While a number of studies have sought to investigate ESL speakers' fluency gains over the course of one 15-week semester, few if any studies have investigated these changes over a longer developmental period. A critical factor in researching longitudinal change is that students do not often remain in an intensive English program (IEP) for more than two semesters before moving to a new school, applying to an American university, or returning to their home country. Longitudinal research, therefore, is necessary as program administrators, teachers, and learners all seek to understand points where change in oral fluency actually occurs. For this study data were collected from students in a large intensive English program over a 45-week period. For 39 ESL learners audio files from speaking tasks that were part of placement and end-of-semester level achievement tests were collected and analyzed. Specific oral fluency features such as speech rate, articulation rate, and pause frequency were investigated. This thesis will share the results of the analysis while also discussing the implications of the data for program administrators, teachers, and learners. Particular focus will be given to helping stakeholders understand specific changes that occurred in learners' fluency over the time period of three semesters.

This report explores factors contributing to absenteeism and attrition in government-funded adult ESL programs. Because adult learners enrolled in inexpensive programs typically juggle numerous priorities and responsibilities beyond their schooling, their motivation must be maintained in order for them to continue to attend their language classes. As consumers, they "directly or indirectly assess the cost-benefit ratio of their program participation every time they attend or do not attend classes/tutoring sessions" (Tracy-Mumford & Baker, 1994, p. 8). Tendencies toward absenteeism can ultimately lead to attrition, which poses serious challenges for programs as it inhibits their success rates, their funding, and ultimately their ability to continue to offer services. This research attempted to identify key factors in program procedures, structure and organization, as well as key classroom factors that negatively affect adult Hispanic students' motivation to continue to attend. Specifically, it focuses on which aspects of overall program structure and which classroom factors have the greatest impact on students motivation and attendance patterns. We found that student affective factors (e.g., social sensitivity, lack of congruence), ineffective teaching methods or incomplete methodologies, students' perceived lack of progress, and assessment issues were the most prominent factors that emerged from the analysis of the data. Additionally, we offer suggestions for influencing these factors so that retention is boosted and attrition minimized.

The questions asked in this empirical study is how teachers and students prefer to work with reading projects. It is asked which method they prefer to work with. 28 student informants have participated in the study that contained two questionnaires and a smaller reading project. They read two texts using two different approaches: one reading with no instructions other than to read the text and another reading with more thorough pre-, during, and post-reading assignments, such as discussions before and during the reading and a final individual written summary after the text was read. The results of the study showed that the majority of informants stated that they prefer more thorough pre-, during- and post-reading work in order to feel confident about their comprehension of what they have read. In addition, four teachers were interviewed for this study, and they all agree that literature in their classroom is important from several aspects. For example, they see greater vocabulary growth and more relaxed students when the students are reading. All four teachers use different strategies. Two of them focus on the pre-reading, one on the during-reading strategy while one works more with the post-reading strategy. What they all have in common is that they work regularly with reading and it is a big part of their lives outside of work as well and that is something they hope to pass on to their students, the freedom and joy of reading. This study discovered that a teacher must be willing to create reading projects that involve a lot of preparation and student discussions in order to increase their students’ reading comprehension.

This quantitative study was designed to determine the extent to which the language of testing in reading and math had a positive effect on 50/50 dual language program Hispanic students' reading and math achievement level as measured by a standardized achievement test. The research questions in this study include: 1. Is there a statistical difference in reading achievement for Hispanic 50/50 English- Spanish dual language program students when testing data is disaggregated linguistically? 2. Is there a statistical difference in math achievement for Hispanic 50/50 English- Spanish dual language program students when testing data is disaggregated linguistically? This study examined the reading and math standardized achievement results for students in grades 2-12 in a school district in Iowa serving students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12 that chooses to offer 50/50 dual language Two-Way Immersion (TWI) (Spanish/English) instruction to its students. The district uses the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and Iowa Tests of Educational Development (ITED), both presented in English, and the Spanish test Logramos to evaluate student achievement. The reading and math results of 157 Hispanic students enrolled in the dual language program are compared in this study to determine if the Hispanic students, on average, achieve at higher levels as measured by national grade equivalency (NGE) and percentage proficient when testing in Spanish versus English in math and in reading. There was, on average, a two-year gap in reading performance by Hispanic students when testing in English compared to testing in Spanish. The students performed about two years above grade level in Spanish in reading, but rarely performed even at grade level in English as measured by NGE and percentage proficient results. Over the three- to five-year testing window, the reading gap stayed constant at about two years. When comparing English and Spanish math results for the same students by grade level, the students scored at a higher level in Spanish over 97% of the time compared to the English math results. The results show that for the eight graduating cohorts, the average percent proficient is 72% overall when taking the math test in Spanish, but for the math test in English the average percent proficient is only 50.2% proficient. Linguists have argued that Hispanic students' progress in attaining proficiency on standardized reading and math assessments is possible after five to seven years of learning English. This study demonstrates that not all Hispanic students progress to that level of proficiency and that further programming options or interventions might be needed within the TWI program model. Additionally, this study shows that the rate toward proficiency in reading and math on the English and Spanish versions differs over time and that students generally attain proficiency in math prior to reading on both the English and Spanish assessments. Balancing the language acquisition process through models like dual language is supported in research, but implementing a TWI program model and utilizing native language assessments like Logramos must be carefully studied, monitored, and enacted with community support and ongoing professional development for all involved. Dual language programs and native language assessments are a means to address issues presented by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in relation to Hispanics' and English Language Learners' (EL) academic achievement, but further studies must address other subgroups within the dual language programs.

The general aim of this study is to better understand aspects of using reference tools for writing and to identify technologies that can assist foreign language writers. The specific purpose of this study is to look closely at how English as a Second Language (ESL) students from Korea use a corpus as a reference tool in conjunction with dictionaries when paraphrasing English newspaper articles. The participants were Korean graduate students with advanced English proficiency (N=10). Their task was to paraphrase an English newspaper article. The results show that purposes for using a concordancing program include collocations, definitions, context, and parts of speech. The subjects looked for a variety of information in a concordancing program, including prepositions, authentic samples, and the context in which the search terms were used. Reasons for using dictionaries include definitions, parts of speech, and sample sentences. The most common strategy was to combine reference tools, while the second most common was to use a specific search word. Subjects who used more than one tool for a search or performed multiple searches were more successful in finding what they were looking for. A concordancing program enabled users to see multiple examples of everyday language use. By using the concordancing program, learners were able to see words that were used most frequently, their patterns, and collocations. Learners took more responsibility for their language learning, as they became researchers in their own right. They gained confidence as L2 writers as they had inside access to linguistic resources. The subjects became more independent and were able to solve their own writing and linguistic problems as they became more aware through the use of authentic texts. In this study, the subjects found the corpora to be useful for sentence-level composition and revision. Overall, the use of reference tools led to an improvement in the accuracy of writing. A concordancing program played an important role in defining the structure and context of English phrases and sentences.

Much of how Florida and other states across the country justify the practice of mainstreaming English language learners into regular content classrooms rests on the premise that with the guidance of state officials, local school districts adequately train content teachers to work with English language learners. Yet little to no research exists that can help identify and analyze the overall efficacy of these programs. Consequently, this study has attempted to determine whether district training sessions in Florida are sufficiently covering the state-mandated content areas that teachers are required to learn and to what extent in-service teachers agree or disagree that they received the appropriate amount of instruction that would prepare them to instruct English language learners. Training sessions in three large Florida school districts with high proportions of English language learners were studied using a mixed-methods approach that gathered quantitative and qualitative data from observations, surveys and in-depth interviews. Among other things, the findings revealed a pattern of districts overemphasizing cross-cultural awareness issues to the detriment of other critical areas teachers need to know such as methods and curriculum. In addition, there was a general consensus on the part of participants that the trainings lacked specificity and were both impractical and redundant. A number of specific recommendations are offered such as ways to modify the focus of the curriculum, provide incentives to teachers, and create more accountability and oversight of the training sessions themselves. Policymakers are strongly urged to prioritize these types of programs by providing training sessions with more resources and attaching to them a larger sense of importance.

Postsecondary English language education is a growing industry in the United States. While there has been considerable research on international student mobility in higher education, there is limited research on the population’s participation in U.S. English language programs (ELPs). The purpose of the study was to apply existing theories and data analysis to understand postsecondary English language program participation and create a foundation for future studies. This exploratory study examined the characteristics of international students enrolled in U.S. postsecondary ELPs. The researcher investigated the relationship between ELP enrollment with U.S. higher education enrollment as well as the relationship between ELP enrollment by destination location, ELP provider type, gender and country of origin. Finally, the researcher analyzed the completion rate of international students in U.S. postsecondary ELPs by gender and country of origin. Data from 2004-2014 were collected from the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System and the Institute of International Education’s Open Doors Report. Data analysis was conducted through quantitative methods. Findings of this study may help educators reflect on the form and function of current English language programs to improve the quality of future ELPs.

The Walter Pope School District (WPSD), a predominantly African American district, has experienced a new wave of immigrant students arriving from African nations such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Many students arrive with little or no formal education, and they are not achieving academic success. This purpose of this study was to discover successful instructional strategies that academically, socially, and culturally support the immigrant students. Guided by Portes and Rumbaut's segmented assimilation theory, this study examined the experiences of WPSD African immigrant learners and explored instructional approaches to reinforce their learning. The research questions focused on teachers' perceptions of factors that influence immigrant students' success and of their effectiveness in working with this population. The participants were teachers in the district with two or more years of teaching experience. A case study design was used to capture the insights of seven participants through individual interviews. Emergent themes were identified from the data through open coding and findings were developed and validated. The key results were that teachers have a desire to engage with their peers to create collaborative learning opportunities, literacy rich environments, and positive peer interactions and that they desire meaningful and relevant professional development to support instruction for African immigrant learners. Findings indicated that teachers need to receive resources, recognition, and appreciation for their efforts to positively impact their immigrant students. Implications for positive social change are that African immigrant students will benefit from teachers being provided with improved instructional strategies that align with best teaching practices.

The purpose of this study was to investigate similarities and differences in the classroom discourse of male and female ESL teachers in the academic stream of one Western Australian tertiary institutions ELICOS program. Language and gender research generally suggests that males and females have different and quite distinctive communicative styles. This study attempts to examine if this finding is also manifested in male and female teachers discourse in adult ESL classrooms in the three main aspects of classroom interaction; giving explicit instructions, asking questions and providing verbal feedback, using Sinclair & Coulthards (1975) IRF framework. A sample of six teachers, three males and three females were observed through a process of non-participant observation and their lessons video-recorded in the naturalistic situation of the classroom in order to make a comparative analysis of their discourse.Teacher discourse in the three aspects of classroom interaction, namely, instructions, questioning and feedback, was examined with the purpose of exploring gender differences and similarities so that the reasons and implications for the manifestation of such similarities and differences can be further investigated. Conclusions were then made about the influence of traditional masculine and feminine speech styles on the discourse choices of the teachers.The discourse analysis found that more similarities than differences existed in the teachers classroom discourse supporting the notion that the choice of discourse features is dependent firstly on the context and secondly on the role of the interactants vis-à-vis each other in the community of practice. Although some differences emerged, the teachers in this study generally adopted a facilitative, cooperative speech style in their classroom discourse.

In the era of globalization, growing numbers of children are living in situations where the language of their formal schooling is different from that of the everyday communication in their family. In such a bilingual context, this study documents biliteracy development of two Korean background children growing up in Australia. The children?s written texts (both in English and Korean) were collected over the period of 5 years 8 months (from preschool through primary school) both in home and school contexts, and analyzed using the Systemic Functional Grammar as well as genre and register theory. Throughout the researcher?s regular classroom observation and participation in their school?s literacy activities as well as in the home context, a detailed documentation of the children?s socio-linguistic environment is also provided as an important part of this longitudinal case study?s data collection and analysis. Over the period, the children?s writing in both English and Korean developed quite significantly in terms of their control of the register in text. With the introduction of Genre-based Approach in their school, they had opportunities in learning to write a range of genres such as Narrative, Report, Explanation, Argument and Procedure in English to meet the expectations of the mainstream curriculum. The children?s writing in Korean was mainly developing to satisfy their personal and interpersonal communication needs, largely through diary writing, E-mails and personal letters to extended family. Their developmental patterns of writing different genres as well as their control of written language have been examined largely through the analysis of the system of Transitivity, the use of nominal groups, Theme choice and Mood system. The similarity and difference in literacy practices between the two children (the brother and the sister) are also discussed. As the key to the two ESL background children?s successful biliteracy development throughout their primary schooling period, this case study emphasizes the importance of the supportive parents? role through mother tongue maintenance and an effective literacy program, such as Genre-based Approach, which provides practical guidance for developing written language through learning a range of genres with different social functions and purposes. The literacies in English and Korean have been found to be mutually supportive and thus it is argued that the whole biliteracy development in this case study has an enhancing effect on the children?s academic achievement in their Australian schooling. Simultaneously, with their continuous biliteracy development, the children were able to enjoy being part of a caring Korean-speaking family and community. Moreover, this whole process of biliteracy development certainly provided the two ESL children with a positive self-concept and socio-cultural identity as a balanced proud bilingual. In this regard, it is argued that the successful outcome of this case study of the ESL children?s bilieracy development can be identified as a case of an ?empowering? additive bilingualism.