Educating language minority children in Canada is becoming increasingly challenging as our population becomes more and more diverse. Determining the best educational policy to help immigrant children learn English or French, while furthering their knowledge of core subject material has long been a difficult task for educators in the public system. This novel is a fictional account of an immigrant girl's first year in an Ontario elementary school. Through her experience, I describe a language policy whereby children have access to bilingual primary education no matter what their first language is. Two-way immersion is offered for language minority groups with significant numbers of students within a district. And, in collaboration with the community, first language support in school is given to students of all language backgrounds. I propose a teacher training programme that better prepares teachers for the linguistic diversity in their classrooms and promotes foreign language learning in teachers themselves. Children under this system are able to acquire the dominant language of society, learn the subject material, and continue to develop literacy skills in their first language. With such policies in place, I argue, Canada could be a world leader in bilingual education for diverse populations.

The present study was designed to examine students' comprehension and problem representation when reading and solving algebra word problems in their first language (L1: Spanish) and their second language (L2: English). The main interest was to investigate the role of the L2 in performing the task. It was hypothesized that difficulty in understanding and solving word problems is a function of carrying out the task in the L2 and discourse factors inherent to the specific type of text. / The sample consisted of 31 grade 9 students who attended a private bilingual school in a Colombian city. Students were asked to think aloud as they solved four problems that dealt with the topics of ratio and percentage. Problem presentation was counterbalanced with respect to topic, but the language of presentation was kept fixed; i.e., the first set of ratio and percentage problems were in English and the other set in Spanish. Students were allowed to use either language when solving the problems. There was a short post-task semi-structured interview. Students' think aloud protocols and answers to problems were analyzed. / The results support the role that language plays in performing this type of task, although not in the way that it was initially predicted. The results suggest that the language of instruction plays a more important role than whether the task is performed in L1 or L2. Thus, the hypothesis that completing the task would be more difficult in the L2 was not supported. The results suggest that the difficulty with word problems resides in the mismatch between text comprehension, the situation presented in the text and the mathematical representation. The evidence is discussed within the framework of current explanations for performance in word problems in the L1 as they apply to the bilingual case, and theories of text comprehension. It is argued that current explanations for performance in word problems in the L1 apply to the bilingual case, but with the caution that the interaction between the content of the subject domain, and the knowledge students have of the language of instruction and their first language must be taken into account.

This inquiry involves two case studies that examine the beliefs of two selected ESL teachers in Zimbabwe teaching at the secondary school level. The study looks at the various nested contexts of the two case studies at the international, national, provincial, school and classroom levels with respect to Zimbabwe before and after independence in 1980. The analysis of the nested contexts aims to show how the various factors at the different levels impinge on the ESL instruction of the two teachers. / The study adopts a naturalistic, classroom-based approach that allows for the holistic investigation of teacher-learner interactions in socially-situated cognitive instruction. Specific research questions addressed are: (a) What are the classroom interaction patterns of each of the two teachers selected for the study? What do these patterns and the teachers! classroom artifacts reveal about their beliefs about the construction of social knowledge at secondary school level? (b) How does each teacher in the study construct academic knowledge in his/her ESL instruction? What do the patterns of construction and the teachers' classroom artifacts reveal about their beliefs about the instruction of ESL academic knowledge at the secondary school level? / The study uses tools of data collection and analysis from constitutive ethnography and ethnomethodology. Data from interviews, classroom observations, field notes, artifacts and documents are analyzed to see what they reveal about each teacher's beliefs about ESL instruction. Four major themes emerge from the analysis of these data: (a) teachers' beliefs about curriculum documents; (b) teachers; beliefs about ESL models for instruction; (c) teachers' beliefs about interactional rights and obligations in the classroom and (d) teachers' beliefs about teaching linguistic and communicative competence. A major finding of this inquiry is that the two selected teachers, guided by their personal beliefs, respond in different ways to the many contextual factors that impinge on their teaching, giving rise to each teacher's unique teaching repertoires. In the fight of this major finding, it is recommended that ESL teacher education programmes in Zimbabwe begin with the student teachers' beliefs rather than the traditional "method" paradigm.

This cross-sectional inquiry examines first-, third-, and eighth-grade dual immersion students' use of Spanish and English when interacting with their teachers and peers in a U.S. school. Findings are based on classroom interactions, student and teacher interviews, and student questionnaires intended to determine when students diverged from using the language of instruction and whether their age or language background affected their language use. In addition, teachers' impact on student language use is examined, and other factors affecting language use—such as the length of a students' stay in the United States—are discussed. An overall preference for English was found among first and third graders, while eighth graders spoke more Spanish to their peers and teachers. Findings indicate that this language behavior may have been more than a function of the students' age. It appeared to be linked to students' language background, teaching activities that promoted students' positive identification with Spanish language and Hispanic culture, the absence of native English speakers, and the presence of Spanish-dominant newcomers.

This classroom-based interpretive inquiry investigates how two academic writing instructors with disciplinary backgrounds in English Literature and English Education teach writing to graduate students with other disciplinary backgrounds. The instructors' teaching practices are conceptualized within a Vygotskian socio-cultural framework. Relevant educational issues are situated within two fields of education, Second Language Education and L1 writing instruction. This inquiry challenges the polarized views of writing instruction reflected in the second language literature. The research participants were two writing instructors and two focal students in one class. Data collected and analyzed include 70 hours of classroom-based observations in two classes over a semester, 12 hours of interviews with the research participants over 16 months, and documents such as course handouts, the focal students' portfolios, teacher audio-taped and written feedback to student drafts. Findings indicate that the writing instructors provided writing instruction and writing opportunities both in the specific disciplinary discourses of their students and other discourses. The instructors' goal-directed teaching practices were informed by their own generalist and discipline-sensitive evaluative orientations toward academic writing instruction at postsecondary levels. The instructors' evolving individual beliefs, perceptions, and practices were shown to be related to embedding sets of nested institutional contexts, such as developments in composition and education theory, and the changing theoretical orientations of the instructors' teaching units. Despite the instructors' different emphases on discipline-specific and general features of writing, findings suggest that both instructors mediated the students' appropriation of disciplinary discourses.

No description available.

This study investigates ways in which English Studies at Rhodes University, the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Natal, and the University of Sydney responded to linguistic and academic literacy needs of entrance level students. Both qualitative and quantitative data from these research sites are integrated with an autobiographical narrative based on my own personal experiences of learning English and in English at secondary and tertiary levels in South Africa. Dealing with data this way made it possible for my study to examine strategies through which different English departments negotiate the challenge of enabling students to access the discourse of the Discipline. I relied on the principles underpinning Genre Theory and Grounded Theory to engage critically with participants’ responses to interview questions and documentary evidence from research sites. It appears from the study that modules designed to develop students’ linguistic and/or academic literacy skills need not maintain a pedagogic practice that is either grammatical rules or academic writing and critique based, without an attempt to integrate the two. This separation is seen as artificial, and reflects pedagogic practices that tend to mystify the discourse of the Discipline of English Studies. Given the fact that not all students posses relevant cultural capital to negotiate meanings successfully within this discourse, many of them are excluded during lectures. Literature and research findings in this study indicate that this exclusion manifests itself when such students fail to choose grammatical structures according to the purpose for which they construct texts, both in speaking and in writing. Within this context, there is a need for an alternative model to inform theory, module design, and pedagogic practices in entrance level modules. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.

At a technically biased secondary school in KwaZulu-Natal, teachers of Grade 12 English Second Language (ESL) learners, including myself, found it problematic to assess students' writing which is often fraught with spelling and grammar errors. This meant that these learners were disadvantaged because they were assessed with a lower score in comparison to students who edited their work and ensured that their writing was free from spelling and grammar errors. The aim of this study is to improve English vocabulary spelling of ESL learners by investigating the effectiveness of processing Heard English Vocabulary, in comparison to the Transcribed Vocabulary Training Programme (TVTP). This study is theoretically framed by the Cognitive Load Theory (2003), and employs a quasi-experimental approach as a methodology (Goodwin, 2005). It is a quasi-experiment because the sample was not randomly selected, as in a classic experiment. The sample consisted of 60 Grade 12 English Second Language (ESL) volunteers from a technically biased high school in Ethekwini, KwaZulu-Natal. Significant findings revealed first, that the comparative analysis of the Nonequivalent Control Group (NECG) in comparison to the Experimental Group (EG) was that the Transcribed Vocabulary Training Programme (TVTP) increased the 06-010 average scores for the EG by 36.3%, yet reduced the average time by 40 seconds; second, the visual and kinetic nature of transcription facilitates distinct pattern markings on the graphemic output lexicon; third, transcription also facilitates semantic processing, because meaning can be derived from context, and finally, there is a strong positive correlation between transcription and sustained attention, which implies that correct transcription depends on sustained attention. The findings in this research are compatible with the principles underpinning Sweller and Cooper's (1998) Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design. It is argued that if the instructional design uses more than one sense of perception, for example, auditory and visual, then the cognitive load on the working memory is decreased and the mental capacity (attention levels) is increased. When mental capacity is increased, the chances of retrieval are greater. It is also argued that time and training results in automatic processing, which decreases cognitive load, and increases mental capacity. Training also enhances performance, and reduces performance time. In this study, performance would mean written retrieval of English vocabulary. The findings also suggest that any ESL learner who attentively transcribes meaningful English vocabulary will successfully retrieve English vocabulary. The overall conclusion of this research is that instructional designers (for example, educators) have some control in increasing attention levels through synergizing the senses of perception at the encoding stage of the instructional design, and presenting meaningful data. The use of transcription as a 'hands on' instructional design in a quasi-experiment makes this an innovative project. This study began in March 2005 and was completed in July 2008. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

In the Lesotho primary education system, the language policy states that the mother tongue (Sesotho) should be used up to Standard Three (this is the third year of schooling in Lesotho) as the medium of instruction. English is prescribed as the medium of instruction from Standard Four upwards. This sudden change presents enormous challenges for teachers, especially in Standard Four. The purpose of my study was to investigate Standard Four teachers’ curriculum development experiences of the transition from the mother tongue to English as medium of instruction. The study also sought to understand how teachers plan and teach at this level. This was a qualitative interpretive study that adopted a case study methodology. Participants were purposively selected. They were three Sesotho-speaking Standard Four teachers in three different urban schools. In addressing the research questions, data was generated through qualitative methods such as semi-structured teachers’ interviews, classroom observations, document analysis and a personal reflective journal. Data was analyzed and interpreted through an open coding process. The findings revealed that these teachers experienced several challenges in the use of English as the medium of instruction. Teachers were faced with three key issues that they had to deal with, namely, overcoming their own perceptions of their competence in English, their low sense of self efficacy with regard to teaching at this transition class, and the difficulty with teaching pupils in a second language before these pupils had gained proficiency in their mother tongue. Teachers regularly employed codeswitching as a strategy to make meaning in their classrooms. The study recommends pre- and in-service teacher professional development, and a review of the Lesotho language policy in the primary school. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

This is a one module report on the impact of using computers for teaching English as a second language in the foundation phase in one of the schools in KwaZulu-Natal. It aims to test computers as an intervention for teaching English as a second language. The problems which led to the study are further discussed in details as well as how the study came about. The study is largely qualitative and interpretive. It involved eight grade one teachers. All the procedures were clearly explained before the study commenced. Interviews used were followed by the participant observations. Data was cleaned, transcribed and coded. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.