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English As A Second Language (english + as_a_second_language)
Selected AbstractsEnglish as a Second Language at the Community College: An Exploration of Context and ConcernsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, Issue 117 2002Amy J. Blumenthal Issues relating to instruction in English as a second language (ESL) in community colleges are the diversity of the student population, the position of ESL programs within institutions, the employment and training of instructors, the newly defined Generation 1.5 population, and financial and funding concerns. [source] Development of an English as a second language curriculum for hepatitis B virus testing in Chinese Americans,CANCER, Issue S12 2005Gloria D. Coronado Ph.D. Abstract Chinese Americans are at disproportionately high risk of liver cancer. A major risk factor for liver cancer in Asia is infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV): Approximately 80% of liver cancers are linked to HBV, and chronic carriers of HBV are > 100 times more likely to develop liver cancer compared with noncarriers. However, many adults, particularly those who have immigrated to the U.S., remain untested and therefore unvaccinated or unmonitored for the disease. Chinese Americans are mostly foreign born, and more recent arrivals face multiple social and health challenges. Many require special attention from public health professionals because of low levels of acculturation and difficulties learning English. It has long been established that an English as a Second Language (ESL) curriculum can teach immigrant adults and their family's important life skills, such as job training and citizenship. The authors report on their plans to develop and pilot test a culturally appropriate curriculum that will motivate Chinese ESL students to obtain a blood test for the detection of the HBV. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society. [source] A Secondary School Career Education Program for ESL StudentsCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 4 2001June Wyatt-Beynon Using Bourdieu's theory of different types of capital and social "fields," this paper analyzes one curriculum model, the ESL Co-op program, which is designed to meet the needs of immigrant adolescents who are primarily dependent on their first language. The program couples instruction in English as a second language (ESL) with work experience. ESL Co-op is offered in two secondary schools in a suburban Vancouver school district that is the most rapidly growing district in British Columbia. More than 30 percent of the approximately 50,000 students enrolled in the district speak a language other than, or in addition to, English in the home. A collaborative team of university researchers and district curriculum consultants inquired into the program's success in helping recent immigrant students become aware of possible future career and job opportunities and any other aspects of the program's operation deemed salient by the interviewees. We wondered if the folk theory of success embedded in federal, provincial, and district policy discourse, which emphasizes work experience, was in fact setting the stage for educational and occupational success of these young people. Interviews with 44 parents, 43 students, and six staff members from a total of 10 different language backgrounds revealed that staff perceive the program as a unique opportunity for students to gain exposure to Canadian work environments and to develop survival, language, and job-related skills or, in Bourdieu's terms, embodied capital. Students' and parents' overriding concern is that the program precludes the possibility of graduation with the grade-12 diploma (institutional capital) available from the mainstream program. [source] Dyslexia in English as a second languageDYSLEXIA, Issue 1 2005Turid Helland Abstract This study focused on English as L2 in a group of Norwegian dyslexic 12 year olds, compared to an age and gender matched control group. Norwegian school children learn English from the first grades on. The subjects were assessed with a test battery of verbal and written tasks. First, they were given a comprehension task; second, a model sentence task; third, two pragmatic tasks, and fourth, three tasks of literacy. The verbal tasks were scored according to comprehension, morphology, syntax and semantics, while the literacy tasks were scored by spelling, translation and reading skills. It was hypothesized that the results of the control group and the dyslexia group would differ on all tasks, but that subgrouping the dyslexia group by comprehension skills would show heterogeneity within the dyslexia group. The data analyses confirmed these hypotheses. Significant differences were seen between the dyslexia group and the control group. However, the subgrouping revealed minor differences between the control group and the subgroup with good comprehension skills, and major differences between the control group and the subgroup with poor comprehension skills. Especially morphology and spelling were difficult for the dyslexia group. The results were tentatively discussed within the framework of biological and cognitive models of how to interpret L2 performance in dyslexia, underlining the importance of further research in L2 acquisition in dyslexia. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Relationship between L1 and L2 word-level reading and phonological processing in adults learning English as a second languageJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 4 2007Gina L. Harrison Word-level reading and phonological processing measures were administered in English and Chinese to adult ESL students whose first language (L1) was Mandarin and whose second language (L2) was English. Instructors also identified students who may be at risk for L2 reading difficulties based on specific identification criteria. L2 phonological processing measures were related to L2 word-level reading and there was a cross-linguistic relationship between L1 and L2 phonological processing measures. Students considered at risk for L2 reading difficulties also differed significantly from those students not at risk on one L1 and several L2 phonological processing measures. Results are discussed in relation to contemporary theory on the assessment and identification of reading difficulties in English language learners. [source] Emerging Hispanic English: New dialect formation in the American SouthJOURNAL OF SOCIOLINGUISTICS, Issue 3 2004Walt Wolfram Although stable Hispanic populations have existed in some regions of the United States for centuries, other regions, including the mid-Atlantic South, are just experiencing the emergence of permanent Hispanic communities. This situation offers an ideal opportunity to examine the dynamics of new dialect formation in progress, and the extent to which speakers acquire local dialect traits as they learn English as a second language. We focus on the production of the /ai/ diphthong among adolescents in two emerging Hispanic communities, one in an urban and one in a rural context. Though both English and Spanish have the diphthong /ai/, the Southern regional variant of the benchmark local dialect norm is unglided, thus providing a local dialect alternative. The instrumental analysis of /ai/ shows that there is not pervasive accommodation to the local norm by Hispanic speakers learning English. There is, however, gradient, incremental adjustment of the /ai/, and individual speakers who adopt local cultural values may accommodate to the local dialect pattern. [source] The Role of Task-Induced Involvement and Learner Proficiency in L2 Vocabulary AcquisitionLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 2 2008YouJin Kim Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) proposed a motivational-cognitive construct of task-induced involvement to account for variation in effectiveness among different vocabulary learning tasks. Building upon their original research, this study consisted of two experiments investigating the involvement load hypothesis in vocabulary learning. Experiment 1 compared the performance of 64 adult English as a second language (ESL) learners from a range of countries at two different proficiency levels (i.e., matriculated undergraduate students vs. students in an Intensive English Program) to ascertain the effectiveness of three vocabulary tasks with different levels of task-induced involvement. Experiment 2 investigated whether two tasks hypothesized to represent the same level of task-induced involvement would result in equivalent initial learning and retention of target words by 20 adult ESL learners at two different levels of proficiency. The results of Experiment 1 showed that a higher level of learner involvement during the task promoted more effective initial vocabulary learning and better retention of the new words. The findings of Experiment 2 indicated that when different tasks had the same involvement load, they resulted in similar amounts of initial vocabulary learning and retention of new words. The results of the two experiments are discussed in light of the involvement load hypothesis. [source] Explaining the "Natural Order of L2 Morpheme Acquisition" in English: A Meta-analysis of Multiple DeterminantsLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue S1 2005Jennifer M. Goldschneider This meta-analysis pools data from 25 years of research on the order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes by students of English as a second language (ESL). Some researchers have posited a "natural" order of acquisition common to all ESL learners, but no single cause has been shown for this phenomenon. Our study investigated whether a combination of 5 determinants (perceptual salience, semantic complexity, morphophonological regularity, syntactic category, and frequency) accounts for the variance in acquisition order. Oral production data from 12 studies, together involving 924 participants, were pooled to obtain weighted accuracy scores for each of 6 grammatical functors. Results of a multiple-regression analysis showed that a large portion of the total variance in acquisition order was explained by the combination of the 5 determinants. Several of these determinants, it was argued, can be seen as part of a broad conceptualization of salience. Since the article was originally published, a number of meta-analyses have appeared in the applied linguistics literature (e.g., Masgoret & Gardner, 2003; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Ortega, 2003), and a book on meta-analysis in applied linguistics research is forthcoming (Norris & Ortega, in press). Meanwhile, research on the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language has begun to provide cross-linguistic evidence for how different aspects of salience contribute to ease or difficulty of second language acquisition (DeKeyser, Alfi-Shabtay, Ravid, & Shi, 2005) and how salience interacts with age of learning (DeKeyser, Ravid, & Alfi-Shabtay, 2005). [source] Testing Vocabulary Knowledge: Size, Strength, and Computer AdaptivenessLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 3 2004Batia Laufer In this article, we describe the development and trial of a bilingual computerized test of vocabulary size, the number of words the learner knows, and strength, a combination of four aspects of knowledge of meaning that are assumed to constitute a hierarchy of difficulty: passive recognition (easiest), active recognition, passive recall, and active recall (hardest). The participants were 435 learners of English as a second language. We investigated whether the above hierarchy was valid and which strength modality correlated best with classroom language performance. Results showed that the hypothesized hierarchy was present at all word frequency levels, that passive recall was the best predictor of classroom language performance, and that growth in vocabulary knowledge was different for the different strength modalities. [source] Explaining the "Natural Order of L2 Morpheme Acquisition" in English: A Meta-analysis of Multiple DeterminantsLANGUAGE LEARNING, Issue 1 2001Jennifer M. Goldschneider Some researchers have posited a &;ldquo;natural&;rdquo; order of acquisition of English grammatical morphemes common to all learners of English as a second language, but no single cause has been shown for this phenomenon. This meta-analysis investigated whether a combination of five determinants (perceptual salience, semantic complexity, morphophonological regularity, syntactic category, and frequency) accounts for a large part of the total variance found in acquisition order. Oral production data from 12 studies over almost 25 years, together involving 924 subjects, were pooled. Multiple regression analysis showed that a very large portion of the total variance in acquisition order is explained by the combination of the five determinants. We suggest research on other potential contributing factors and discuss the need for similar research in other languages. [source] Social networks and community support: Sustaining women in need of community-based adult education programsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 122 2009Velmarie L. Albertini This chapter focuses on women in need of community education programs, specifically general educational development (GED), English as a second language (ESL), adult basic education (ABE), and workforce development. The author explores social networks and learning programs necessary for facilitating the transition of this group of women to sustainable employment. [source] Identity issues in building an ESL community: The Puerto Rican experienceNEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 121 2009Betsy Morales English has a unique status in Puerto Rico, giving rise to special challenges in building community and teaching English as a second language on the island. Identity is at the core of these issues. [source] English as a Second Language at the Community College: An Exploration of Context and ConcernsNEW DIRECTIONS FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGES, Issue 117 2002Amy J. Blumenthal Issues relating to instruction in English as a second language (ESL) in community colleges are the diversity of the student population, the position of ESL programs within institutions, the employment and training of instructors, the newly defined Generation 1.5 population, and financial and funding concerns. [source] Tool to classify stool consistency: Content validity and use by persons of diverse culturesNURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES, Issue 2 2003Donna Zimmaro Bliss PhD Abstract Developing and testing the quality of a research instrument, including its ability to be used by culturally diverse persons, is an important methodological objective. The present study determined the content validity and feasibility of culturally diverse persons to use an instrument to classify stool consistency that has been employed in research on fecal incontinence. Five multidisciplinary clinicians experienced in assessing stool consistency determined the tool to possess content validity. Twenty-four foreign nationals of diverse cultures who spoke English as a second language (ESL) classified the consistency of nine stools using word only or word plus diagram descriptions. The agreement of the ratings of the participants were compared with the those of an experienced investigator. There was no significant difference between the ratings of participants using either type of description. There was good agreement between the classifications of the participants and those of the investigator. The findings of this study contribute to the quality of our instrument and support its use by culturally diverse persons. [source] Linguistic Capital and Academic Achievement of Canadian- and Foreign-Born University StudentsCANADIAN REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY/REVUE CANADIENNE DE SOCIOLOGIE, Issue 2 2008J. PAUL GRAYSON Au Canada, plusieurs universités prennent des mesures pour recruter des immigrants ou leurs enfants et satisfaire leurs besoins,et parmi eux plusieurs ont l'anglais comme langue seconde. Il n'y a pas de recherches au Canada qui comparent la progression potentielle du capital linguistique des étudiants ayant l'anglais comme langue seconde et celui des autres étudiants au fil de leur parcours universitaire, avec les relations entre les progressions du capital linguistique et de l'acquisition des connaissances. L'auteur montre dans cette étude que, contrairement aux étudiants canadiens et ceux nés à l'étranger pour lesquels l'anglais est la première langue, le capital linguistique des étudiants nés à l'étranger dont l'anglais est une langue seconde s'accroît au cours des quatre années d'études universitaires. Cependant, cette augmentation du capital linguistique ne correspond pas à une augmentation de l'acquisition des connaissances. In Canada, many universities are taking steps to recruit and meet the needs of immigrants and/or their sons and daughters, many of whom have English as a second language (ESL). There is, however, no research in Canada comparing potential increases in the linguistic capital of ESL and other students over the course of their university careers and the connection between increases in linguistic capital and academic achievement. In this study, it is shown that in contrast to Canadian- and foreign-born students for whom English is a first language, and Canadian-born ESL students, the linguistic capital of foreign-born ESL students increases over 4 years of university study; however, this increase in linguistic capital is not paralleled by an increase in academic achievement. [source] Implications of articulatory awareness in learning literacy in english as a second languageDYSLEXIA, Issue 2 2004Jun Yamada Abstract The articulatory awareness task, which was found by Griffiths and Frith (2002) to discriminate ex-dyslexic from non-dyslexic adults, was given to three groups of Japanese college students with different English reading abilities. Two unexpected results emerged: (1) Articulatory awareness performance was generally poor across the groups, thereby suggesting that poor articulatory awareness is not unique to dyslexia but rather to reading difficulty in general, and (2) There was a weak but significant positive correlation between articulatory awareness and English reading ability. Implications are that while articulatory awareness may not function only in dyslexia, it is embedded in a complex information-processing network involving reading acquisition. Specifically, a revised Articulatory Awareness Deficit Hypothesis is formulated, which states that poor articulatory awareness is part of articulation difficulty associated with poor phonological awareness that in turn tends to underlie dyslexia and reading difficulty. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||||||||