The purpose of this single case study was to understand the perceptions of Latino Spanish-speaking English learners on the efficacy of developmental education services at a western United States community college. The conceptual frameworks used in the investigation included critical theory related to human emancipation, social learning theory aligned to second language acquisition, and contemporary adult learning theories. The goal of the investigation was to understand how students used and perceived the developmental education services to transition from Spanish language instruction to English coursework. Research questions focused on how the developmental education services contributed to the successful completion of the child development practicum for Latino Spanish-speaking English learners. The primary data collection method was in-depth individual interviews of a purposeful sample of 9 successful students. Data were transcribed, coded, and themes were developed based on the components of the conceptual frameworks. Findings indicated that participants relied on Spanish instruction for comprehensible context, but needed consistent education support services and information from a culturally responsive institution in a language they understood. The results prompted the development of a multicultural introduction to college course designed to facilitate access to developmental education services. Implications for social change include developing curriculum to inform Spanish-speaking English learners in the community college system and remediating the shortage of qualified Latino preschool teachers in the community, thereby providing positive role models for young Latino children.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Spanish-speaking men in the United States with limited English proficiency following their release from prison. The study specifically examined the experiences of these men in their efforts to access health care treatment, housing, education, and employment in Central Pennsylvania. An empirical, phenomenological research design was employed that used self-stigma, critical race, and self-determination theories for in-depth interviews with 8 men who spent 5 to 24 years in prison. A tiered coding method was used to generate 6 interconnected themes that tell the story of these men's lives: (1) a genuine desire to change (2) a lack of effective communication, (3) a sense of dependency on others, (4) a persistent lack of social support, (5) a perception of resentencing by society, and (6) a perception of entrapment with little possibility to get out. This study promotes positive social change by demonstrating a need for more effective transitional programs for this demographic and additional need for counselor training programs to actively recruit and train more Spanish-speaking counselors for work with this population. The results can be used by counselors and mental health providers to develop programs that would support families such as job training and second language instruction within correctional facilities. Implementing these recommendations is expected to reduce crime and facilitate the healthy integration of this population into the mainstream society post incarceration.

The Hispanic population within the United States has grown to a considerable amount. The state of Florida’s population is 25% Hispanic, with projected estimates of this population continuing to grow in the coming years (Ortman & Shin, 2011). Statistics show that 28.3% of the state’s population, over the age of five, speak a language other than English at home. With this considerable number of Spanish-speakers comes the responsibility to adjust certain educational practices to best meet their needs. Literacy is an essential part of learning, and therefore assessing early literacy is an essential part to any child’s academic development. Phonological awareness is the ability to manipulate and identify the phonological segments of a word (Blachman, Tangel, Ball, Black & Mcgraw, 1999). It is a strong predictor for early literacy abilities (Bradley & Bryant, 1983, Kozminsky & Kozminsky, 1995, Vandervelden & Siegel 1997). This relationship between phonological awareness and early literacy exists within the English language, and also within many other alphabetic languages such as Spanish (Anthony, Williams, McDonald, Corbitt-Shindler, Carlson, & Francis, 2006). Therefore, phonological awareness shares an important relationship to early literacy abilities for both English and Spanish speakers. There are many morphological, phonological, syntactical, and lexical subtleties that exist between varied dialects of the Spanish language. Vocabulary and lexicon use has been shown to positively influence phonological awareness skills in young children. Dialectical classifications of the participants were determined through use of different dialect specific vocabulary word list in the Linguistic and Cultural Background Survey. This study sought to evaluate whether dialectical differences among young Spanish-English bilinguals were associated with performance on measures of phonological awareness and reading. Twelve participants (children ages 3.17 years to 7.5 years and their parents participated in the study. Children completed a short form of the dynamic assessment of phonological awareness in Spanish (Loreti, 2015), the Letter-Word Identification of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey-Revised (WMLS-R; Woodcock et al., 2005), the Elision, Rapid Automatic Naming, and Letter Name/Letter Sound subtests from the Test of Phonological Sensitivity in Spanish (TOPSS; Brea et al., 2003) and the Preschool Language Scales, Fifth Edition Spanish Screening Test (PLS-5; Zimmerman et al., 2011). Parents completed a Linguistic and Cultural Background Survey designed to identify potential dialectical differences among the children. Results from the Linguistic and Cultural Background Survey indicated that all participants used the dialect consistent with Central America, and six additionally used lexical features of dialects outside of Central America. Consequently, children were categorized into either a Central group or a Central Plus group. The Central group indicated the use of words specific to the Central American dialect of Spanish. The Central Plus group indicated use of Central American dialect specific words, as well as words specific to Standard and Caribbean dialects of Spanish. These two groups were compared on the assessments of phonological awareness and early literacy. The results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences on any of the assessments between the dialect groups. Although the comparisons on the measures of Letter Word Identification Subtest and Letter Name Letter Sound subtest demonstrated medium effect sizes in favor of the Central plus another dialect group, and Rapid Automatic Naming demonstrated a medium effect in favor of the Central only group. Further investigation is needed to demonstrate these medium effects to a greater extent.

This exploratory mixed-methods study examines the experiences of Spanish-speaking patients seeking non-urgent care in an emergency department setting. Emphasis is placed on understanding variables that influence patient satisfaction among this particular special patient population. This study draws from the explanatory models of illness and perspectives of clinically applied anthropology in contributing to the limited body of scholarly work that utilizes ethnographic approaches in clinical spaces to investigate how patients experience seeking emergency care services. Health-related deservingness, social determinants of health, and health literacy are used as complementary frameworks in understanding the unique experiences of these patients. The combination of methodological approaches employed in this study included: participant observation (120+ hours), patient shadowing (40 hours, N=10), administration of a modified patient satisfaction survey (N=100), semi-structured interviews (N=25), and retrospective analysis of existing patient satisfaction data from the research site. Quantitative findings generally indicate high degrees of satisfaction among this particular patient population, with statistically significant differences when compared to English-speaking patients. Quantitative data also indicate how modality of communication with this patient population is important to consider in terms of patient comprehension and perceived levels of care/attention demonstrated by hospital staff. The qualitative findings from this project highlight the similarities in explanatory models of illness between this patient population and emergency medical providers. Qualitative data additionally elucidates many of the barriers Spanish-speaking patients face when seeking out non-urgent care such as: limitations in exercising individual autonomy when communicating with medical staff, self-blame for not being able to effectively articulate their symptoms and concerns, as well as lack of clarity in understanding follow-up care plans. The results from this study call for addressing issues pertaining to health literacy, specifically at the end of the clinical encounter when follow-up care and treatment plans are explained to patients.

xi, 89 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / One of the fastest growing populations of students in American schools today is that of Spanish speaking English language learners. Many of these students are taught in classrooms in which Spanish is the language of instruction for the development of early literacy skills. There is a need for valid and reliable progress monitoring measures for Spanish speakers in these classrooms, as many of the current measures in use were designed for and normed on English speaking populations of students. Phonological awareness is one of the strongest predictors of success in learning to read. Therefore, the purpose of this replication study was to determine the efficacy of five independent variables: (a) Letter Sounds, (b) Syllable Sounds, (c) Phonemic Segmentation, (d) Syllable Segmentation, and (e) Grade Level to predict scores on Spanish Word Reading and Sentence Reading Fluency assessments for 41 first-grade and 41 second-grade native Spanish speaking students whose early literacy instruction was in Spanish. Correlational and multiple regression analysis showed that, of these variables, performance on a test of Syllable Sounds was the best predictor of performance on both the Word Reading Fluency and Sentence Reading Fluency tests. Results show that, for students receiving early literacy instruction in Spanish, tests of syllable sounds demonstrated the most efficacy in accounting for the variance in predicting future reading success in Spanish. / Adviser: Gerald Tindal

No description available.

xiv, 141 p. ： ill. / This study examines how health care administrators perceive Spanish-speaking immigrant growth in a city with little to no history of attracting immigrants but recently experiencing tremendous growth. Different communities are finding a need to adjust various institutions, organizations, and policies to meet the needs of newer groups, which often arrive in communities ill-equipped to deal with the structural and social changes necessary to serve them. This study investigates the ways one health care system's administrators frame the institution's role and response as the surrounding city is transformed into a new destination city. Their responses complicate existing understandings of how people discuss newly settled immigrant groups in an era of racial colorblindness, as this colorblindness often cloaks underlying racial prejudice. Administrators who expressed egalitarian understandings professionally often shifted to rigid racial boundaries in their private lives. Moving the color line based on the arena of conversation challenges existing theories, which mark racial hierarchies as static lines demarcating divisions between two or three groups. Finally, administrators link the needs of Spanish-speaking patients to the health system's Mission Department, reinforcing cultural representations of this particular group as indigent and outside the mainstream services offered by the health care system. / Committee in charge: Dr. Mia Tuan， Co-Chair； Dr. Jocelyn Hollander， Co-Chair； Dr. Aliya Saperstein， Member； Dr. Susan Hardwick， Member

Le récit magico-réaliste entretient avec l’écriture de l’histoire un rapport très étroit. Entre les années 1940 et les années 1980, dans toute l’aire géographique américaine, s’est développé et a évolué une fiction magico-réaliste qui se donne comme objectif la transcription de données anthropologiques, concernant les populations dominées américaines, qu’elles soient composées d’autochtones, d’esclaves ou de descendants d’esclaves, dans un univers romanesque où réalisme et magie se côtoient sans tensions. Ainsi, en abordant les périodes passées du continent américain, les auteurs de récits magico-réalistes ont construit un type de fiction qu’ils ont façonné dans le but de permettre une expression littéraire de l’opération historiographique, qui ne peut pas se substituer à la science historique, mais qui peut donner, d’une façon qui tire parti des potentialités de la fiction, une voix à ceux qu’un discours dominant et des structures de pouvoir ont longtemps laissés dans l’ombre. Nous étudierons donc comment les récits magico-réalistes écrivent l’histoire, et notamment restituent des visions du monde longtemps ignorées, dans une perspective proche de l’histoire des représentations. Une telle entreprise littéraire et historique constitue par-là même un phénomène structurant pour le champ littéraire américain, mais aussi caribéen. Notre corpus d’étude trilingue réunit des auteurs de tout le continent américain : Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Toni Morrison, Wilson Harris, Toni Cade Bambara, Jean-Louis Baghio’o, Jacques Stephen Alexis et Maryse Condé. / The magical realistic narrative is deeply linked with the writing of history. Between the 1940’s and the 1980’s, throughout the entire America, has been developed and has evolved the magic realism which let the authors of such narratives to transcribe anthropological datas, coming from dominated populations of America (Natives, slaves or former slaves) in novels in which realism and magic can mix without tension. Then, by describing the past periods of the American continent, the authors of magic realism narratives have built a kind of fiction able to imitate, but not replace, the historical investigation : they can, with the help of the specific resources of fiction, give a voice to those who where kept in the dark for so long. We will study how the authors of magic realism narratives write history, et transcribe the representations of people who were not considered before. Such a literary phenomenon is fundamental in the building of an American literary filed. Our trilingual corpus gathers these nine authors : Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Toni Morrison, Wilson Harris, Toni Cade Bambara, Jean-Louis Baghio’o, Jacques Stephen Alexis et Maryse Condé.

Submitted by ANA MARIA DEL PILAR ALTAMIRANO ROBLES null (amp.altamirano@gmail.com) on 2016-04-11T22:37:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação.AltamiranoRobles.pdf: 4923610 bytes, checksum: bc15f12823104340c8e4232158b383dc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Felipe Augusto Arakaki (arakaki@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-04-13T13:21:59Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 altamiranorobles_amp_me_arafcl.pdf: 4923610 bytes, checksum: bc15f12823104340c8e4232158b383dc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-13T13:21:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 altamiranorobles_amp_me_arafcl.pdf: 4923610 bytes, checksum: bc15f12823104340c8e4232158b383dc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-23 / Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação (PROPG UNESP) / Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA)/Grupo Coimbra de Universidades Brasileñas (GCUB) / Esta pesquisa visa a estudar as interferências linguísticas nos níveis semântico, sintático e ortográfico, presentes no desenvolvimento da interlíngua de um grupo de alunos peruanos hispanofalantes do nível intermediário de português como língua estrangeira. A investigação buscou verificar as interferências linguísticas presentes nas produções escritas daqueles alunos, considerando a proximidade linguística entre o espanhol e o português, com o objetivo de avançar na descrição da interlíngua de alunos peruanos hispanofalantes e contribuir para o estudo do ensino e da aprendizagem de português como língua estrangeira. A hipótese deste trabalho é a de que os traços linguísticos da língua materna pode influenciar de modo negativo a aprendizagem do português por serem consideradas línguas próximas. A análise foi realizada com base na metodologia da Linguística Contrastiva em um corpus de 70 textos elaborados por 50 alunos peruanos hispanofalantes do nível intermediário de português como língua estrangeira, em dois Centros de Línguas em Lima, Peru. Além disso, foi aplicado um questionário semiestruturado no qual se propôs uma reflexão acerca do papel da língua materna, o espanhol, no processo de aprendizagem do português dos aprendizes em questão. A partir do referencial teórico sobre interlíngua e as análises das interferências linguísticas baseadas no contraste entre o espanhol e o português, a pesquisa obteve resultados que revelaram informações significativas sobre as ocorrências das interferências nos níveis semântico, sintático e ortográfico, evidenciando, quantitativa e qualitativamente, as mais comuns na aprendizagem dos alunos, permitindo, assim, identificar os casos sistemáticos de interferências linguísticas recorrentes nas referidas produções escritas. Observou-se que o uso das normas linguísticas da língua materna dificultou a elaboração das produções escritas em português, pois de modo genérico, no nível semântico, os alunos peruanos hispanofalantes recorreram ao uso continuo de palavras da língua materna e criaram palavras na língua estrangeira com base nas raízes utilizadas em espanhol; no nível sintático, as interferências se evidenciaram no uso incorreto e na omissão de preposições, e em casos de concordância nominal nos quais se identificou a transferência da língua materna no uso de gênero; enquanto no nível ortográfico, os casos de omissão de acento em palavras paroxítonas, oxítonas e monossílabas foram os mais comuns devido ao uso das normas de acentuação em espanhol pelos aprendizes peruanos. / This work aims to study linguistic interferences at semantic, syntactic and orthographic level, which occurred during interlanguage development from a group of Peruvian native Spanish speeakers of intermediate level of Portuguese as a foreign language. The investigation sought to verify the linguistic interferences identified in the students’ writings, considering cross-linguistic similarity between Spanish and Portuguese with the objective of expanding interlanguage description of Peruvian native Spanish speakers, and contributing the research on the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a foreign language. The hypothesis of this work is that linguistic characteristics of native language can influence in a negative way Portuguese learning as these languages present typological proximity. The analysis of this work was based on Contrastive Linguistics methodology in a corpus of 70 writings elaborated by 50 Peruvian native Spanishspeakers from two Language Institutes in Lima, Peru. In addition to this, it was applied a semi-structured questionnaire which proposed a reflection about the native language (Spanish) role in the Portuguese learning process. From the theoretical framework about interlanguage and linguistic interferences analysis, based on comparison of Spanish and Portuguese, this research got results that revealed, in a quantitative and qualitative way, relevant information about the occurrences of the most common interferences at syntactic, semantic and orthographic level during Portuguese learning. These results allowed identifying systematic cases of frequent linguistic interferences in the mentioned writings of the Peruvian native Spanish speakers. It was observed that use of linguistic norms of native language hampered writings elaboration in Portuguese, as generically, at semantic level, Peruvian native Spanish speakers resorted to using continuously words in the native language and to creating words in the foreign language based on the root words used in Spanish; at syntactic level, interferences were evident in the misuse and omission of prepositions, and in cases of agreement in which native language transfer was identified in the use of gender; while at orthographic level, cases of written accent omission on paroxytone, oxytone and monosyllabic words were the most common as these Peruvian students resorted to using accentuation norms of Spanish. / Esta investigación pretende estudiar las interferencias lingüísticas en los niveles semántico, sintáctico y ortográfico, presentes en el desarrollo de la interlengua de un grupo de alumnos peruanos hispanohablantes del nivel intermedio de portugués como lengua extranjera. La investigación buscó verificar cuáles fueron las interferencias lingüísticas identificadas en las producciones escritas de aquellos alumnos, considerando la proximidad lingüística entre el español y el portugués, con el objetivo de avanzar en la descripción de la interlengiua de alumnos peruanos hispanohablantes y contribuir con el estudio de enseñanza y de aprendizaje de portugués como lengua extranjera. La hipótesis de este trabajo se enfoca en que los rasgos lingüísticos del español puede influenciar de modo negativo el aprendizaje del portugués al ser consideradas lenguas próximas. El análisis fue realizado con base en la metodología de la Lingüística Contrastiva en un corpus de 70 textos elaborados por 50 alumnos peruanos hispanohablantes del nivel intermedio de portugués como lengua extranjera, pertenecientes a dos Centros de Idiomas de Lima, Perú. Además, se aplicó un cuestionario semiestructurado sobre el papel que tiene la lengua materna, el español, en el proceso de aprendizaje de portugués para este grupo de alumnos. A partir del referencial teórico sobre la interlengua y los análisis de interferencias lingüísticas basados en el contraste entre el español y el portugués, la investigación obtuvo resultados que revelaron informaciones significativas sobre las ocurrencias de las interferencias en los niveles semántico, sintáctico y ortográfico, evidenciando cuantitativa y cualitativamente, cuáles fueron las más comunes en el aprendizaje de los alumnos, permitiendo, así, identificar los casos sistemáticos de interferencias lingüísticas que ocurrieron en las referidas producciones escritas. Se observó que el uso de las normas lingüísticas de la lengua materna dificultó la elaboración de las producciones escritas en portugués, pues de modo genérico, en el nivel semántico, los alumnos peruanos hispanohablantes recurrieron al uso continuo de palabras de la lengua materna y crearon palabras en la lengua extranjera con base en las raíces utilizadas en español; en el nivel sintáctico, las interferencias se evidenciaron en el uso incorrecto y en la omisión de preposiciones, y en casos de concordancia nominal en los cuales se identificó la transferencia de la lengua materna en el uso de género; mientras que en el nivel ortográfico, los casos de omisión de acento en palabras paroxítonas, oxítonas y monosílabas fueron los más comunes debido al uso de las normas de acentuación en español por parte de los aprendices peruanos

This study was designed to provide information on the reading instructional practices of 36 first grade teachers in nine schools that serve predominantly Spanish-speaking and ELL students in a southeastern U.S. school district. The purpose of this investigation was to describe teaching practices employed during English language arts instruction and to examine their use in relation to instructional grouping strategies, teacher language use, and student engagement. Participating classrooms were observed three times throughout the 2006-07 school year. Data were collected via the Timed Observations of Student Engagement/Language (TO/SEL) classroom observation instrument (Foorman & Schatchneider, 2003). Paired sample t-tests, multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA), and multiple regression analyses were employed to investigate the relationship among the following observed variables: allocation of reading instructional time, grouping strategies, teacher language use and student engagement. Several key findings emerged. Participating teachers spent a greater amount of time on meaning-focused reading instruction (i.e., writing, reading texts, reading comprehension) than on code-focused reading instruction (i.e., word work, spelling, reading fluency, phonemic awareness), both during all four observed grouping strategies and after controlling for individual student seat work. In addition, of five key collapsed instructional variables (word work/spelling, oral language, writing, reading texts, and reading comprehension), teachers spent most time on word work/spelling (19%) and writing (18%). Reading texts and reading comprehension instruction together comprised 26% of total instructional time. Whole class instruction was the grouping strategy of choice among teachers (65% of total observed time); in sharp contrast, teachers spent 11% of observed time engaged in small group instruction, despite research findings supporting the effectiveness of sound grouping instruction. In addition, as little as 1% of teachers' total instructional time was spent in oral language/discussion, and 6% of total instructional time was spent in vocabulary instruction. The results also demonstrated little variation in teacher language use. Thus, evidence of "codeswitching" was not significant. Student engagement was high- 91% of total time students were observed; and was highest during writing and word work/spelling instruction. More longitudinal research is warranted that further explores precisely documented teacher reading instructional practices in relation to student outcomes with culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. Implications for practice include teacher training and professional development on managing small group instruction, and incorporating additional oral language/discussion, vocabulary and meaningful tasks into daily classroom activities.