<p>The Simple View of Reading model (SVR) was used as a theoretical lens to explore some of the reading comprehension issues and challenges faced by Arabic Heritage Language Learners (HLLs) in the United States. This study investigated which of the two SVR model components, decoding and linguistic comprehension, is a better predictor of Arabic reading comprehension among HLLs. The study also examined if the level of reading proficiency affected the way the two components predict Arabic reading comprehension. To answer these questions, 70 participants from four different levels (i.e., fourth through seventh grade levels) from a southern California heritage language school were tested on one reading comprehension measure, one linguistic comprehension measure (i.e., a listening comprehension measure), and two decoding measures, word reading scores and spelling. </p><p> Results revealed that both components, linguistic comprehension and decoding, were equally significant predictors of reading comprehension in the overall sample accounting for 62% of the variance in reading comprehension. Moreover, the sample was then split into more skilled readers and less skilled readers. In the sample of less skilled readers, both linguistic comprehension and decoding were significant predictors of reading comprehension accounting for 42% of the variance in reading comprehension, with the spelling measure (i.e., decoding) being a slightly stronger predictor. In the sample of more skilled readers, only linguistic comprehension was a significant predictor of reading comprehension. However, when the decoding measure, spelling, was replaced with a fluency component (i.e., a fluency measure based on the recorded reading time of participants), both linguistic comprehension and the fluency component were equally significant predictors of reading comprehension accounting for 53% of the variance in reading comprehension. </p><p> Finally, additional preliminary observations and speculations were presented suggesting that: 1) the HLLs&rsquo; linguistic abilities may be closer to the abilities of second language learners; 2) the linguistic comprehension of HLLs may be influenced by multiple factors such as diglossia, language deterioration, and low oral proficiency; and finally, 3) the intertwined relationship between spelling and reading appeared to provide further insight into the literacy development of HLLs. </p>

This dissertation examines the academic and social goals that three second-grade English language learners in a U.S. urban school bring to their blog-mediated academic writing practices, and the interrelated nature of those goals. This study aims to bridge the dichotomy between approaches to studying computer-mediated language and literacy development that are oriented toward academic goals inside school, and those that are oriented toward social goals outside school. The study also aims to investigate connections between language use and language development by highlighting linguistic features of semiotic choices that the students made for their texts. This builds upon recent research studies of literacy practices that focus only on situated uses of literacy in various social and cultural contexts (Christie & Martin, 2007). In this study, learning is defined as appropriation and language is defined as a semiotic system, from sociocultural perspectives that capture the transformative nature of tool-mediated practices (Bakhtin, 1981; Halliday, 1985; Kress, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978). Ethnographic data collected over the course of a year include students’ texts, blog comments, videotaped classroom interactions, interviews, instructional materials, and school documents. Analysis of the data examines student goals, semiotic choices employed by the students, and roles adopted by the students, in the social processes of learning academic genres. Systemic functional linguistics is used to analyze register variables across texts and blogging comments, to examine changes in the students’ uses of linguistic resources. The findings demonstrate that students appropriate blogging for both academic and social goals, and compose their texts by drawing on linguistic features appropriate for goals related to the audiences reading their blog posts. Writing for meaningful goals and for wider audiences encourages ELLs to become more invested in learning, and to use linguistic patterns in context-dependent ways. The study concludes with a discussion of the significance of social goals in developing critical academic literacies (Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007), and implications for K-12 educators who are attempting to open up curricular spaces in which all stakeholders collaboratively work toward transformative learning experiences for ELLs (Willett & Rosenberger, 2005).

This study analyzed how six Heritage language learners at the university level gained conscious awareness and control of the concept of modality as revealed in student verbalizations (Vygotsky, 1998) throughout five different written communicative events. This work took place in the only course designed for Heritage language learners at a large public suburban university in the Northeast part of the United States. Grammatical simplification in bilingual speakers is due to incomplete acquisition of Spanish, attrition or loss of an underused linguistic system (Lynch, 1999; Martínez Mira, 2009a, 2009b; Mikulski, 2010b; Montrul, 2007; Ocampo, 1990; Silva-Corvalán, 1990, 1994a, 1994b, 2003; Studerus, 1995). The result of the process of simplification is reduction or loss of forms and/or meanings. In this work, I investigated in which ways Gal'perin's (1989) systemic-theoretical organized instruction promoted awareness, control and internalization of the concept of modality in three sets of data: definition, discourse and verbalization (Negueruela, 2003). In addition, I examined how the concept of modality emerged and proceeded. By focusing students' attention in Negueruela's (2003) Concept of Mood in Spanish orienting chart in a top down fashion, students were able to strengthen their theoretical understanding in practical activity while still accessing empirical knowledge, and eventually generalizing its use in new contexts across nominal, adjectival and adverbial clauses. At the definition level, Gal'perin's Systemic-theoretical instruction promoted emergence and progress of their conceptual understanding from perceptual to semantic. At the discourse level, students' theoretically based semantic understanding had a positive impact as revealed in student's discourse progress throughout tasks. At the verbalization level, semantic, abstract and systematic verbalizations showed students' emergence of awareness of the interrelated categories of modality. The conceptual category of anticipation was appropriately verbalized and contextualized 68% of the time. The absence of quality verbalizations referring to a specific conceptual category in some students lead me to conclude that students did not fully understand the meaning of some conceptual categories. On the contrary, their presence in any of the tasks showed emergence of conceptual meaning(s) in appropriate contexts, further appropriate recontextualization may provide full awareness and control.

In this current era of rapid demographic shifts and high stakes school reform, studies that explore the academic and social responses of students to critical language pedagogies are very much needed as resources for education policymakers and teachers. Through a combined ethnographic and systemic functional linguistic approach, this study explores the textual and classroom process of 5th-grade Puerto Rican students engaged in a SFL-based curricular unit on literature. Three interrelated questions guide the research: how SFL-based pedagogy supports students in developing an understanding of how to write literature and to accomplish social and political goals; and on a wider level, how institutional policies and practices constrain and facilitate teachers in developing such pedagogies. To address these issues, the dissertation draws on a critical sociocultural theory of language and literacy that sees language as a semiotic process and text as a web of previous texts and contexts woven together for a specific communicative purpose. To analyze ethnographic and classroom data, the study draws on concepts from Bloome and Egan Robertson (1993), Dyson (1997, 2003), and Keene and Zimmermann (1997). The comparative SFL analysis of literary source texts and students' writing is based on the work of Eggins (2004), Halliday and Matthiesen (2004), and Thompson (1996). Analysis of the data reveals that students in this SFL-based curricular unit learned in very different ways to interweave patterns of meaning from literary source texts into their literary and other academic writing. Furthermore, the students' access to a wide variety of literature and scaffolding activities afforded them different entry points into literature that resonated most strongly for each of them (Dyson, 2003). On an ethnographic level, a history of school-university-partnerships and school reform initiatives in the research site facilitated teachers' implementation of critical language-based curricula. Implications of this study for K–12 practitioners and researchers are discussed at length. They include the importance of the explicit use of intertextuality in heightening students' awareness of language as a pliable repertoire of choices and the crucial role school-university alliances need to play in supporting teachers and students in urban school classrooms.

<p> Bilinguals have been found to outperform monolinguals across a variety of cognitive tasks (e.g., Bialystok, Craik, &amp; Luk, 2008). Research regarding the generalizability of the bilingual advantage in driving, however, has not been conclusive (Chong &amp; Strybel, 2015; Telner, Wiesenthal, Bialystok, &amp; York, 2008). This study aimed to investigate differences in monolingual and bilingual performance in a simulated driving task. The Lane Change Test (LCT) was used to assess driving performance in the presence of a peripheral detection task (PDT), delayed digit recall task (2-back task), and visuospatial task (clock task). Results demonstrated that both monolinguals and bilinguals performed equally across all tasks. Completing a cognitive task, however, was found to be detrimental to both driving and the detection of peripheral stimuli. Given the controversial nature of the bilingual advantage, possible explanations for the null results obtained for the two language profiles are discussed.</p>