Most Haitians in the U.S. area have immigrated over the past three decades, with the largest number of arrival coming in the late 1970's through the mid 1980's. Boston has one of the largest Haitian student populations in the U.S. following Miami and New York City. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of English language development among Haitian immigrant ninth graders participating in Boston's transitional bilingual education. Two major research questions guided this study: (1) What is the effectiveness of oral English language-use among ninth grade Haitian immigrant students in selected bilingual classrooms? (2) What is the effectiveness of English reading among ninth grade Haitian immigrant students in selected bilingual classrooms? Three High schools with transitional bilingual education programs totalling ninety-one Haitian ninth grade students participated in the study. Twenty five students were randomly selected as subjects for the study. A pre- and post-test comparison and an analysis of students' oral and reading scores were done to obtain a preliminary quantifiable impression of the students' growth in English language development over a period of time. Using Halliday's (1973) seven functions of language, classroom observations of students oral English language-use were recorded and analyzed to determine the students' ability to communicate effectively in different classroom contexts. Miscue analyses through a series of reading activities were performed to provide valuable insights into the nature of the reading process and gain appreciation for readers' strengths as well as weaknesses. Over three hundred and fifty hours of classroom observations and reading miscue activities with (N = 25) Haitian immigrant ninth graders reveal that subjects do not differ markedly in their oral and reading effectiveness in English. Although individual differences among subjects in oral and reading effectiveness existed; however, only a minority of students (N = 5/25) in (oral language) and (N = 1/4) in reading did not show positive gains in language effectiveness. Overall, many of the subjects show positive gains in English. Thus, they have the ability to use oral and reading English effectively to succeed academically.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8920 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Prou, Marc E |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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