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Orientador: Araguaia Solange de Souza Roque / Banca: Celso Fernando Rocha / Banca: Mariza Silva de Moraes / Resumo: O propósito de aprender Inglês como Língua Estrangeira não se limita a seu caráter instrutivo de conteúdo escolar, mas principalmente de conhecimento necessário para a inserção e interação com o mundo, de modo a conhecer e refletir sobre contextos da realidade no mundo globalizado e pós-moderno. Nesse cenário, a tecnologia tem ampliado significativamente as formas de interação, conferindo instantaneidade e rapidez ao acesso às informações, difundindo conhecimento e, dessa forma, nosso interesse foi refletir de maneira geral sobre a tecnologia no ensino e aprendizagem de línguas estrangeiras e, de modo particular, sobre o tratamento do vocabulário no aplicativo Duolingo no ensino-aprendizagem de Inglês (LE) por aprendizes brasileiros. Procuramos identificar potencialidades e limitações do aplicativo para o desenvolvimento da competência lexical de aprendizes, inseridos ou não em contexto formal de ensino, isto é, analisando as atividades que poderiam ser exploradas por aprendizes autonomamente ou como atividades complementares por professores no contexto de sala de aula. A base teórica sobre a qual nos apoiamos para a realização desta pesquisa constitui-se de referenciais do campo da Lexicologia Aplicada ao Ensino ( LEFFA, 2000; LEWIS, 1993) e da pedagogia crítica centrada no papel do professor como teorizador da própria práxis (KUMARAVADIVELU, 1994, 2003, 2012a, 2012b). O percurso de investigação consistiu nas seguintes etapas: a) pesquisa documental sobre o tema geral da... / Abstract: The purpose of learning English as a Foreign Language is not limited to its formal character into school content, but mainly by needs of knowledge for the insertion and interaction with the world, so as to know and reflect about real contexts into the globalized and postmodern world. In this scenario, technology has significantly expanded the forms of interaction, giving immediate and rapid access to information, spreading knowledge and, therefore, we are interested about reflecting generally, in the teaching and learning technology of foreign languages specially about Duolingo app during the teaching-learning process of English (LE). We tried to identify the potentials and limitations of the app during the learners lexical competence development, whether or not they are inserted in a formal teaching context, by, analyzing activities that could be explored by learners autonomously or as complementary activities by teachers into the classroom context. The theoretical basis on which we support this research consists in applied lexicology references (LEFFA, 2000, LEWIS, 1993) and critical pedagogy centered on the role of teacher as a theorist of own praxis (KUMARAVADIVELU, 1994, 2003, 2012a, 2012b). Among the objectives of this research are: a) to undertake documentary research on the general theme of research (teaching and learning LE) in some official documents (PCNs - Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais, Diretrizes curriculares / Orientações Curriculares (Língua Estrangeira) e ... / Mestre

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This study examined incidental receptive and productive vocabulary gains within conversation-class interactions. Eleven Mexican learners of English attended four videotaped conversation lessons where 40 target words were incorporated in different types of exposure. Stimulated recall interviews with students highlighted the effect of cognates, learners' access to passive vocabulary, and use of their vocabulary knowledge in learning related words. Posttests revealed a correlation between frequency and receptive/productive gains. Mean scores showed that words mentioned with synonyms were learned most often, followed by task-essential words and last those mentioned without explanation. A two-way ANCOVA revealed main effects for cognates, and a statistical interaction between cognate status and types of exposure. A statistical correlation was found between receptive and productive gains. Aptitude scores correlated with productive gains but not with receptive gains. The results provide implications for ESL teachers who consider incidental learning of vocabulary within their conversation lessons.

This dissertation examines how the reading of complex literary texts is enacted by select tenth-grade students, and their teachers, both within and outside of the classroom context, with an aim toward deconstructing "close reading" as a preferred pedagogical choice with insufficient theorization or supporting research. First, utilizing an individual think-aloud protocol, the researcher solicited the responses of nine students, and one of their tenth-grade English teachers, as they read for the first time three short story texts selected based on their identification by the Common Core State Standards as texts of complexity for high school students: Chekhov's Home, Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, and Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths. Those case study students were then studied ethnographically via the researcher's participant observation in their tenth-grade English classes for all days over the period of time that a major literary text was taught: Golding's Lord of the Flies. Based on the principles of microethnographic discourse analysis, the research applied open coding to all artifacts: the think-aloud commentaries, the verbatim transcripts of the audiotaped classroom oral discourse, the documents of classroom written discourse, and the verbatim transcripts of ongoing semi-structured individual interviews with the student and teacher case study participants based on themselves as readers both within and outside of their English classroom contexts. Ultimately, the dissertation identifies themes related to text complexity - those elements inherent to the text itself as perceived by the individual reader during the reading act - and related to text difficulty - those elements situated within a contextualized environment of the reading act, including individual reader, text, classroom, tasks, peers, and teacher - to offer provisional conclusions with the intent of reconceptualizing Rosenblatt's transactional zone toward a stronger theory of how adolescents read literary texts.

Increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are entering the US (US Census Bureau, 2011) and are learning American English (AE) as a second language (L2). Many may experience difficulty in understanding AE. Accurate perception of AE vowels is important because vowels carry a large part of the speech signal (Kewley-Port, Burkle, & Lee, 2007). The relationship between native language and L2 vowel inventories causes some vowels to be more difficult to perceive accurately than others (Best & Tyler, 2007). The present study examined the patterns with which early and late Spanish-English bilingual adults assimilate AE vowels to their native vowel inventory and the accuracy with which they discriminate and identify the vowels. Early bilingual listeners demonstrated similar perceptual assimilation patterns to late bilingual listeners, but judged AE vowels as less Spanish sounding than did late learners. Additionally, discrimination and identification accuracy of L2 vowels improved with early age of L2 acquisition. However, early bilingual listeners’ vowel perception was not native-like. Certain AE vowels (/ʌ/, /ɑ/ and /æ/) were difficult to discriminate and identify. Perceptual assimilation patterns predicted categorial discrimination accuracy, an outcome posited by the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2 (Best & Tyler, 1997).

This dissertation study explores the relationship between Ladson-Billings’ (1992, 1994, 2006) early scholarship and work with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) frameworks and the literacy practices of the multilingual students in my community college classroom. This qualitative, interpretive case study draws upon CRP and sociocultural frameworks to specifically investigate the visual, media, and technological literacy (multimodal) practices in a community college developmental English class for multilingual students. When visual, media, and technological literacy practices are purposefully included in a CRP framework and curriculum, it helps to reposition both teachers’ and students’ conceptual understanding of language acquisition. Two important aims of this study are to fill an existing gap of literature around the CRP theoretical framework and strengthen it with the specific inclusion of college-level, multilingual student’s use of visual and technological literacy practices for the acquisition of English literacy. This in turn helps to legitimize the inclusion of visual and technological literacies into curriculums designed especially for multilingual students which are also adaptable for any class. In this study, my classroom serves as the primary unit of analysis (Merriam, 2009). I present the multimodal practices of four student participants as “cases” or portraits to illustrate the study’s findings. I am interpreting/defining the multimodal productions my students create as their observable literacy events (Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Heath, 1992) and their literacy practice is the ongoing act of creating and engaging with visual, media, and other related technological literacy practices. The act of students creating multimodal productions, “visual interpretation,” is the specific visual literacy practice this study investigates triangulated with students’ interactions on a group Facebook page and digital story compositions. Using a reflexive model (Luttrell, 2010b) of research and additional grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2008, 2010; Corbin & Strauss, 2008) to analyze data, findings for this study reveal that a curriculum utilizing multimodal literacy practices promote Ladson-Billings’ (1992, 2006) three tenets of CRP: academic excellence, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness in the following ways: First, the curriculum acknowledges students' multiple literacies and cultural backgrounds. Second, the curriculum enables students to become personally invested and more engaged in their academic participation, productions and achievement. Third, the curriculum raises students' competencies in reading/writing comprehension, deconstruction, and production of subsequent multimodal texts as it privileges students’ own literacy practices. Therefore, visual literacy practices should be a mechanism for achieving and representing these tenets of a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy inside college classrooms with curriculums designed for multilingual students.

Reading in a second language (L2) is considered a necessary skill in increasingly globalized societies. Not only is reading for purposes of comprehension necessary for survival, also reading in an L2 is an important means by which L2 acquisition occurs, particularly where vocabulary is concerned. Consequently, there is a strong demand for L2 research to investigate the instructional conditions that will best promote reading comprehension and vocabulary through efficient and effective reading strategies. The current study addressed this dual need, reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition, through an investigation of a particular type of pedagogical intervention, repeated reading (RR; i.e., multiple encounters with the same text), with high school English language learners in Taiwan. The study examined the effects of three conditions – Unassisted RR (repeated reading only), Assisted RR (repeated reading plus listening), and Control – on the participants’ reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition through a pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test design. The results of the data from 42 participants suggested that L2 RR did not promote reading comprehension, nor did it contribute to a transfer of practice effect to new text in terms of reading comprehension. However, there were statistically significant incidental vocabulary gains and retention for the Unassisted RR group and some vocabulary gains for the Assisted RR group. When the percentage of unknown words of a text reached 10% and the participants were not provided with additional support, five repeated encounters with the text (over eight treatment sessions) were found to be inadequate in promoting reading comprehension. Nonetheless, the participants provided with such challenging condition still benefited from the incidental vocabulary acquisition. Findings may imply that a certain threshold of proficiency (e.g., percentage of known words of a text) is necessary for the beneficial effects of repeated reading to support comprehension. Additionally, RR alone may still be insufficient and additional support to RR may still be necessary for L2 learners dealing with difficult texts.

English Learners (ELs) represent one of the fastest-growing groups among the school-age population in the United States. However, there have been significant achievement gaps between ELs and native English-speaking students in all grades and content areas. The gap only widens when EL students with a disability are considered. This study built on the existing literature by examining longitudinal data that tracked the academic achievement outcomes of ELs classified with an educational disability who attended three special education instructional programs rather than linguistic instructional programs, and evaluating whether these programs were differentially effective for students of different ethnic backgrounds and type of disability. The programs included General Education (GE), Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) or Collaborative Team Teaching (TT), and Special Education classes (SE). Using existing data from the New York City Department of Education, the analytic sample for this study looked at one cohort consisting of approximately 2,297 ELs who entered third grade during the 2006-2007 school year and followed them through the 2015-2016 school year when students were expected to be in the twelfth grade. Academic achievement in ELA and math were measured by the Grade 3-8 New York State ELA and math standardized exam scores. Achievement was also measured by graduation status as well as type of diploma earned upon projected year of high school completion. A three-level linear mixed model (LMM), logistic regression modeling, and cross-tabulations were used to analyze the dataset. Overall, the results from the present study supported findings from previous studies indicating that students who have the opportunity to engage with typically developing peers display better long-term academic achievement outcomes. Nonetheless, consistent with prior research, increased gaps between ELs and non-ELs as well as Disabled students and their Non-Disabled peers were noted.

This ethnographic study is driven by the aim of understanding how an out-of-school learning program supports the development of youth artists and writers, particularly when it operates outside of institutional strictures such as mandatory grading, curricular guidelines, and tracking based on age and perceived abilities. The research is guided by the following overarching questions: 1) In what ways do Black, Latinx, and queer students demonstrate investment in critical multimodal literacies? 2) How do world-building projects reveal the possibilities and limits of the imagination? 3) What conditions can inspire youth to articulate their identities as evolving writers and leaders? This work argues that playing with multimodal projects and imaginative world-building opportunities provided generative conditions for young adults’ development as writers, creators, and mentors. By engaging in transdisciplinary projects that invited crafting, coding, urban planning, architectural modeling, and creative writing, youth participants contributed to a participatory learning environment that celebrated their inherent capacities as critical thinkers and actors. My research ultimately highlights the ways that critical multimodal literacies can promote powerful self-expressions, complex articulations of the future, and projections of self confidence through productive play and public engagement with wider audiences.