International students have attended American colleges since colonial times. Although international students attend all types of colleges and universities, most studies and reports which have examined their presence on American campuses have been directed at four-year institutions. This is not surprising in that 86% of all international students in the United States, (based on 1990/91 data), were enrolled in four-year institutions. 57,720 international students were enrolled in two-year institutions by 1990/91. While such research is helpful in providing key data and information regarding international students at some of the largest and most prestigious U.S. institutions, comparatively little research has been directed at international students in two-year colleges. The purpose of this study has been to conduct a qualitative examination of international students in three public two-year colleges in New England. Using a case-study approach, four questions were investigated: Why do international students choose a public two-year college? What are their experiences? What are the experiences of faculty and administrators who work with them? What policy questions are important for these institutions? Field research included twenty-one interviews with international students, twenty-two interviews with faculty, and eight interviews with administrators. Also, on-site observations were conducted and available institutional documents reviewed. The study revealed a group of highly motivated international students who, for the most part, were quite satisfied with their educational experiences in the two-year community colleges. The study also revealed that international students are prominent in the academic life of the institutions and faculty members were, on the whole, pleased with the performance and presence of international students. The greatest policy challenge to public two-year community colleges that enroll international students, is the challenge of fully embracing a wider philosophy and vision of the institution's role and contribution in international education. While the overall assessment of the two-year college experience from international students, faculty and administrators was a positive one, it is also clear that institutions could do more to improve the educational experience of international students and the faculty who work with them. Ten recommendations are offered including an examination of mission statements, development of on-going faculty and staff training programs, strengthening of international student orientation programs, development of more creative recruitment efforts, and strengthening of the institutional data base on international students.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Educational Leadership / W. Franklin Spikes / Educators teaching English as a second language to adult students must keep course materials relevant, up-to-date and low cost. This research examines the possibility of using television commercials to supplement existing teaching materials, making lessons more culturally relevant. Often direct translations reveal that the translator, while knowing the rules of the language, did not fully understand the nuances of that language's culture. The idea that language and culture are interwoven is well established. While some understanding of one without the other is possible, finding ways to blend language and culture in the classroom can give non-native speakers an aid to understanding implied and literal meanings. This dissertation describes research on how American culture is intertwined in the ubiquitous television commercial and how these 30-second "slices of life" could benefit ESL education. It examines American concepts depicted in television advertisements on the four largest networks and then investigates the relative merits of using TV commercials as a teaching tool. This study uses the Map of Culture, developed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1959, for content analysis of ten primary message systems that can categorize cultural descriptions. A sample of nearly 2,000 national television commercials was recorded from four major networks—ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC—during primetime in November 2001. Only national commercials aired more than six times that month were analyzed for trends in illustrating both manifest and latent cultural meanings, and even cultural taboos. Random examples were then selected to create a suite of ESL classroom materials. Television advertising was chosen for this study because of its accessibility and its ability to provide both visual and auditory content. Materials created for use in the classroom included a discussion model with pretest component, a video of selected commercials, a Q&A format follow-up discussion guide, and a post-test measurement instrument. ESL teachers and students who tested the materials and were surveyed on feasibility, logistics, students' interest level, content, and cultural relevance. Television commercials were found to include cultural content useful in ESL lessons and in class testing showed favorable outcomes. The study results could positively impact ESL pedagogy.

The main objective of this ethnographic study is to examine the processes by which minority students, Koreans Born in Japan (KBJs), are able to find their own voices within Japanese educational settings. I also explore how minority, KBJ students, and majority, Japanese students, learn to understand each other and their identities in two educational settings: university and high school, and how educators' knowledge and theories contribute to the process. One setting is a sociology class taught by a Japanese professor. The other setting is a Japanese public high school. For this ethnographic study, my data consist of transcriptions of interview sessions, reflection essays and reaction papers written by students. The data also include daily field notes on my classroom observations, my interactions with the participants and email messages from the participants. I analyze and interpret the data by looking at the data sources inclusively in order to answer my research questions. The results show that the KBJ students explore their identities reflectively and describe and revalue themselves as active participants of society within humanistic and liberatory educational settings. Originally, my research questions focused on only KBJ learners. However, in the process of collecting data, I realized that I had obtained important data from my Japanese participants. This helped to refine my research questions to incorporate the process of how majority students, describe, demystify, and redefine their perceptions of their KBJ peers as well as their own identities. This study highlights the ways in which educators, knowledge and theories influence the processes by which both minority and majority students describe, demystify and redefine their own identities self reflectively. My findings indicate that humanistic and liberatory education offer opportunities for minority students to describe and revalue themselves as learners and active participants in society. In addition, humanistic and liberatory education also offers opportunities for majority students to describe, demystify and redefine their KBJ peers as well as their own identities.

This study is based on participant observation and ethnographic fieldwork in Tlaxcala, Mexico and looks at language use and linguistic ideology in several Mexicano speaking communities undergoing language shift in the Malintsi (Malinche) region of Central Mexico. Many Tlaxcalans expressed conflicting feelings about teaching Mexicano to their children, while some actively avoid transmitting the indigenous language. I suggest that there is ideological multiplicity that surfaces in discourses of language, identity and progress. This multiplicity is organized through three discourses that have local, regional, and national expressions, these are: the pro-development meta-discourse of salir adelante, or forging ahead, and improving one's socioeconomic position; menosprecio , the denigration of indigenous identity; and third, the pro-indigena or pro-indigenous discourse that promotes a positive attitude towards indigenous-ness. The analysis of discourse offers a productive means for understanding the semiotic resources speakers employ as they orient towards and against particular identities through discourses they create and tap into. Using recorded data collected during field research, I analyze "naturally occurring" and elicited speech, and interviews conducted with local people on language use, ideology, shift, and bilingual schooling. The study of bilingual schooling offers an important site for the study of ideological multiplicity. Bilingual-indigenous schools in Tlaxcala as both community and nation-state institutions are a nexus for the discursive emergence and local reformulation of ideologies of language, identity, modernity, and the nation. I consider the politics and possibilities of language revitalization through the school system, focusing on the dialectics between agency and structure, as local communities and teachers interact with the national system. Despite the tremendous structural and ideological constraints on bilingual teachers, several are dedicated "language promoters." In this dissertation I suggest that focusing on ideological multiplicity, surfacing in and through discourse, can begin to address the question of how and why speakers shift their ideologies and their languages.

The purpose of this study was to identity whether the following variables are related to a sense of alienation among international students: age, sex, marital status, length of time in the United States and in Tucson, the place of residence, the participation in campus activities, and their perception of language ability. Alienation is viewed as a sense of powerlessness, meaninglessness, and social estrangement. The instrument for collecting demographic information and measuring the level of participation and alienation were administered to randomly selected international students at a southwestern university. Responses (185) were analyzed to find out the relationship among variables. The analysis identified that the more international students participated in campus activities, the less they felt alienated. Asian students had higher alienation scores than non-Asian students. The results suggest that the needs of different groups among international students should be evaluated separately, especially when designing the language programs. The international students should take the initiative to utilize the resources on campus which could help them adjust to the environment easier.

This descriptive socio-linguistic study examines second grade children's biliteracy development in a private school in Buenos Aires, where English is taught as a foreign language. It describes a bilingual setting in Argentina and determines how these second graders are becoming biliterate. The major findings of the study are: (1) Students are learning English as a foreign language, not as a second language. (2) The model of language learning influenced the children's perceptions of themselves as language learners, readers and writers. (3) Students frequently transferred and applied literacy in the first language (Spanish) to foreign language literacy (English). (4) In order to read and write in a language, a person doesn't have to be orally fluent in it. (5) Learning is a socially constructed process.

This naturalistic study examined the kinds of decisions prospective teachers and their instructor made in constructing and using reflective portfolios in a 13-week multicultural education course. In addition, I also examined the role reflective portfolio construction and discourse played in relation to classroom interaction with peers, instructor, pedagogy and self. The reflective portfolio model, adapted from the literacy portfolio model (Hansen, 1992), was a tool that asked students to develop a portrait of themselves as reader/writer/learner/teacher, in the context of a multicultural education course. Participants in this study included three prospective teachers and one instructor purposefully sampled from a class of eight. Data were constructed from nine data sources. The theoretical framework of this study drew from related research in the domains of portfolios, narrative and autobiography, and pedagogy. / Through reflective portfolio discourse, prospective teachers examined personal experience as it related to their emerging beliefs about teaching and learning. The primary focus of the study was to examine the process of prospective teachers and their instructor and using reflective portfolios in a 13-week course. In doing so, I explored the decisions prospective teachers and their instructor made throughout the process and the role the portfolio played in relation to classroom interaction, pedagogy, self, and the multicultural course curriculum. A secondary focus emerged during data collection. This secondary purpose examined the function/role of the reflective portfolio as a tool for examining intrapersonal context, the way in which prospective teachers view themselves, and personal experiences as they relate to multicultural course content. Seven research assertions emerged. These research assertions were presented in three categories: (a) managing portfolio pedagogy; (b) portfolio construction; and (c) curricular dimensions. These findings contribute to a new dimension in portfolio research by examining the possibilities of portfolios as reflective and discourse tools in teacher education to explore how personal experience relates to practical knowledge. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-09, Section: A, page: 2798. / Major Professor: Kathryn Scott. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of type of testing method and reading proficiency level on readers' comprehension scores. A secondary purpose was to examine any interaction between these two factors. In addition, a question of interest was whether Bernhardt's Second Language Reading Model could help explain the comprehension processes of these group of readers. / The subjects were 162 Malaysian ESL students from three levels of reading proficiency courses at the National University of Malaysia. The subjects read a 306-word passage about the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Subjects then performed either a multiple-choice task or an immediate written recall task. Comprehension was measured by the scores obtained on the two tasks. Both tasks were measured on the same scale based upon number of weighted idea units or propositions. / A 3 x 2 Factorial ANOVA was applied to examine the effects of testing method and reading proficiency level on subjects' comprehension scores. The results of the ANOVA reveal that there is a main effect for type of testing method. However, there seems to be no significant effect of proficiency level on the comprehension scores. The results also indicate an absence of interaction between the two factors. The qualitative analysis of 81 recall protocols provides evidence in support of Bernhardt's Second Language Reading Model. / The study calls for the use of multiple-assessment techniques in ESL reading comprehension. The immediate written recall task is recommended as a valid assessment instrument for classroom application. Further pedagogical and testing implications are discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-07, Section: A, page: 2496. / Major Professor: Frederick L. Jenks. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of cultural bias in essay topics on non-native speaker (NNS) undergraduate writing performance. To do this, this study uses the essay subsection of Florida's College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST). Motivation for this study came from: (a) a call for research in this area; (b) evidence that racial/ethnic minority groups perform inconsistently on the CLAST essay exam, while White Non-Hispanics demonstrate consistent pass rates across administrations; and (c) evaluations of prior CLAST essay topics that show that some CLAST topics are culturally biased. / In order to determine whether cultural bias in essay topics affects NNS writing performance, other factors that influence writing proficiency were controlled for in the sample selection process and in the research design: the reader, the writer, the task, and the scoring procedure. Each of the 56 subjects in this study was assigned either a culturally biased or culture fair essay topic at random. The mean score of the culturally biased group (n = 29) was then compared to the mean score of the culture-fair group (n = 27). The results of both the parametric and nonparametric statistical tests led to the rejection of the null hypothesis at the 95 percent level of confidence or higher. / The findings of this study are consistent with the alternative hypothesis which states that on average, NNSs produce better writing scores on culture-fair essay topics than on culturally biased essay topics. Thus, if some CLAST exams contain culturally biased essay topics, while some contain culture-fair essay topics, this inconsistency may explain the observed inconsistencies in the pass rates of racial/ethnic minority groups. If exams are not culture-fair, they may not provide equal opportunities for all examinees to achieve a passing score. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-04, Section: A, page: 0890. / Co-Major Professors: Frederick L. Jenks; Elizabeth Platt. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.