Teachers face pressures to meet the needs of an ever-changing diverse population of learners while simultaneously attempting to assist students in meeting state standards. There is a body of research that supports emergent bilinguals' growth in reading and writing. However, those practices do not necessarily reflect classroom instruction nor the needs of the students. The purpose of this study was to examine adolescent emergent bilinguals' perceptions about their learning from research-based literacy practices implemented in a classroom designed as a third space. Data were collected using participatory research and photo-elicitation and were analyzed using inductive analysis. The emergent bilinguals provided their insights about class assignments. Findings revealed that research-based literacy practices support emergent bilinguals' perceptions of learning when they are made accessible to them in distinctive yet extensive ways. For students to uncover which literacy activities they value, teachers need to present them with various opportunities to explore their own learning and encourage them to take ownership of their learning. Educators must consider the unique and individual needs of emergent bilinguals when designing the classroom environment and the lessons based on the standards. Recommendations for practitioners, professional development coordinators, and researchers are presented.

The purpose of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the emotional expression in the narration of autobiographical stories of Chinese international students in their respective languages (i.e., Mandarin and English). It addressed the methodological limitations of previous research on bilinguals' emotional expression and autobiographical memory recall. A phenomenological approach with Conversation Analysis was used to examine the bilingual lived experience of 8 graduate students from mainland China through an individual 60-minute bilingual semi-structured interview. The participants were asked to share stories before and after their arrival in the United States, as well as to self-reflect on their use of their respective languages during the interview and in their daily life. Several strategies were employed to establish four areas of trustworthiness in the qualitative data. Four major themes and related sub-themes emerged from the bilingual interview data including Mandarin as the Base Language, Affective Repertories of Mandarin (Use of Chinese Idioms and Proverbs, Use of Analogy, and Use of Repetition), Code-Switching as an Additional Communication Resource (Mixed Attitudes Towards Code-Switching, Non-Affective Functions of Code-Switching, and Affective Functions of Code-Switching), and Emotional Representation of the Bilingual Self (Open versus Reserved and Formal versus Casual). Finally, research limitations, future directions, and implications for bilingual counseling are discussed.

Thesis advisor: Lauri Johnson / This qualitative case study examined the perceptions of school and district leaders about fostering teacher leadership, specifically to support emergent bilingual and Latinx students in a public school district in the state of Massachusetts. The most recent model of transformational leadership developed from Leithwood’s research in schools (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2000) served as the conceptual framework. Data collection included 13 individual semi-structured interviews with district, building and teacher leaders as well as field notes and document reviews. Findings indicated that school and district leaders perceived they support formal and informal teacher leadership practices for emergent bilingual and Latinx students. Top-down approaches to collaboration and professional development impacted the development of teachers as leaders, creating barriers and challenges in each of three components of transformational leadership (setting direction, developing people, and redesigning the organization). Recommendations include establishing a collective vision for promoting and developing teacher leadership. Future research could be designed to better understand how teacher leadership is enacted to support issues around equity and social justice, and how we might encourage more teacher leadership among marginalized groups. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate code-switching at a structural level among youths in Sweden speaking Persian. According to the theoretical framework of this essay code-switching occurs at certain places in sentences and follow certain grammatical rules. The aim of the conducted study is to demonstrate if there are word classes between which code-switches occur more frequently, whether or not it is possible to find out certain verbs that are borrowed from Swedish to Persian more often than others and if Persian compound verbs are often constructed with a Swedish main verb and the Persian light verb kardan. Eight students participated in the investigation and the ages of the participants varied from sixteen to nineteen years. The methods used consist of recorded interviews and elicitations and took place during a native language class. The result clearly showed that the most common word class from which switches from Swedishto Persian occurs is nouns. Among the verbs, the vast majority were compound verbs, constructed with a Swedish main verb and the Persian light verb kardan. Other light verbs used were raftan and xordan, however, these were only used one time each, implying that kardan is without doubtthe most common light verb used when building a Persian compound verb with a Swedish main verb. The present study does not indicate certain simple verbs used more often than others, on the contrary, it seems possible to choose almost any Swedish main verb in infinitive, or even a Swedish compound verb, and put it together with the Persian light verb kardan to form a Swedish/Persian compound verb.

This is a qualitative study on bilingualism from Somali children’s perspectives. It aims to examine how Somali-Swedish bilinguals understand their bilingual experiences in a Swedish context. It looks at questions that relate to their views on language use in family and peer group interactions, their attitude towards heritage language maintenance, and challenges they may face in their everyday bilingual experiences. Three interviews were carried out with six children of Somali background between the age of 12-15 years, interviewed in pairs, and the empirical data were subsequently analyzed thematically. The findings of the case study show that children have a high-level of awareness about achieving monolingual-like bilingualism. This is linked to their language investment in Somali and Swedish languages in order to be better members of both the Somali community and the Swedish society. From the interviews, it became clear that Somali and Swedish are equally important for their everyday life for a variety of reasons, including: maintaining healthy family relationships and bonds, continuing contact and ties with extended-family, developing ethnic and societal identities, and understanding and fostering friendship. However, many experienced challenges such as bullying and embarrassment as a result of, for instance, insufficient knowledge of their language or avoidance of using multiple languages in public for fear of being mocked. Furthermore, children are active agents in their learning and in acquiring proficiency in Somali and Swedish as they explain their choice of preserving their heritage while they negotiate with teachers to find a balance between language demands in the parental interactions and those with others in their ethnic group, and achieving native-like mastery of spoken Swedish.

The purpose of this study was to understand how young children bridge belonging and language in a dual language immersion (DLI) setting. I developed a 10-week ethnographic study in a Spanish-English third-grade class in the Northeast of the U.S. where data was collected in the form of field notes, interviews, and artifacts. Here I explored the way language instruction and student participation influenced the development of the teacher and students’ multiple identities. The findings of this study suggest that emergent bilinguals’ identity development derives from the process built through multiple dialogic classroom instruction and practices. The products of this process emphasize the sense of belonging and language practices as main components of students’ hybrid and fluid identities. This research contributes to the field of identity development and DLI studies in terms of knowledge, policy, and practices. In particular, the findings of this study: (a) increase our knowledge of students’ multiple identities development in DLI settings; (b) impact policy implementation in elementary schools; and (c) reveal classroom strategies and successful instructions in elementary education.

Significant research has been done regarding the influence of age of acquisition (i.e., the age at which one is exposed to a second language (L2)) on L2 learning (e.g., Johnson & Newport, 1989; Bialystock & Hakuta, 1999). Some researchers have shown that bilinguals who have learned their second language early in life may differ in their fluency from bilinguals who learned their second language later in life (White & Genesee, 1996; Flege, 1999). Specifically, studies have suggested that bilinguals who have not acquired their L2 by puberty will never acquire native-like proficiency (Lenneberg, 1967); however, others claim that there is not one particular age after which native-like language proficiency cannot be achieved (Birdsong and Molis, 1998; Flege; 1999). However, little research has been done regarding the effect that age of acquisition has on how bilinguals code switch and what rules govern this code-switching. Early research by Poplack (1980) found that late (i.e., those who learned the L2 in adulthood), less fluent bilinguals had different code switching tendencies than early (i.e., those who learned L2 in childhood), more fluent bilinguals. Lipski (1985) suggested that early bilinguals will engage in intrasentential switching while late bilinguals will rarely do so. In the present study, 26 early and late Spanish-English bilingual speakers made acceptability judgments on intra- and intersentential switches. Results indicate that there is no statistical difference between early and late bilinguals when responding to whether a mix was good or bad, and how good or bad a mix was. There were, however, trends in the results which indicate that early bilinguals may respond faster to code switches than late bilinguals, suggesting that early and late bilinguals may process language differently. Further research is needed to confirm this finding.

The challenge facing children learning language bilingually has led to efforts to improve the assessment and treatment of language learning difficulties. One of these efforts is the development and validation of the Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale (SELPS). Previous research has been performed to validate the scale for English language proficiency but not for Spanish language proficiency. Twenty-four sequential bilingual children produced spontaneous narrative language samples that were rated using the SELPS and coded for language sample variables using the Systemic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Several language sample variables, most notably the Subordination Index, the number of omitted bound morphemes, and the number of code-switched words, were correlated with the SELPS subscale scores and total score. Findings have implications for screening the Spanish language proficiency of Spanish-English bilingual children who are between four and eight years of age.

This study analyzes the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of natural Spanish-English bilinguals. VOT is a linguistic characteristic that measures the amount of aspiration occurring after the release of a stop consonant. In terms of VOT, English stop consonants differ substantially from their Spanish equivalents. This study analyzes whether or not natural bilinguals produce VOTs that approximate VOTs of monolingual speakers of each language. Participants completed two surveys to quantify their linguistic dominance in English and Spanish. They were then recorded performing similar speaking tasks in both languages. The conclusions show that natural bilinguals do not produce their English or Spanish VOTs within the monolingual norms defined in previous studies. If conclusions were to be drawn solely from this data, then the participants would theoretically have no monolingual-like language production of VOT. There is also no correlation between language dominance scores and production of VOT. These results support the conclusion that a natural bilingual is not the equivalent of two natural monolingual speakers. Significant correlations exist between VOT production and gender, age of learning English, and amount of time spent watching TV in each language. Another interesting conclusion is that many of the participants score more Spanish-dominant when a survey is given in Spanish and more English-dominant when the very same survey is given in English. This shows that even the language of a survey may skew responses slightly.

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