<p> In this intervention study, I engaged principles of culturally responsive research to examine the effectiveness of explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction for English Learners (ELs) with specific learning disabilities (SLD). This study replicated and extended previous research (Jitendra, Hoppes, &amp; Xin, 2000) by modifying instruction found to be effective for native English speakers (i.e., explicit reading comprehension strategy instruction with a self-monitoring procedure). Modifications included: (a) integrating culturally relevant text, (b) providing native language support, and (c) melding strategies from the fields of teaching English as a second language and special education. Through a co-teaching model, I provided instruction to four participants during a 135-min literacy block in a fifth-grade general education classroom for 13 weeks. A multiple probe across participants design (Gast &amp; Ledford, 2010) evaluated effects of instruction on two dependent variables: (a) participants&rsquo; sophistication with applying comprehension thinking strategies while reading, as measured by comprehension thinking strategy rubrics (Keene, 2006) and (b) participants&rsquo; comprehension, as measured through percentage accuracy with responding to verbally-posed, researcher-developed literal and inferential comprehension questions. I assessed maintenance of effects for up to 8 weeks after participants exited the intervention. I assessed generalization to on-grade-level text and to a standardized achievement test (<i>Woodcock Johnson Tests of Academic Achievement III-R</i>; Woodcock, McGrew, &amp; Mather, 2001). Additionally, I examined participants&rsquo; self-efficacy as readers at pre- and postintervention by collecting information from the <i> Motivation to Read Profile</i> survey and interview (Gambrell, Palmer, Coddling, &amp; Mazzoni, 1996). Finally, I measured participants&rsquo; perceptions of the social acceptability of intervention procedures and outcomes through a researcher-developed, 9-item, Likert-scale survey. Results of this study show a functional relation for accuracy with answering literal and inferential comprehension questions and for sophistication with applying comprehension thinking strategies to read instructional-level text. All four participants performed within a similar range on on-grade-level probes as compared to instructional-level probes before and after the intervention. Participants improved or maintained scores on a standardized achievement test. Intervention effects maintained at the end of a 2- to 8-week period at a level above respective baseline performance. Moreover, participants&rsquo; attitudes toward reading and their motivation toward reading increased or maintained at high levels. Results from social validation questionnaires showed favorable impressions of the intervention&rsquo;s procedures and outcomes. Findings are discussed with regard to the need for future research and the implications for practice.</p>

<p> English Language Learners (ELLs) is the fastest growing segment of the public school population. Today&rsquo;s schools face unprecedented challenges in preparing ELLs as they lack instructional supports and fair and valid assessments to support academic learning in classroom settings. This study invokes the principles of design-based research, where both qualitative and quantitative data were triangulated and analyzed to further advance the theory of multimodality and assessment within a sociocultural perspective for linguistically diverse students in two sixth grade classrooms during a unit in photosynthesis. The main research question guiding this study: <i> How do multimodal tasks support science learning in linguistically diverse classrooms?</i> This question leads to three main perspectives, first I examine the two teachers&rsquo; perspectives on the use of multimodal tasks, next the students&rsquo; perspectives on the use of multimodal tasks and finally using a science and language learning rubric, which I created, I examine student learning in the classrooms based on students&rsquo; English learner status and proficiencies in English language arts, science, and vocabulary acquisition and usage. The teachers used some multimodal tasks to communicate ideas and the students created visual diagrams and comic strips to represent their understanding of photosynthesis. Results show the specific scaffolding strategies used by the teachers during the tasks, like analogies, contextualization of vocabulary use, re-representation of ideas through different modes and re-representation of modes in every task were also appropriated by the students. Rubric scoring indicated ELLs had the highest gains in the scores in the visual diagrams, redesignated students had the highest scores in the comic strip and those designated as above proficient in language arts and science had the highest scores in final visual diagram, indicating how ELL status, proficiencies in language arts and science influence the integration of science and language learning. With the advent of Next Generation Science Standards and related assessments, the findings illustrate the importance of aligning the multimodal tasks to learning goals, weaving links amongst the multimodal tasks, modeling the use of representational tasks for ELLs to integrate the understanding of science content and language and assessing students&rsquo; learning over time using visual representational tasks.</p>

English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers’ beliefs about motivation are important but underexplored. Because research on human beliefs indicates that existing beliefs are the filters for new information, a better understanding of teacher beliefs about motivation is necessary in order to provide training on effective motivation strategies for ESL teachers. In order to investigate the beliefs and perspectives of ESL teachers on motivation, 11 teachers at a university intensive English program, from a pool of 32, volunteered to participate in a self-reporting, open-ended interview to share their thoughts and beliefs about motivation. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, divided into comments, and grouped into categories. The transcripts and their coding were checked and approved by each of the participating teachers in the study. The teacher comments were organized around 9 categories of beliefs about motivation. Results of the data analysis indicated that ESL teachers have both specific and varied beliefs about the nature of motivation, and those beliefs correlate consistently with their classroom strategies for motivating students. As a result, teacher training that focuses on motivation strategies without understanding teachers underlying beliefs about the nature of motivation may not be successful. The findings also indicated that the 9 common strategies for motivation (shared by 6 or more teachers) were generally represented in practical guides for motivation which were based on both language learning and general constructs. In addition, as a group, these teachers demonstrated a breadth and depth of beliefs about motivation that could be used as a resource for filling any gaps in individual teacher’s knowledge or beliefs about motivation. Furthermore, these teachers identified group dynamics, student-teacher and student-student interactions, as the most important single factor effecting student motivation. Therefore, any theory of language learning motivation must be able to account for or explain classroom social variables and their effects on motivation. Finally, the ESL teachers’ recollections of the origins of their beliefs focused on early life, language student, and language teaching experiences, which hints that any effective teacher training on motivation should be experiential in nature, whether through language learning, classroom observation, or practice teaching. / text

<p> With an increasing concern in the American school system being the significant growth in the number of bilingual students, the communication between teacher and student, and student to student, has become a focus of attention. The purpose of the present study was to draw on Sullivan&rsquo;s (2012) dialogical approach and Bakhtin&rsquo;s theoretical framework on the concept of dialogism, using Bakhtin&rsquo;s notions of utterance as the unit of analysis. Bakhtin&rsquo;s (1986) primary (oral speech genres) and secondary genres (narrative texts) were applied to analyze the growth of oral language and meaning-making during interactive read-alouds when carefully scaffolded open-ended questions were utilized. The study approached the field through an individual and collective case study with two dual language learners (Ballantyne et al., 2008) in a kindergarten classroom. Participants&rsquo; utterances were collected using videotaped and audiotaped sessions and were analyzed by applying Cazden&rsquo;s IRE (2001) protocol and a writing protocol. The findings suggested that Bakhtin&rsquo;s ideas of author/hero, double-voicing, and elements of carnivalesque matter in the narrative texts read during interactive read-alouds. The findings also determined that Bakhtin&rsquo;s concepts of (a) One Utterance, (b) Multiple Utterances, (c) Double-voicing, and (d) Revoicing emerged from the dataset. The triangulation of data sources confirmed the importance of teachers examining the texts to be used during read-alouds, and the importance of creating a dialogical atmosphere that generates multiple utterances from its participants and increases oral language skills and meaning-making.</p>

<p> Focusing on a Vygotskian theory of cultural historical psychology, this dissertation features a narrative analysis to examine the role of subjectivity and the generative potential and agency manifested in Non Native English Speaking Teachers&rsquo; (NNESTs) successful development of L2 (English) fluency. My research creates another view of a Vygotskian theory by means of the imagination. Building on a cultural-historical approach, I conducted a qualitative analysis of how these teachers&rsquo; pathway to fluency evolved from their Imagined Destinations. This term is defined as a goal or objective in the mind of the learner that mediates, and is mediated by, his or her lived experiences. </p><p> The concept I coin as Imagined Destinations surfaced in my three initial pilot cases and took shape while working with NNES Panam&aacute;nian teachers, from the analysis of online survey data with 27 of these experienced teachers, and detailed case study analyses of the language learning of eight of these teachers. These data revealed how participants dynamically create and recreate their environments through agentive roles that support the transformation of their environments to advance their goals. </p><p> These transformations have implications for how subjectivity, agency, and acquisition of the target language intertwine throughout the participants&rsquo; lived experiences or pathways to learning, thus providing an additional way to look at subjects and subjectivities within a Vygotskian theoretical frame. The findings also indicate that teachers&rsquo; language trajectories are continuous, emergent, and the result of taking on very deliberate ecological roles in their bilingual success despite recurring salient and limiting circumstances. These findings about the centrality of Imagined Destinations in learning &ldquo;smudges&rdquo; the perception that societal power outweighs the dynamic and agentive roles of individuals as active molders of their lives. </p><p> Finally, this dissertation also seeks to enrich scholarship by demonstrating how NNESTs use their bilingual identities built from their trajectories to bilingualism as ways to influence and inspire their own students&rsquo; second language learning.</p>

<p> This Master's thesis seeks to gain further understanding of the issues confronting Latino speakers of ESL with respect to language learning and identity. Specifically, through group and individual interviews that I conducted with Latino immigrants involved with a community-based ESL program in Southeast Michigan, I investigate the factors that shape these individuals' attitudes towards the English language as well as the ways in which pedagogical practices may foster or impede the development of ownership, confidence, and a positive sense of self in the target language. In the first chapter, I examine how recent applications of poststructuralism in second language acquisition (SLA) research serve as the theoretical underpinnings of the present study. Additionally, I outline some of the social, political, and cultural hegemonies impacting the lives of Latinos living in the United States and how SLA researchers have investigated these as they concern the social aspects of language learning. Chapter Two not only delineates the ethnographic methods I used to carry out the current research, but also aims to describe in detail many of the difficulties I encountered as a novice researcher in the hopes that it may benefit other newcomers to empirical exploration. The third chapter of this paper is dedicated to elucidation and analysis of the insights shared by interview participants. Amidst findings that life circumstances and the opinions of others (both native English speakers and Hispanic peers) often preclude these individuals from feeling they can take legitimate claim to English, I offer implications for the ESL classroom that may help students to explore their relationship to the language. Lastly, I propose the limitations of my research as well as directions for future inquiries.</p>

<p> As a result of the expanding interest in the cognitive and social dimensions of language use beyond single sentences, a great number of research studies have been conducted in order to examine nonnative speakers&rsquo; ability to use language appropriately in a social context. Recently, with a growing understanding of the key role pragmatic competence plays in second language development, researchers have also investigated the benefits of direct instruction in helping language learners become aware of the pragmatic conditions governing the uses of grammatical structures. This thesis reports on the design and administration of a study that investigated language learners&rsquo; knowledge of pragmatics and how instruction can help them develop this knowledge in an environment where English is taught as a second language. Specifically, this project had two aims: (1) to observe the relationship between language proficiency and pragmatic competence of learners of English as a Second Language (ESL), and (2) to examine whether instruction was effective in improving those learners&rsquo; pragmatic knowledge. Pragmatic competence was measured quantitatively, through discourse judgment tasks, multiple-choice discourse completion tasks (MDCTs) and written discourse completion tasks (WDCTs) in a pre-, post-, and delayed post-test, designed specifically for this study. The participants in this research, thirty-nine adult ESL learners with a range of proficiency studying in the Intensive English Program (IEP) and in a university-level English course at West Virginia University, first took a language proficiency test and a pre-test on pragmatic knowledge. The participants were then assigned into two groups, experimental and comparison. The experimental group received four hours of direct instruction in five types of speech acts (requests, refusals, apologies, compliments, suggestions) and other aspects of pragmatic knowledge over a period of two weeks, while the comparison group was taught lessons on other topics without intervention during the same amount of time. An immediate post-test on pragmatic knowledge and a delayed post-test were given to both groups. The results showed that language proficiency and pragmatic knowledge were positively correlated with a moderate strength (<i>r</i> = .71, <i>p</i> &lt; .001). Analysis of covariance and further analysis showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the comparison group in both the post-test and delayed post-test. The experimental group benefited from the instruction, which used a blended methodological approach, and the instructional effect was retained after a one-week delay. The results of this research helped understand the communicative skills and intercultural competence of ESL learners and demonstrated that instruction in the area of pragmatics is not only important but it can be beneficial at all levels of language proficiency. It is hoped that the topics reported and discussed here and the findings may help both English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and ESL teachers gain a better understanding of second language learners&rsquo; pragmatic competence and development through instruction, so that when they incorporate pragmatics instruction into their teaching, they will be in a better position to adapt their practices to facilitate pragmatic development.</p>

<p> This qualitative study aims to attain a practical understanding of L2 English speakers' perceptions and understanding of their own English accents and to explore the relationship between their perceptions of accents and their perceived social identities. </p><p> Data were collected through interviews with 14 participants. The individual analysis on each participant was reported as a form of narrative. The group analysis across all the participants' narratives demonstrated the complexity of their perceptions and understanding of accents, and the complex and context-dependent nature of the relationship between accents and perceived social identities. Five themes that respond to the research questions emerged from the results and findings. From the discussion of the themes, a heuristic model of identity construction was developed. The model is grounded in three cases of the participants as an explanatory tool for identity construction. </p><p> The study provides pedagogical implications for language teachers, and provides some suggestions for future research.</p>

<p> This study defines and analyzes the successful leadership practice of a principal of an urban K-8 school serving English Language Learners in the western United States during the 2012-2013 academic year. Focusing on the self-identified leadership practice of a school leader evidenced to positively affect student learning, this study seeks to extend knowledge about what principals actually do to within the context of their schools to improve academic achievement for students. A definition of an applied leadership practice is constructed based on a review of relevant literature and evidence gathered in this study. The successful principal was measured via the VAL-ED Assessment in Education in order to validate the strongest components and processes of that leader's leadership practice. Then, two principal interviews were conducted and coded to show alignments of the described leadership practices with two evidenced based frameworks; the VAL-ED Matrix and the Essential Supports and Indicators Framework. The first interview detailed the principal's leadership practice as they conceived it and experienced it. The second interview was a narrative reflection of how critical work and life incidents were perceived to have shaped the principal's leadership practices, and why these leadership practices emerged and flourished within their particular school and community context. Findings from other schools involved in this research were investigated to ascertain which Essential Supports and Indicators specifically connected to success or failure in mathematics are found in other schools conducting this research. The results of this research provide a more complete description of a successful leadership practice as it exists in practice in the described context.</p>

<p> In spite of growing numbers in high schools and colleges, US-resident adolescent bilingual learners, sometimes termed "English as a second language" (ESL) or "Generation 1.5," are not succeeding academically in proportion to their monolingual English-speaking peers. This achievement gap is evident in their writing as they enter college. Depending on the elementary and secondary schools they have attended, bilingual learners may have received no extra English learning support (often termed "immersion"), ESL support classes, or bilingual education. In addition, depending on school and community resources, bilingual learners have varying knowledge of their first language (L1): some may only speak it, others may have basic L1 literacy, others may have studied their L1 as a school subject, while others may have studied in the medium of their L1, either in their family's home country or in a bilingual education program in the US. The purpose of this study is to determine which kind of English learning support and which kind of L1 education are more likely to prepare bilingual learners to write English successfully at college. </p><p> This study uses three sources of data: a survey on language background, a writing sample, and an optional interview. Twenty-nine college undergraduate bilingual learners participated. Their survey responses develop a profile of the varied kinds of English and L1 education they received. Each participant's communication course placement composition, written as she was applying to college, is analyzed with 12 different measures: six for surface features, four for discourse/rhetorical features, and two for coherence. The writing analysis scores are correlated with the survey data and enriched with interview excerpts to discover which forms of English and L1 education correlate with high or low writing analysis scores. </p><p> The results for this group of participants show that bilingual education and ESL support correlate most often with highly-rated communication placement compositions. Moreover, formal education in the L1 explains the writing analysis scores more accurately than the kind of language learning education the participants received. Interview data suggests that bilingual education and formal L1 education may assist students' English composition skills by helping them develop metalinguistic awareness.</p>