Current literature addressing the challenges English learners in community colleges face is limited. While research examining Black, Indigenous, and People of Color encompasses aspects of being an English learner, little research has focused on what makes this demographic unique, their language ability. The purpose of this study was to identify…

The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study is to describe how community college students in Northeastern states describe the motivation to enroll in a non-required foreign language course. Self-determination theory was the theoretical framework for this study. One overarching research question guided the study: How do community college…

The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 gave way to a precipitous transition to online learning in colleges and universities across the globe. Learners and teachers alike were forced to adapt to new procedures and norms within a matter of days. Among the many questions regarding the development of rigorous courses that can adequately…

This study explores the establishment and evolution of an informal online community, tracing how it developed and evolved. More specifically, the study analyzed the characteristics of the online space, as well as how members engaged within the community, including participation patterns, preferences, and opinions and identity construction. The…

World language study exposes students to more than just language; they are also exposed to different cultures. After graduating, students will be exposed to different languages and cultures in the workforce, and they must be prepared. Students often leave their language of choice after the one or two semester course requirement; it takes more than…

Literature on international students discusses the creation of programs to assist with adjustment to U.S. education, explores negative experiences on campus and in the surrounding community, and discusses in-classroom experiences for ethnic groups within the international student population. Within the literature, developmental education articles…

Experiencing education as an English learner (EL) is challenging and can result in lower persistence and graduation rates for ELs in community colleges. The overall three-year graduation rate in the United States for two-year institutions is low, but graduation rates are even lower for EL learners. One way to support EL students is through an…

While universities' interest in community engagement has grown over time in the United States, the public pedagogies set forth by them do not always reflect a commitment to sustaining community-engaged learning. Additionally, commitments sometimes demonstrate mindsets and the language of "helping" the community or "fixing" a…

This qualitative phenomenological study explores U.S. principals' challenges, successes, and best practices in leading Mandarin Chinese immersion programs in high-need rural schools in a Midwestern state. The study addresses cultural efficiency, increasing student enrollment through principalship preparation, and attracting the interest of parents…

Community-based organizations offer English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) support to community members due to a severe shortage of trained and certified Teaching English Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teachers (Sutcher et al., 2019). Many of these organizations rely on volunteers to teach and tutor students enrolled in the programs they…

This dissertation explores community-based learning (CBL) in university Spanish education. Although Spanish education continues to construct Spanish as a foreign language (Leeman, 2014), recent trends such as changing demographics in the US have led to calls for Spanish education to focus more on US Latinx communities (e.g., Torres, Pascual y…

The purpose of this study was to provide recommendations to solve the problem of a lack of computer skills among Canadian Language Benchmark (CLB) 4 and 5 learners at the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Center. The problem was that CLB 4 and 5 learners do not have basic computer skills. When the school switched to online mode…

This study explored the experiences of Latina immigrant parent students enrolled in a noncredit English as a Second Language (ESL) program at a California community college. It sought to uncover how these students navigate the processes and services of community colleges to support their academic success while also examining how they draw upon…

Distance learning has become an attractive pathway for stakeholders in the field of higher education. It promotes affordability, convenience, and accessibility for many students who wish to pursue post-secondary education (Allen & Seaman, 2008; Travers, 2016). Therefore, many non-traditional students gravitate towards fully online programs at…

This mixed-methods study investigated the effectiveness of multimedia instruction for phrasal-verb education with community-college English as a second-language learners (ESL) in Northern California. Previous researchers have found that ESL learners have difficulties and barriers in learning phrasal verbs, and other researchers have found that how…