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<p> This dissertation seeks to understand college writing-center work between peer tutors and college students&mdash;called <i>peer tutoring</i>. Specifically, this study explores peer tutoring between deaf peer tutors and deaf tutees as they discuss academic writing. Further, this study investigates how deaf peer tutors and deaf tutees who are bilingual users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English use strategies to support the learning of academic writing during a tutorial session in a writing center. My review of the writing-center literature shows that research on the topic of a deaf peer tutor (DPT) and a deaf tutee (DT) as a pair is limited. While the literature on deaf tutees is expanding, the research studies on deaf peer tutors remain little understood. In fact, the literature on the retention rate of deaf college students remains low and persistent (Marschark &amp; Hauser, 2008). I conducted a qualitative case study to explore the DPT-DT interaction in a writing-center setting with a theoretical framework of (1) sociocultural, (2) ASL/English bilingual, and (3) Deaf Critical (DeafCrit) theories. The analytical framework contains an early form of grounded theory analysis and a four-layer discourse analysis, which highlights the micro and macro views of the DPT-DT interaction. One of the three main findings shows that the study participants relied on visual discourse markers, consisting of signed modality and peripheral communication, which clearly supports deaf-student learning of academic writing in English. Another finding reveals that tutors offered many `explaining incidents' compared to the other five means of assistance: giving feedback, questioning, giving hints, modeling, and instructing. Finally, the third finding relates to the participants' lived experiences of audism during their school years where they experienced limited access to learning English incidentally&mdash;a form of oppression. This research effort has the potential to promote writing support for deaf students and writing-center practices for hearing and deaf tutors who are interested in working with deaf students. Further, this research effort has the potential to improve the retention rate for deaf college students and to increase career opportunities for deaf peer tutors in the writing-center field.</p><p> Keywords: Academic writing, writing center, peer tutoring, deaf college students, discourse markers, sociocultural theories, ASL/English bilingual theory, DeafCrit</p><p>

Lei Chin-Hai, Betty. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Bibliography: leaves 229-243.

<p> <b>Purpose:</b> The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to identify and describe effective instructional strategies for English language arts and mathematics perceived by expert fourth and fifth grade elementary teachers in southern California to reduce the achievement gap in high poverty and high English language learner (ELL) elementary schools. </p><p> <b>Methodology:</b> The researcher selected a qualitative research design to describe the instructional strategies used by teachers in three southern California school districts. Through in-depth, semi-structured, open-ended interviews, the researcher provided an examination of the instructional strategies used to address the needs of high poverty and high ELL elementary schools. Teachers were identified from three criteria: (a) teaching at a school with a Latino population of 50% or more, (b) population of 80% or more in poverty, and (c) currently teaching fourth or fifth grade. Data collected using NVivo software to determine patterns and categories. </p><p> <b>Findings:</b> Based on the responses from the study participants, four major findings were established for both Research Questions 1 and 2. </p><p> <b>Conclusions:</b> The major finding from Research Questions 1 and 2 were summarized as four conclusions: (a) collaboration is the number one tool teachers need to prepare students; (b) teachers need training on a collaborative style for teaching small groups, the management, and different teaching strategies and organizational patterns to make small group instruction effective in a large group setting; (c) teachers do not have the technology skills and knowledge necessary to maximize the impact of technology as an instructional tool; and (d) teachers do not have the technology skill and knowledge to maximize the impact of technology as an instructional tool for mathematics or mathematics using manipulatives. </p><p> <b>Recommendations:</b> Six recommendations are: (a) larger sample across the United States focusing on ELLs from different origins; (b) similar study with a teacher of a different origin from the ELLs, (c) similar study of secondary teachers&rsquo; effective instructional strategies, (d) observational study in collaboration to evaluate effectiveness in supporting ELLs, (e) similar study with special education students, and (f) study of English only students comparing differences and similarities between ELLs and effective instructional strategies.</p><p>

<p>Teachers? Experiences in a Charter School With English Language Learners? Acquisition of Academic Literacy. Estella Stephens, 2018: Applied Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education. Keywords: charter schools, English language learners, literacy, phenomenon, qualitative research, teachers This qualitative applied dissertation was designed to investigate and give voice to the lived experiences of mainstream teachers at charter schools where the English language learner (ELL) population increased significantly. It replicated McCoy?s (2013) study. A phenomenological design was used to interview kindergarten-Grade 8 mainstream teachers in 3 charter schools. Interviews were conducted by a noninterested party due to the positionality status of the researcher. Interviews were transcribed, and the data analyzed and coded by the researcher. Teachers were asked about lived experiences with ELLs acquiring academic literacy, teachers? challenges and benefits in teaching academic literacy, changes that occurred in classrooms in their work with helping ELLs to attain grade-level academic literacy, and how they could be best prepared to help ELLs attain academic literacy based on Cummins (1973) language acquisition theory. Six themes emerged from the interviews relating teachers? experiences with ELLs? difficulty with mastering academic literacy in a charter school. The 6 themes that emerged included a large ELL percentage in the class, ELLs entering school behind grade level, cultural and language barriers, increased collaboration, greater emphasis on vocabulary, and increased professional development. The study found that teachers perceived that the influx of ELLs into mainstream classrooms and culture and native languages posed challenges to students? academic literacy achievement. Increased collaboration and a greater emphasis on teaching vocabulary proved to be helpful. The majority of teachers? requests for professional development targeted teaching ELLs to prepare teachers better to help students attain academic literacy. The results of the 3 major findings in McCoy?s (2013) research study were supported as principles of good teaching pedagogy. Implications, limitations, reflections, and recommendations for future research are reported.

<p>Prepositions are hard to learn ? even for the advanced language student (Celce- Murcia & Larson-Freeman, 1999). One reason these lexical items are particularly troublesome is that their meanings vary substantially across languages (Feist, 2008a; Levinson & Meira, 2003). In addition, prepositional meanings are complex, with their uses influenced by geometric, functional, and physical aspects of the scenes they describe (Coventry & Garrod, 2004; Feist 2000, 2008a; Vandeloise, 1991). In light of this complexity, the purpose of this study was to figure out what advanced ESL students understand about English prepositional meanings. In my first experiment, advanced ESL learners from ten different language backgrounds studying at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette were asked to look at images and choose the best fit preposition to describe each spatial scene (created by Feist, 2000). Students were given a choice of in or on to best describe spatial scenes which varied along geometric, functional, and physical parameters. Their responses were then analyzed to determine which factors influenced ESL learners? prepositional meanings. In addition, the pattern of influences on ESL learners? use of English prepositions was compared to the influence previously observed in native English speakers (Feist , 2000) to determine how the ESL students? prepositional meanings compared to those of native English speakers. This may help elucidate whether even advanced nonnative speakers are missing subtle influences in prepositional semantics or if they possess a complex understanding that is similar to native speakers. My second study, which was formed out of the discussion of the first, explored one potential strategy used by advanced nonnative speakers in prepositional selection. How do students choose one preposition over another? Understanding what students know about in and on can help researchers develop pedagogical practices which guide learners on a path toward more native-like understanding of prepositional semantics.

<p> English second language (ESL) learners have been present in the United States public schools for decades. While the identification and procedures for entering students into an ESL program have improved throughout the years, there still seems to be a lack of understanding of academic backgrounds and program support for these students with unique educational backgrounds and languages. Instructional techniques for ESL students have varied widely, but there has not been a common consensus on which technique to utilize with secondary ESL students. Placement of ESL students has proved to be a difficult task in districts with limited options and often times the best placement for the ESL student is not an option. This mixed-methods study was designed to evaluate the English Second Language classroom placement at the secondary level in a Midwest public school. The evaluation was done using ACCESS English fluency testing scores and teacher, counselor, and administrator perspectives gathered through interviews, surveys, and a focus group.</p><p>

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In recent years, there has been a growing body of literature investigating metacognition in second language (L2) listening (e.g. Cross, 2010; Vandergrift & Goh, 2012; Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010). The theoretical underpinning of the majority of these studies is that metacognition and listening are individual psychological processes. This led to a limited understanding of metacognition in listening that highlights the regulation of oneself, whilst disregarding the communication partner and the wider context. The present study contributed to the existing body of literature by investigating and re-conceptualising metacognition in L2 listening. Informed by a sociocultural and dialogical perspective on discourse and thought, this thesis offered new insights that recognise L2 listeners’ metacognitive awareness and activities as reciprocal monitoring and control processes. International students for whom English was a second/foreign language participated in the study. They worked in pairs on a collaborative problem-solving task and their interactions on this task were video-recorded. Directly after the task, individual interviews with each member of the pair were conducted to gain their accounts of how they perceived the task and how they monitored and regulated the interaction. A grounded theory informed approach was used to analyse the interview data, and a conversation analysis informed approach was used to analyse the interaction data. The findings of this study have established that a wider view of metacognition in L2 listening is required. The re-conceptualisation, underpinned by existing theories and deriving from the study’s empirical data, moved beyond conventional views of metacognition, and argued that the monitoring and control processes in listening are dialogical and reciprocal. This re-conceptualisation was encapsulated in the term Metacognitive Discourse Awareness (MDA). The central tenet of the MDA framework is that metacognition in listening involves the complex regulation of the discourse, thought and social-affective dimensions. This multidimensional framing of MDA entails the listener’s awareness of his/herself as the co-regulator of the other(s) in the reciprocal relationship in which meaning is socially co-constructed and negotiated. This study thus foregrounded the situatedness of the monitoring and control processes in L2 listening and the connections within, between and across the thought, discourse and social-affective dimensions. The thesis concluded with recommendations for L2 teachers and learners to develop a broader understanding of metacognition in the listening process so that this understanding can have an impact on practices in the increasingly diverse global higher education context.

The present thesis investigates in how properties of a reader’s first language (L1) have an influence on syntactic processing in a second language (L2). While the Competition Model (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982, 1987, 1989, MacWhinney, 1997) predicts that syntactic properties of the L1 can have an influence on L2 processing, the Shallow-Structure Account (Clahsen & Felser, 2006) suggests that an L2 speaker’s representation of an L2 sentence is shallower, lacks syntactic detail, and is therefore not detailed enough for properties of the L1 to have an influence on L2 processing (Papadopoulou & Clahsen, 2003). In two sets of studies, I investigate whether L2 speakers of English activate syntactic information from their L1 while processing English sentences. In Experiments 1-4, native speakers of German, and control groups of native speakers of French and English, are confronted with English sentences consisting of a word order which exists in both English and German, but which represents different underlying syntactic structures in both languages. Results suggest that native speakers of German activate syntactic information from their L1 while reading such sentences. Experiments 5-7 represent an attempt to address both the issue of L1 influence and the issue of shallow processing within the context of the same experimental design. Native speakers of German, and a control group of native English speakers, read grammatically incorrect English sentences with a word order which would either be grammatically correct in German, or grammatically incorrect in both English and German. In this set of experiments, we found evidence against an influence of syntactic properties of the L1. Results also suggest that contrary to the predictions of the shallow-structure account, L2 speakers fully parse the syntactic structure of an L2 sentence, and compute detailed syntactic representations.