This quantitative study examined state and local funding and district spending patterns for English language learning (ELL) students in Texas. The purpose of this study was to examine the vertical equity of the state public school funding system from 1997-2007 for purchasing educational resources for ELL students. Vertical equity was operationalized through a research-based framework that places ELL students at risk of academic failure. Regression analysis examined vertical equity through (a) the extent to which the quantity of ELL students within districts predicted the TPSFM funding output for ELL students in districts over 10 years and (b) the extent to which, when districts are grouped by like-sized populations of ELL students within each of the 10 years, the quantity of ELL students within districts with like-sized populations of ELL students predicted the TPSFM funding output for ELL students. The findings revealed that from 1997-2007, the ELL student funding component was not found to be a statistically significant predictor for district spending on ELL students in any given Texas district. The present study therefore concludes with a discussion of policy implications and recommendations for further study. Within the current punitive culture for student assessment results and annual yearly progress measures, these findings indicate that programs serving ELL students may be constrained to produce results in areas where they are not equitably funded to be able to do so. In the daily life of school operations, teachers and administrators may be well aware that the state's mechanism does not supply adequate funding for the education of ELL students, therefore the results of this study may serve policy makers to clearly see the elephant of inequitable funding standing in the classroom.

Children who are English Language Learners (ELLs) are often falsely identified with reading disorders. Similarly, some ELLs with true reading disorders are overlooked because it is assumed that they are still acquiring the necessary reading skills in English. This review of current bilingual assessment literature focuses on the use of early screening tasks to identify potential reading disorders among ELLs. These assessment tasks cover phonological, letter naming, rapid naming, sequencing and reading skill sets. This review synthesizes current research findings to determine which tasks are the most appropriate for assessing future reading disorders among children from linguistically diverse backgrounds. Results were mixed. Further research is needed to determine the best methods for reading assessment of ELLs. / text

This research examines a multi-level language ability ESL secondary school classroom in relation to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) community of practice and Dörnyei and Ottó’s (1998) L2 motivation conceptual frameworks. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were employed. Case study data were collected through monthly interviews, semi-monthly observations, and monthly written journals over 3 months in Toronto from 6 participants (5 students and 1 teacher). Also, students who had been in Canada 5 years or less, and ESL teachers were invited to complete an on-line questionnaire. Results indicate that the multi-level classroom positively and negatively impacts participation and motivation. Participants define the most striking factor to impact participation and motivation as themselves; this links the two conceptual frameworks because “self-regulation” in the Actional Phase (Dörnyei & Ottó, 1998) can be better understood by legitimate peripheral participation or the ability to “imagine” and “align” oneself (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In this multi-level classroom, self-regulation is when students actively imagine possible selves who are aligned with their family or peer goals, or when faced with disengagement, students envision new roles for themselves in the classroom to overcome barriers and realign themselves with shared family or peer goals. In these cases, alignment drives imagination; however, students also use imagination to create alignment. When lower level learners see advanced students as possible selves, they feel hope for their future. Similarly, advanced learners recall their past selves when seeing their lower level peers and feel empathy for them. This interaction cements student alignment and sets a context conducive to cooperative learning which enhances students’ abilities to remain aligned with their families. Overall, this research highlights the interplay of imagination and alignment which impacts student identity. Moreover, it reveals that one aspect of the Post-actional Phase in Dörnyei and Ottó’s (1998) model, “self-concept beliefs,” can be enhanced by the notion of identity in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) framework. Finally, these findings could serve to change policy and improve programming and serve as an archive for future research.

Sammandrag Agneta Nylund Guhrén Varför har många tvåspråkiga elever svårt att nå målen skolan ställer på dem? En studie av situationen i en internationell gymnasieklass. Why Do Many Bilingual Students Have Difficulties in Achieving School Targets? A study of an International Class at a Swedish Upper Secondary School. VT 2011 Antal sidor: 55 En lägre andel av andraspråkseleverna når målen för grundskolan än de som är födda i landet.Forskning och kunskap finns inom området om hur framgångsrik andraspråksinlärning skabedrivas. Varför består och till och med ökar andelen andraspråkselever som inte når målen?För att uppnå syftet att urskilja faktorer som avviker från dem som enligt forskningen leder tillgoda studieresultat har styrdokument och forskningsrön studerats, en kvalitativ intervjuundersökningbland elever och lärare genomförts samt observationer gjorts i en internationell klassvid en gymnasieskola i Mellansverige.Resultatet visar att vissa andraspråkselever kommunicerar i lägre grad än vad som är nödvändigtför att utveckla språket. I textproduktionen finns krav på elevernas abstraktionsförmågamen i muntliga situationer utmanas inte språknivån. De sent anlända andraspråkelevernasordförråd räcker inte till för ämnestexter med krav på lingvistisk förståelse.Elever med tidigare skolgång har verktyg för att överbrygga språksvårigheterna och ta till sigett mer abstrakt kunskapsrelaterat språk medan elever utan skolgång behöver utveckla förmågan.Elevernas få tillfällen att utveckla sin additativa tvåspråkighet påverkar deras möjlighetatt nå kunskapsmålen. Samarbete mellan sva-, ämnes- och modersmålslärarna för att förbättraandraspråkelevernas måluppfyllelse är nödvändig.

Do adult L2 English bilingual speakers have difficulty with cognate words whose meanings are distinct across their two languages? This study explored the extent to which variations in meaning in cross-language cognates affect translation performance in a translation task by L2 English (L1 Spanish) speakers who learned English as adults. A prep-phase experiment was conducted to test native English-speakers’ predicted completions of the study’s stimuli sentences, in order to choose the optimal stimuli for the primary experiment. The method for the primary experiment of this study consisted of a web-based translation task of 120 sentences from Spanish to English, while controlling for polysemy and frequency. The results showed that adult L2 learners of English did experience difficulty when translating cognates in sentences from their L1 to their L2. The interaction of the Spanish word’s polysemous nature, Spanish word frequency, English target frequency and English cognate frequency played a role in the participants’ performance.

BACKGROUND: The increasing number of migrant children attending Swedish preschool highlights the necessity to effectively meet the needs of all students. This paper outlines the findings of Second Language Learners (SLL) children related to engagement, interaction, and collaboration between teachers and parents. Bioecological system theory was applied as a mean to understand how those aspects interact.  AIM: The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether there are differences between children's average engagement in classes with a low and high proportion of SLL (unit level). Another aim is to investigate differences in engagement and in the interaction between children that are SLL and children that are not (child level). Finally, this thesis provides an insight into teacher’s perceptions regarding collaboration with parents when groups of children with and without SLL support are compared.  METHODS: A quantitative method was established based on existing data from the Early Detection Early Intervention Project [TUTI]. Using a cross-sectional design, this study draws upon data from Swedish preschools that teachers respond to instruments, CEQ and Interaction Questionnaire, as well as Questions informing Characteristics and Questions about Collaboration with Parents. RESULTS: The results showed that there are no differences in engagement when groups are compared at unit level, however, at the child level, children who have SLL support on average had lower engagement than children without a need for SLL support. Regarding to interactions, the four types analyzed showed significant differences when the two groups were compared, the SLL children demonstrated less interaction. Furthermore, the results showed low parent collaboration with preschool for parents of SLL when compared to non-SLL. LIMITATION: lacks of data from other perspectives, in addition to the teachers' perspectives, are missing from this study. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: Children´s particular characteristic, and educational environmental aspects are discussed. More efforts are need in order to provide to all children adequately of opportunities, equality of wellbeing and acceptance.

Education is a fundamental precondition for progress and growth in South Africa (Spaull, 2011, p. 1). Literacy opens the doors to better livelihoods, improved health and expanded opportunity (UNESCO, 2011). Illiteracy is a serious constraint to improving education standards in South Africa. Prominent research studies stress the low levels of reading ability across the country. At the onset of Grade One, pre-reading skills are taught. Pre-reading skills are foundational skills and essential for later reading success. Teachers in English Second Language environments face the daunting challenge of teaching learners to read in a foreign language. This qualitative research study, which was conducted at a low-fee private school in Pretoria Central Business district, aimed to explore the methods that educators were using to teach second language English Learners (ESL) pre-reading skills. Data collected from semi-structured interviews, lesson observations and document analysis revealed that educators had a limited theoretical knowledge of pre-reading skills due to a lack of tertiary education and curriculum training. Numerous methods of teaching pre-reading skills were identified during pre-reading lesson observations. The synthetic phonics approach, multisensory teaching, using dramatization and subtractive bilingualism were methods of instruction used to develop phonemic awareness and English oral language competency. The study highlighted the numerous challenges faced by ESL teaching working in a low-socioeconomic environment and the ways in which the teachers overcame these challenges. Based on this study’s results, recommendations are provided to enhance the teaching of pre-reading skills to ESL learners. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

The thesis analyses syntactic complexity of monologic tasks of 10 B2 and 10 C1 speakers of English with Czech as their L1. The data derives from LINDSEI_CZ (Gráf 2017). The transcripts of the recordings were segmented into AS-units (Foster et al. 2000) and adapted for the purposes of the analysis. Syntactic complexity was calculated using following measures: mean length of AS-unit, mean length of clause, clauses / AS-unit. These were complemented by fine-grained indices of structural complexity, comprised of ratios of subordinate clause types and coordinate verb phrases per total number of clauses (Vercellotti & Packer 2016) and a weighted complexity scale designed by Vercellotti (2018). The results of the quantitative analysis showed no significant effect of proficiency on syntactic complexity of the speakers. In fact, all speakers irrespective of language proficiency level produced very similar complex structures as opposed to lower-proficiency structures. This indicates that more fine-grained indices should be incorporated into spoken complexity research. At the same time, scores of each measure varied considerably within groups, pointing at the importance of inter-speaker variability in this research. The thesis thus produced outcomes that are largely methodological, in that it has identified...

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As the population of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States grows, educators, administrators, and policymakers must support effective methods of instruction. Co-teaching, an inclusive special education instructional approach, has recently grown in popularity as a method for providing English as a second language (ESL) support. The research on ESL co-teaching lacks in-depth data about the experiences and relationships of co-teaching teams. The purpose of this heuristic phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences and relational dynamics of co-teachers within an English language instructional setting. Friend and Cook's model of collaboration and Siemen's theory of connectivism provided a framework for this study. Through purposeful sampling, 3 ESL and 3 mainstream teachers were identified. Individual interviews and subsequent focus groups yielded information about the lived experiences and perceptions of both the ESL and mainstream teachers. Using Moustakas' heuristic inquiry stages of analysis, the data were analyzed and coded. Four themes emerged: preparation, the value of time, the issues of control, and the dynamics of a co-teaching relationship. The teachers perceived insufficient time as a major barrier to effective preparation and coordination of teaching teams. The participants also indicated additional elements as important to the success of a teaching team: personality, teacher modeling, flexibility, and communication. This study may lead to social change by informing educators, administrators, and policy-makers about (a) implementing the ESL co-teaching model and (b) the supports needed to help ESL and mainstream teachers function effectively in a co-taught classroom.