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Readers’ theater can provide an enjoyable foundation for students to become more fluent readers. In addition, children must become physically and emotionally, as well as academically, involved in learning to read. Procedures arepresented for having students perform plays and engage in 1. artistic endeavors, 2. performance reading, 3. social interaction, 4. repeated readings, and 5. story retelling. Suggestions presented herein are appropriate for application in a variety of learning environments and with many types of literature.

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One-on-one language teaching holds great potential for improving students' speaking ability. Programs such as Brigham Young University's Chinese Flagship program uses a one-on-one approach to help students learn how to use the language in respect to their desired profession. The Ohio State University uses individualized instruction as an alternative to traditional classroom-based classes. However, little to no research has compared one-on-one language teaching to traditional group classroom teaching in terms of language gains. Many studies show that one-on-one teaching can lead to language improvement, but do not attempt to compare method effectiveness. Additionally, although anxiety in language learning has been well researched, a comparison of anxiety between teaching methods has not been attempted. There are few studies that investigate anxiety between one-on-one and group methods. The present study attempts to close this gap in the research. This is done by comparing speech gains between a one-on-one teaching method and a group teaching method. The one-on-one method includes weekly five to ten minute sessions, and the group method includes weekly 50-minute sessions. Speech gains are defined as gains in fluency (determined through speech rate), pronunciation (consonants, vowels, and tones), and syntactic accuracy (determined by error free T-units). Speech gains are assessed via a pre/post-test design. Furthermore, the present study attempts to compare anxiety between the two teaching methods. This is done by administering the anxiety survey Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale twice. Students were asked to respond to one survey in reference to the one-on-one setting, and respond to the other survey in reference to the group setting. Finally, students filled out a preference survey at the end of the study to determine student perception on teaching method effectiveness. Results show that there is no statistical difference in speech gains in five-ten minute one-on-one sessions compared to 50-minute group sessions. This is true for all four areas assessed: fluency, vowel/consonant pronunciation, tone pronunciation, and syntactic accuracy. This shows that short sessions of one-on-one teaching can produce the same speech gains as longer sessions of group teaching. Survey results show that anxiety levels were the same between the two teaching methods. Preference surveys show that the majority of students: 1) feel that the one-on-one method is effective in improving their speaking ability, 2) would choose to take a class that includes one-on-one teaching, 3) and enjoy coming to one-on-one sessions. It further shows that 50% of students feel that one-on-one teaching is more effective than group teaching, and feel more comfortable in one-on-one sessions than in group sessions.

The purpose of this study was to fill gaps in the research to determine if picture books in the high school classroom can enhance student writing especially with word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions. Previous research has not fully considered employing picture books as mentor texts to examine writing traits in the high school Language Arts classroom. The population was 12 participants from two low track English 10 Reading classes. Six participants were identified from each class as low, medium, or high-performing students based on an informal narrative writing activity. This study employed an action research methodology (Sagor, 2000). Students were taught from an inquiry-based approach as the teacher read aloud each book, and asked students what they noticed. Students reviewed the picture books to guide them as they were challenged to improve their writing. Findings from the study illustrate that picture books as mentor texts can help secondary students of all ability levels improve their word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions in narrative writing as measured by a writing trait rubric created by Vicki Spandel and adapted by Jim Burke. Picture books were tools that helped students think and act like writers. Conclusions also highlighted the lack of word choice and sentence fluency instruction in the students' formative years. This study shed light on the abstract nature of sentence fluency, and an effective way to mitigate this problem. This study provided a new angle with which to teach the writing traits through narrative composition instruction, and teacher modeling. Further, this study adds to the literature of effective high school instruction as picture books as mentor texts are less common in the high school English Language Arts classroom.

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Thesis (M.Ed. (Language Education)) -- University of Limpopo, 2010 / This research study investigated subtractive bilingualism in teaching and learning through the medium of English without the support of the mother tongue. The aim was to investigate if it is possible for learners to acquire a second language (English) without totally losing their home language. This was done through: probing the reasons why the language policy is difficult to implement in schools as outlined by the constitution of South Africa; determining the causes of subtractive bilingualism in the school settings and; an emphasis of the rights and responsibilities of educators and parents to make a positive difference in the lives of bilingual and bicultural learners. This research was grounded on Cummins (1991) theory of second language acquisition. The literature review examined other theories of second language acquisition and learning (Krashen 1981). In particular, emphasis was placed on the following broad areas in the literature review: mother tongue development; language shift and language loss; language planning and language policy; language and culture; language and identity, attitudes and equity; language in education; the National Language Policy Framework; and multilingualism. This research was conducted using the qualitative research methodology. A case study design was employed. Three instruments were used for collecting of the data. These were: questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations. The data analysis strategy used in this research was interaction analysis which was done through transcriptions of observations and video and audio recordings of interviews and classroom observations. The following were some of the findings from this research study: learners were not happy with their educators who unduly force them to communicate in English as the educators themselves are also not proficient in the language; learners are afraid to take risks of communicating in English for fear of other learners intimidating them; and many learners now communicate only in English and cannot understand the greater details of their mother tongue. iv The recommendations of this study are: to reduce the extent of language loss, parents should establish a strong home language policy and provide ample opportunities for children to expand the functions for which they use the mother tongue; parents and care-givers should spend time with their children and tell stories or discuss issues with them in a way that develops their mother tongue vocabulary and concepts so that children come to school prepared to learn the second language successfully without being distracted; funding and resources must be made available for additional language acquisition; well-trained and dedicated teachers with similar linguistic backgrounds to the learners should be hired; and the new language policy should be adopted.

This study investigated oral reading fluency development among Hispanic high school English-language learners. Participants included 11 males and 9 females from first-year, second-year, and third-year English language arts classes. The pre-post experimental study, which was conducted during a four-week ESL summer program, included a treatment and a control group. The treatment group received a combination of components, including modified repeated reading with self-voice listening and oral dictation output from a speech recognition program. Each day, students performed a series of tasks, including dictation of part of the previous day’s passage; listening to and silently reading a new passage; dictating and correcting individual sentences from the new passage in the speech recognition environment; dictating the new passage as a whole without making corrections; and finally, listening to their own voice from their recorded dictation. This sequence was repeated in the subsequent sessions. Thus, this intervention was a technology-enhanced variation of repeated reading with a pronunciation dictation segment. Research questions focused on improvements in oral reading accuracy and rate, facility with the application, student perceptions toward the technology for reading, and the reliability of the speech recognition program. The treatment group improved oral reading accuracy by 50%, retained and transferred pronunciation of 55% of new vocabulary, and increased oral reading rate 16 words-correct-per-minute. Students used the intervention independently after three sessions. This independence may have contributed to students’ self-efficacy as they perceived improvements in their pronunciation, reading in general, and reported an increased liking of school. Students initially had a very positive perception toward using the technology for reading, but this perception decreased over the four weeks from 2.7 to 2.4 on a 3 point scale. The speech recognition program was reliable 94% of the time. The combination of the summer school program and intervention component stacking supported students’ gains in oral reading fluency, suggesting that further study into applications of the intervention is warranted. Acceleration of oral reading skills and vocabulary acquisition for ELLs contributes to closing the reading gap between ELLs and native-English speakers. Fluent oral reading is strongly correlated with reading comprehension, and reading comprehension is essential for ELLs to be successful in school. Literacy support tools such as this intervention can play a role in ameliorating English acquisition faster than the rate attained through traditional practices.

Fluent reading has been described as the ability to read a passage with accuracy, at a steady rate, with minimal hesitancy, and good comprehension (Grabe, 2009; Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, & Meisinger, 2010). Dysfluent reading can affect motivation for reading in English language learners, thereby limiting access to a wealth of language input from written texts (Taguchi, Gorsuch, & Sasamoto, 2006). Extensive research of repeated reading in L1 settings has been shown to increase reading fluency (Samuels, 1979; National Reading Panel, 2000), while comparatively little research has been done on repeated reading in L2 settings (Grabe, 2009). The objective of this eye-tracking study was to accurately document lower-level and higher-level reading processes in an immediate repeated reading exercise to observe how repeated reading affects reading fluency in adult English language learners. In our study, 30 students in an intensive English program in the United States read three short expository texts three times each. Eye-tracking showed significant increases in reading fluency measures in both lower-level and higher-level reading functions. For example, average first fixation duration decreased by 15 ms from the first to the third reading and average late dwell time decreased by 40 ms from the first to third reading. Repeated reading is an exercise that should be considered by educators to help English language learners increase their reading fluency with immediate repeated reading of expository texts.