Adopting a constructionist interpretive research approach, I investigated the phenomenon of motivation to learn English as a second language (ESL) in a sheltered, middle school, transitional class. I interviewed eight ESL students who were attending an ESL program in grades seven through nine. This process enabled me to distill the essence of which factors impacted the students’ motivation for second language acquisition (SLA). The literature does suggest that ESL students’ motivation to learn English may be influenced by numerous factors including, but not limited to: previous learning experiences, family perspectives on education, peer interaction, the classroom teacher, teaching strategies and procedures. The study occurred over a period of five months, from April 2012 to August 2012, and included data gathering and analysis.

Despite the fact that a considerable body of empirical research has been done to examine the role of metacognitive strategic awareness both in L1 and L2 reading, controversial findings have been reported. In addition, although a substantial number of studies have been conducted to investigate reading strategy use by English learners of various first languages, there is a lack of research involving Vietnamese ESL learners. The present study was designed in order to add to the existing literature new evidence about the second language reading strategies used by Vietnamese ESL learners. Particularly, three main aspects of reading strategy use were investigated: 1) the reading strategies that are most frequently used by Vietnamese ESL learners; 2) the reading strategies that distinguish high achieving readers and low achieving readers; and 3) the reading strategies that are significantly associated with performance on lower order and higher order reading questions. The participants of the study were 32 Vietnamese ESL college students in Vietnam. The research instrument employed two tasks: a fourteen-item reading comprehension test and a five-point Likert scale survey of reading strategies (SORS). The reading test was used to divide the sample into a higher performing group and a lower performing group. The SORS was taken from Mokhtari and Sheorey (2002) and consists of 30 items which measure learners' frequency of use of global, problem solving and support strategies when reading academic materials in English. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, multiple independent samples t-tests, and multiple regressions. The frequency analysis revealed a fairly regular use of reading strategies by Vietnamese ESL learners. Of the three types of strategies, support strategies were the most frequently employed, followed by global and problem solving strategies. Regarding strategies used by the higher and lower performing readers, the results revealed significant differences in the use of 5 global and 1 problem solving strategies. In addition, the study found that participants' performance on higher order and lower order reading questions was significantly associated with a set of reading strategies. Specifically, 14 reading strategies were significantly correlated with performance on lower order reading questions and 22 reading strategies with performance on higher order reading questions. These findings have provided new evidence and insight about the use of reading strategies in second language reading, particularly focusing on the relationships between strategy use and reading performance and strategy use and type of reading questions. Especially, the findings about the relationship between reading strategies and performance on lower order and higher order reading questions are novel, which fact, undeniably, requires further research in order for these findings to be validated and expanded. Finally, the present study's findings carry valuable pedagogical implications concerning the design of ESL reading curricula and the practice of teaching ESL reading strategies. Namely, curriculum designers and teachers should take into account the following issues: 1) the universality and uniqueness of ESL learners' preferences for reading strategies; 2) the connection between strategy use and reading performance, and 3) the fact that effective performance on higher and lower order questions is correlated with the use of specific reading strategies.

Students who are learning English as a second language (ESL) have lower performance on mathematics problems based in language than students who are fully fluent in English. Students’ performance on word-based mathematics problems is directly related to their English reading comprehension and language fluency (Abedi & Lord, 2001; Brown, 2005; Hofstetter, 2003). This places students who are not fully fluent in English at a disadvantage in the mathematics classroom. Students’ self-efficacy beliefs also impacts their mathematics performance and motivation. The self-efficacy of students who are not fluent in English may be negatively impacted by their struggle with language. For this exploratory study, image-based mathematics problems were created to communicate problem solving questions with pictures instead of language or computational symbols. This problem format was investigated as a potential alternative to word-based or computation-based problems. Grade 6 students registered in ESL level 2, ESL level 4, and not registered in ESL, completed a mathematics task with four computation problems, four language-based problems, and four image-based problems. During a follow-up interview, students’ solution strategies and thought processes were explored further. The results of this study indicated that the inclusion of wordless mathematics problems, such as image-based problems, assisted some of the students who were learning basic English interpersonal communication skills. As nonroutine problems, image-based mathematics also encouraged complex thought and mathematics understanding. Students in ESL Level 2 demonstrated higher self-efficacy beliefs on image-based problems than word problems. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

An important question in the field of reading development is whether models of reading, which apply largely to monolingual English (L1) learners, also apply to English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. The pursuit of such an inquiry is critical to the development of empirically valid models of reading in ESL populations. This study investigated the nature and determinants of the developmental pathways of reading comprehension in ESL (N=153) and L1 learners (N=593) from the fourth to the seventh grade. Two research questions guided the research: (1) How similar are ESL learners to L1 learners in their reading comprehension growth trajectories? (2) How similar are ESL learners to L1 learners in the determinants of their reading comprehension growth trajectories? The following basic processes of reading comprehension were examined: phonological awareness, pseudoword decoding, word identification, reading fluency, and syntactic awareness. Using latent growth modeling, the study found that ESL learners were identical to L1 learners in the functional form (both showed linear growth), slope or rate of growth, intra-individual variability, and linguistic determinants, of their reading comprehension growth trajectories. However, they were weaker than L1 learners in their reading comprehension skill levels. These results provide compelling support for the applicability of L1 models of reading comprehension for ESL learners, and help shape an emergent conceptualization of reading comprehension development for ESL learners. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

Recent studies have begun to redefine the idea of accuracy in second language acquisition to include not only grammatical correctness, but also native-like selection. This is an exploratory study aimed at identifying areas of nonnative-like selection of adverbs, such as sentence position, semantic category preferences, frequency of use and breadth of word choice. Using corpus-linguistic methods it compares the writing of nonnative English speakers at an intermediate and advanced level to both American college students’ writing and published academic writing. It also conducts in-depth case studies of three of the most commonly used adverbs. It finds that while advanced students are grammatically accurate, there are still several ways in which their use of adverbs differs from that of native speakers.

The purpose of this research was to learn how teachers, school division policies, and community influences facilitated the transition of middle school Limited English Proficient (LEP) students from their native language to English. The research questions are: (1) How did the content area teachers influence the LEP student with learning English? (2) How did the ESL teacher influence the LEP student with learning English? (3) How did the school division policies influence the LEP student with learning English? (4) Which community influences assisted the LEP student with learning English? ESL students from one school district were randomly selected from a list of students currently enrolled the middle school level three ESL program. Selection criteria included: (1) middle school student, (2) level three English proficiency, (3) Spanish speaking as the primary language of the student, and (4) enrollment for five consecutive years within the school system. Individual interviews were conducted with students, regular education teachers and ESL teachers selected to participate in the study. Data were analyzed using the Constant Comparative Method (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994). Findings revealed the content area teacher assisted the student by using a variety of instructional strategies including small group assistance, games and hands on activities, use of visuals and articulation. The ESL tutor assisted the student by using games, hands on activities, and visuals. The tutors also focused on grade level curriculum, provided testing assistance and positive reinforcement. The school division policies influenced the student by structuring policies to assist with proper placement and success of the LEP student. These policies include scheduling, grading, screening, and communication with parents. The community influenced the LEP student by the language spoken in the home, family and extended family assistance, and parent involvement with the school. As a result of the research, recommendations for changes to the current ESL program were suggested. These recommendations include increased parent and community involvement, content area teacher training including teaching strategies, revision and distribution of the ESL policy guide, and formation of a steering committee including parents, teachers, administrators, community members and ESL coordinator. / Ed. D.

This qualitative case study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the obstacles that students from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia face when learning English in a writing course that implements critical thinking and writing process pedagogy. The study took place over five months at the Virginia Tech Language and Culture Institute in spring 2012. While ten participants--six female and four male Saudi Arabian ESL students--participated in this study, these findings focus primarily on one male and one female student. The aim of this focus was to give a rich and in-depth description of the two students. Two main queries guided this study: 1) How do sex differences affect Saudi students' perception of their teachers' and peers' authority? 2) How do those perceptions affect their development as writers and critical thinkers when learning in an intensive writing course at the high intermediate level? The researcher documented data through three sources: classroom observation, interviews with ESL students and teachers, and student writing samples. / Ph. D.

This interpretive qualitative study examined university ESL instructors' experiences using technologies and their personal views of technology integration. The study also explored the factors that affected these instructors' decisions for using computer and other technologies in their teaching. The informants in the study were five ESL instructors from five different institutions of higher learning in the southern state. The qualitative data were collected mainly through interviews along with self-report surveys and document materials. Overall positive statements were found in the instructors' experience and perception of their technology use in teaching. Nevertheless, it appears that these instructors' computer use is very minimal and their beliefs and perceptions of technology use are impacted by their experience of using technologies. Eight influential factors are identified from the emerged themes in affecting these instructors' technology decisions. The factors include: perceived benefits or value; anxiety; personal style; machines and language teaching; environment; peer influence; teaching style; and time. The findings in this study also indicate that instructors' demographic information has no influence on their perceptions and use of technology despite whether or not they use computers in instruction and how they use them.

O contínuo avanço da capacidade dos circuitos integrados e a necessidade de sistemas embarcados cada vez mais complexos para lidar com os problemas atuais, com prazos cada vez mais curtos, estão direcionando o desenvolvimento de sistemas de circuitos integrados para ambientes de alto nível de abstração cada vez mais distantes dos detalhes de hardware. O uso de linguagens de alto nível para auxiliar o desenvolvimento de sistemas embarcados é uma tendência atual pois tal abordagem tende a reduzir a complexidade e o tempo de desenvolvimento. Este trabalho propõe o desenvolvimento de uma nova ferramenta para geração de arquiteturas de hardware em Bluespec em um ambiente gráfico utilizando diagramas da UML. Esta ferramenta permite que o projetista descreva o comportamento utilizando máquina de estados finita no padrão UML 2.0, onde cada estado pode conter a codificação do comportamento com as linguagens Bluespec e C. Dada uma máquina de estados, a mesma é traduzida para a linguagem Bluespec por meio de um compilador e templates. Como resultado, é apresentado a geração de duas arquiteturas de hardware a fim de demonstrar as vantagens e limitações da ferramenta desenvolvida / The continuous advancement of integrated circuits capacity and the need for embedded systems even more complex to deal with current problems, with shorter time-to-market, are driving the development of integrated circuits systems to environments with high level abstraction more and more distant from the hardware details. The use of high level languages to assist the embedded systems development is a current trend for such an approach tends to reduce the complexity and development time. This work proposes the development of a new tool in Bluespec to generate hardware architectures in a graphical environment using UML diagrams. This tool allows the designer to describe the behavior using finite state machine in UML 2.0 standard, where each state can contain the coding behavior with Bluespec and C languages. Given a state machine, it is translated to Bluespec language through a compiler and templates. As a result is presented the generation of two hardware architectures in order to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the developed tool

O contínuo avanço da capacidade dos circuitos integrados e a necessidade de sistemas embarcados cada vez mais complexos para lidar com os problemas atuais, com prazos cada vez mais curtos, estão direcionando o desenvolvimento de sistemas de circuitos integrados para ambientes de alto nível de abstração cada vez mais distantes dos detalhes de hardware. O uso de linguagens de alto nível para auxiliar o desenvolvimento de sistemas embarcados é uma tendência atual pois tal abordagem tende a reduzir a complexidade e o tempo de desenvolvimento. Este trabalho propõe o desenvolvimento de uma nova ferramenta para geração de arquiteturas de hardware em Bluespec em um ambiente gráfico utilizando diagramas da UML. Esta ferramenta permite que o projetista descreva o comportamento utilizando máquina de estados finita no padrão UML 2.0, onde cada estado pode conter a codificação do comportamento com as linguagens Bluespec e C. Dada uma máquina de estados, a mesma é traduzida para a linguagem Bluespec por meio de um compilador e templates. Como resultado, é apresentado a geração de duas arquiteturas de hardware a fim de demonstrar as vantagens e limitações da ferramenta desenvolvida / The continuous advancement of integrated circuits capacity and the need for embedded systems even more complex to deal with current problems, with shorter time-to-market, are driving the development of integrated circuits systems to environments with high level abstraction more and more distant from the hardware details. The use of high level languages to assist the embedded systems development is a current trend for such an approach tends to reduce the complexity and development time. This work proposes the development of a new tool in Bluespec to generate hardware architectures in a graphical environment using UML diagrams. This tool allows the designer to describe the behavior using finite state machine in UML 2.0 standard, where each state can contain the coding behavior with Bluespec and C languages. Given a state machine, it is translated to Bluespec language through a compiler and templates. As a result is presented the generation of two hardware architectures in order to demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the developed tool