Science classrooms in the United States have become more diverse with respect to the variety of languages spoken by students. This qualitative study used ethnographic methods to investigate the discourse and practices of two ninth grade science classrooms. Approximately 44% of students included in the study were designated as English learners. The…

Oral proficiency is an important goal in second language learning not only for communication, but also for developing reading and writing skills. Use of cooperative learning (CL) strategies has been shown to successfully improve second language learning in many cases for its focus on individual accountability and positive interdependence (Kagan &…

The CEPA-English test is used for achievement, selection, and placement purposes. Since this test has heavily influences student's academic futures, it is imperative to ensure that the test functions as intended and provides meaningful results. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the technical quality of the CEPA-English test in…

This study investigated the intelligibility of Chinese graduate students to their Indian, Chinese, Korean, and American peers. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine the teaching priorities for English for Academic Purposes in the US, where listeners have a wide variety of native languages. Research on Second Language Acquisition…

This study investigated how the speech act of refusal is realized in Egyptian Arabic by intermediate and advanced American learners of Arabic as a foreign language. It also compared the performance of the learners to that of native speakers of Egyptian Arabic and native speakers of American English. The study aimed to investigate the relationship…

The implementation of English education at the elementary level in Taiwan is still in its early stage. However, researchers and educators in this field have noticed the variation of student English proficiency which increases the difficulty of teaching in today's EFL classes and results in calls for intervention programs. The purpose of this study…

This dissertation reports findings from a reading motivation study conducted in an elementary school serving students, all of whom were American Indian, in the southwestern United States. The school claimed to have more than fifty percent of its students scoring proficient or advanced on the state's high-stakes reading assessment and to value the…

Many factors that contribute towards the perception of second language (L2) sounds and the subsequent establishment of L2 phonetic categories have been the focus of past research. However, learning a third language, unlike SLA, may be influenced by additional factors attributed to the presence of two language systems in a bilingual instead of one…

Chinese characters are used in both Chinese and Japanese writing systems. When literate speakers of either language experience problems in finding or understanding words, they often resort to using Chinese characters or "kanji" (i.e., Chinese characters used in Japanese writing) in their talk, a practice known as "brush talk" ("bitan" in Chinese,…

This case study examined the general question: "What are the best practices for teaching. English language learners how to read?" Furthermore, this study sought to discover specifically: How do students using Houghton Mifflin Reading Program with supplementals and Rigby Reading Program with supplementals compare in terms of academic gains?; What…

The explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies has been proposed as a means to better prepare secondary school-aged students for today's information-dense, fast-paced, fast-changing global society, and to improve the academic performance of struggling adolescent readers. This proposition of a direct and positive impact of reading…

The quantitative study was a comparison of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students' assessment outcomes when taught by a teacher with specialized training and when taught by teachers with no specialized training. The comparison of 2007-2008 Northern Nevada LEP third grade student scores in the content areas of English language arts and…

Performance assessments have become the norm for evaluating language learners' writing abilities in international examinations of English proficiency. Two aspects of these assessments are usually systematically varied: test takers respond to different prompts, and their responses are read by different raters. This raises the possibility of undue…

This qualitative research study investigated four adolescent English Language Learners' (ELLs) perceptions of READ 180. READ 180 is a reading program designed for both struggling readers and English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students (Scholastic, 2009a). Although there have been a number of research studies on the benefits of READ 180 for…

Federal and state policies have long sought to address the social inequities faced by limited English proficient (LEP) students through the improvement of English language acquisition. English language acquisition policy has focused on access to resources, qualified teachers, and instructional methodologies (e.g. pedagogy) that create a learning…