

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Every two years, SIL-UND offers a "Literacy Megacourse" focused on development of community-based literacy programs. At one point in the Megacourse, students are asked to express themselves in a creative fashion about what they have been learning. We offer three such expressions here, from students in the 2017 summer session.

Fiqws Language And Literacy: Linguistic Myths And Realities, Emily Miller, Missy Watson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is for a Freshmen Inquiry Writing Seminar, which is a two-section, collaboratively taught course wherein one of the two courses engages students in critical thinking, reading, and writing about the issue of language and literacy, while the other introduces students to conventions of academic writing and mentors them in social and rhetorical writing processes. Thus, this course draws on the topic of language and literacy as a vehicle for critically analyzing students' own languages and literacies and developing especially their academic and information literacies.

Critical Coaching: Approaching Literacy Coaching Through A Critical Lens, Melissa Wells

Education Faculty Articles

Based in critical theory, this qualitative case study explored how a new genre of literacy coaching, called critical coaching, developed and what outcomes it produced. The researcher (a literacy coach) built a critical coaching partnership with an early childhood teacher, and two findings emerged: (1) self-reflection occurred through defining educators’ identities as cultural beings, as well as by naming and challenging assumptions; and (2) taking action occurred through critical networks, advocacy in public spaces, and planning culturally relevant pedagogy. Implications include seven essential conditions for building critical coaching partnerships.

Possibility And Play: Ludonarratology As Liberating Praxis, Morgan Read-Davidson

English Faculty Articles and Research

Studying and composing ergodic media like interactive fiction can be one way of liberating students from the constraints of linear textual composition, encouraging them to explore and experiment with multimodality and remediation. A pedagogy that incorporates narratology and ludology teaches awareness of the remediation of narrative into digital, ludic media, and creates opportunities for the transfer of nonlinear, interactive writing practices back into more conventional writing. This paper describes an example of this pedagogical approach in a Writing for Video Games course, and the preliminary steps toward understanding how such praxis might transfer to writing in new contexts.

The Impact Of A Teacher Education Program Redesign On Technology Integration In Elementary Preservice Teachers, Guy Trainin, Laurie Friedrich, Qizhen Deng

Literacy, Language and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

This 5-year multicohort study examined the growth of elementary preservice teachers’ technology integration in the context of a teacher preparation program redesign that made integrating technologies into instruction a major focus. The authors examined how the teacher education program impacted preservice teachers’ technology integration in the classroom by increasing their efficacy to integrate technology and subject areas (i.e., technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge [TPACK] efficacy ) and their technology knowledge. Survey data collected from 891 participants were analyzed using thematic coding, analyses of variance, and structural equation modeling. The full program redesign showed across-cohort growth in TPACK efficacy, technology knowledge, …

Strategic Contemplation As One Saudi Mother’S Way Of Reflecting On Her Children’S Learning Only English In The United States: An Autoethnography And Multiple Case Study Of Multilingual Writers At The College Level, Razan Alansari

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This thesis is two single case studies that represent the emic and etic views of the parenting choices of the researcher as well as 12 multilingual writers who were not parents but who offered their opinions in simulated journals that appear unedited in the thesis. The mother/researcher of two boys discusses the challenges she faced when trying to introduce the heritage language, Arabic, to her children, one of whom was born in the United States. Both were raised in the United States outside their home country for almost seven years while the parents were government scholars earning degrees. This is …

“If You Wanted Me To Speak Your Language Then You Should Have Stayed In Your Country”: A Critical Ethnography Of Linguistic Identity And Resiliency In The Life Of An Afghan Refugee, Logan M. Amstadter

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

Nasreen and her family had not wanted to leave their native Afghanistan, but when the Taliban’s violence forced them to seek refuge in Iran, Nasreen found herself a teenager on the outskirts of Tehran. Discrimination, lack of opportunity, and an unwelcoming environment compelled her to make the dangerous overland journey from Iran to Turkey along with her husband, her brother, and her two sons. Now, they have asylum in the United States, where Nasreen is thriving—earning a degree at a community college and translating for other members of her community. Refusing to dwell on the past and enduringly optimistic about …

Proposed: Technical Communicators Collaborating With Educators To Develop A Better Efl Curriculum For Ecuadorian Universities, Daniel Jack Williamson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

This policy and action research in the form of a case study of language policy in Ecuador posits, with a pragmatic view, that students’ backgrounds, prior knowledge, and learning objectives should significantly impact curriculum development. Applying principles of information development, such as conducting usability studies and generating appropriate user profiles, technical communicators produce user-friendly documentation. Pairing technical communicators with educators to collaborate in the parallel processes of information development and curriculum development may yield instructional materials more useful to students than currently available materials are. An etic perspective is appropriate for this study for it does not presuppose what the …

Learning To Write, Writing To Learn: Cedar Valley High School Teachers' Use Of Formative Assessment, Kenna Marie Koster

Honors Program Theses

My goal for this thesis, as well as for my time at UNI, was to examine pedagogies that will inform my future practice as an English teacher, enabling me to provide a better learning environment for my future students through various means of assessment. In this study high school English teachers in three towns in the Midwest were interviewed to find out: (1) What is really going on in the writing classroom in terms of writing assessment? (2) How is formative assessment specifically being used in the writing classroom? And (3) Does the teacher find these methods effective? Speaking to …

Parent Perspectives On Inclusive Bookclubs, Amy Bucciferro

Graduate Research Papers

An inclusive book club was created to examine the effectiveness of incorporating literacy enhancing techniques and art to aid comprehension. This study focused on the parent perspective of their child participating in the book club and how it affected their child’s life at home. Two parents were interviewed after their child participated in a 3-month book club. The significance of this study is to show educators and families the benefits of having their children participate in inclusive environments. The study also explored how inclusive book clubs can benefit students with different comprehension levels and how families viewed the outcome of …

An Exploration Of Representations Of Race And Ethnicity In Three Transitional Series For Young Children, Sonia M. Balkaran

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis seeks to explore the related research literature surrounding representations and portrayals of protagonists of various multicultural backgrounds in series or transitional books. As teachers, it is essential to acknowledge the lack of multicultural characters in children's literature among elementary classroom bookshelves and learn how to incorporate literature featuring strong main characters of varying races and ethnicities so that children can see role models who mirror their own contexts. Prior studies, such as Gangi (2008) and Green and Hopenwasser (2017) have examined the deficiency of multicultural literature in the classroom, particularly among transitional stories, which shows the importance of …

Effects Of Integrated And Independent Speaking Tasks On Learners' Interactional Performance, Yen Vo

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Interaction has been considered an important element in second language acquisition (Long, 1983). Also, the ability to effectively and appropriately interact with others is one of the important sub-constructs of oral communication (Kramsch, 1986; Ockey & Li, 2015). Researchers in the field of language teaching have raised the importance of how different task types or task formats affect learners’ interaction. As a result, many efforts have been made for a better understanding of what task types/formats are more appropriate for promoting language acquisition as well as interactional ability. However, little has been done to investigate how integrated speaking tasks and …

La Aculturación En La Comprensión Lectora De Los Estudiantes Universitarios: La Valoración En El Uso Polifónico De Las Citas, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

El acceso de los alumnos universitarios a los estudios de nivel superior implica un proceso de adaptación y aculturación que encuentra respuesta principalmente en la lectura y en la escritura académica. Esta transformación genera al principio altos grados de ansiedad en los sujetos, quienes en este nivel carecen aún de las coordenadas necesarias para la interpretación de textos científicos codificados en géneros discursivos que en muchas ocasiones han sido expresamente elaborados por escritores expertos para otros especialistas de la disciplina.

El cambio conceptual que se produce en el individuo que trata de integrarse en una nueva comunidad discursiva viene marcado …

Language Learning In The Virtual Wild: The Influence Of Emotions On Learning Another Language In Informal Virtual Environments, Iwona Barbara Lech

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates learning a foreign language in informal virtual environments (the “virtual wild”) and learners’ emotions connected to the process. Evidence suggests that incidental foreign language contact in unstructured, virtual environments can enhance second language (L2) learning, and that the use of online informal learning of language activities with students learning English as an L2 results in higher fluency, lower error rates, and greater engagement compared to learning that occurs in a traditional classroom setting. The research on online informal learning of English (OILE) aligns with the newest research in linguistics asserting that language is learned through experience with …

Acculturation And Belongingness: The Keys To International Student Satisfaction, Semehar Ghebrekidan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore if acculturation in conjunction with belongingness, affected international student satisfaction. With the changes in immigration, the political climate as a whole and college campus demographics, it was important to evaluate what stress factors international students faced while being undergraduate students at a Midwestern University. In addition to using secondary research, primary research was conducted in the form of 4 interviews and 59 electronic surveys. The independent variables that were measured were reorganized into 2 categories: the students’ religious beliefs and the country where the student is from. Themes that came across throughout …

“What Makes Me Who I Am?”: Using Artifacts As Cosmopolitan Invitations, Tiffany A. Dejaynes

Publications and Research

As a classroom researcher, Tiffany DeJaynes revisited the curriculum of an English elective she helped design and found students using artifacts to investigate personal identity and create community

Small Group Reading Instruction For English Language Learners In Grades 3-5, Emily Peters

All Graduate Projects

This project highlights best practices for small reading group instruction for third through fifth grade English language learners in the general education classroom. By completing a literature review, a journal article was developed to report the pros and cons of heterogeneous and homogeneous groupings for reading instruction. Data from the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) and the OSPI Report Card were used to discuss a need to raise student reading proficiency scores.