Traces to Entrenchment: A Mixed Methods Study Examining the Use of Reading and Writing to Facilitate Lexical Sequence Acquisition Among Bilingual Learners and Factors Influencing Their Language Learning

Informed by entrenchment and usage-based theories, this mixed methods study, modeled after Riazi\u27s mixed methods fully integrated design, examined how reading and writing may be used to facilitate lexical sequence acquisition for high school bilingual learners. The study compared the efficacy of two interventions on increasing the depth of knowledge of lexical sequences: a reading intervention requiring the reading of short informational texts embedded with eight target lexical sequences and a writing intervention requiring participants to follow the readings with the intentional use of target sequences in writing. A repeated measures factorial ANOVA found no impact of gender or first language on results; both groups made statistically significant gains on depth of knowledge during both interventions with large effect sizes, and they retained gains three to four weeks later. However, reading was found to be more impactful for one group, whereas reading and writing was found to be more impactful for the second group. Subsequent analyses of written responses by participants coupled with a repeated measures ANOVA measuring the acquisition of individual sequences demonstrated that participants were more likely to acquire and use some lexical sequences than others. Data from semi-structured interviews from 12 participants were analyzed through the lens of Anthias’ multilevel model of intersectionality to determine factors influencing intervention results as well as English learning generally. Results of this qualitative strand revealed that the requirement to read twice weekly led reading to become a habit for some participants, that text interest impacted some participants’ motivation to comprehend the text, and that interlinear glossing (providing synonyms above target sequences) was helpful for reading comprehension. Gender and L1 were found to influence learning through the long-lasting impact of bullying, which often led females and those with perceived accents to refrain from speaking English even years after bullying occurred. Other salient findings suggest that the employment of high school students may be underreported and that implicit teacher bias may impact the schooling of some bilingual learners. One LGBTQ bilingual learner narrative provided a positive example of empowerment despite the bullying of others. Several recommendations for research, policy, and teaching practices are discussed

Traces to Entrenchment: A Mixed Methods Study Examining the Use of Reading and Writing to Facilitate Lexical Sequence Acquisition Among Bilingual Learners and Factors Influencing Their Language Learning

Informed by entrenchment and usage-based theories, this mixed methods study, modeled after Riazi\u27s mixed methods fully integrated design, examined how reading and writing may be used to facilitate lexical sequence acquisition for high school bilingual learners. The study compared the efficacy of two interventions on increasing the depth of knowledge of lexical sequences: a reading intervention requiring the reading of short informational texts embedded with eight target lexical sequences and a writing intervention requiring participants to follow the readings with the intentional use of target sequences in writing. A repeated measures factorial ANOVA found no impact of gender or first language on results; both groups made statistically significant gains on depth of knowledge during both interventions with large effect sizes, and they retained gains three to four weeks later. However, reading was found to be more impactful for one group, whereas reading and writing was found to be more impactful for the second group. Subsequent analyses of written responses by participants coupled with a repeated measures ANOVA measuring the acquisition of individual sequences demonstrated that participants were more likely to acquire and use some lexical sequences than others. Data from semi-structured interviews from 12 participants were analyzed through the lens of Anthias’ multilevel model of intersectionality to determine factors influencing intervention results as well as English learning generally. Results of this qualitative strand revealed that the requirement to read twice weekly led reading to become a habit for some participants, that text interest impacted some participants’ motivation to comprehend the text, and that interlinear glossing (providing synonyms above target sequences) was helpful for reading comprehension. Gender and L1 were found to influence learning through the long-lasting impact of bullying, which often led females and those with perceived accents to refrain from speaking English even years after bullying occurred. Other salient findings suggest that the employment of high school students may be underreported and that implicit teacher bias may impact the schooling of some bilingual learners. One LGBTQ bilingual learner narrative provided a positive example of empowerment despite the bullying of others. Several recommendations for research, policy, and teaching practices are discussed

Transnational Vietnamese: Language Practices, New Literacies, and Redefinition of the “American Dream”

The research focuses on the transnational literacy and language practices of a Vietnamese immigrant family in Midwestern United States. Drawing upon multiple bodies of contemporary research and conceptual frameworks, this investigation intends to go beyond transnational movements to indicate the complex nature of bi-literate, bilingual and bi-cultural development and the role of national and supranational ideologies, as well as to describe how the Vietnamese diaspora have mobilized their identities and in so doing, redefined the provoking term “the American Dream.

Generating natural language specifications from UML class diagrams

Early phases of software development are known to be problematic, difficult to manage and errors occurring during these phases are expensive to correct. Many systems have been developed to aid the transition from informal Natural Language requirements to semistructured or formal specifications. Furthermore, consistency checking is seen by many software engineers as the solution to reduce the number of errors occurring during the software development life cycle and allow early verification and validation of software systems. However, this is confined to the models developed during analysis and design and fails to include the early Natural Language requirements. This excludes proper user involvement and creates a gap between the original requirements and the updated and modified models and implementations of the system. To improve this process, we propose a system that generates Natural Language specifications from UML class diagrams. We first investigate the variation of the input language used in naming the components of a class diagram based on the study of a large number of examples from the literature and then develop rules for removing ambiguities in the subset of Natural Language used within UML. We use WordNet,a linguistic ontology, to disambiguate the lexical structures of the UML string names and generate semantically sound sentences. Our system is developed in Java and is tested on an independent though academic case study

Exploring Racially Informed Factors and Assessing Their Impacts on the Working Conditions and Burnout among Bicultural Asian Human Service Workers

The United States has undergone a significant increase in cultural diversity, with Asians being the fastest-growing immigrant group. Their population has almost doubled from 11.9 million in 2000 to 22.4 million in 2019, marking an 88% increase in less than two decades. Presently, Asians make up 6% of the total U.S. population and are estimated to grow to 46 million by 2060, representing over 10% of the U.S. population. Asians are often considered a model minority due to their higher educational and health status compared to other minority groups. However, they are still perceived as perpetual foreigners regardless of their length of stay and generational status in the country. During the pandemic, they became the target of pandemic-related racism that was supported by a political agenda. Amidst unprecedentedly heightened racism and collective trauma in the Asian community, bicultural and bilingual Asian human service workers play a critical role in providing culturally and linguistically aligned health and social services. However, these dedicated workers have not received much attention. Therefore, this research, based on the Asian Critical Race Theory, investigates how the racial positioning and racial realities of Asians in the United States relate to the working conditions of bicultural and bilingual Asian human service workers. This study uses a sequential exploratory mixed-method approach to explore the connection between racially informed factors and the working conditions and burnout of workers in the health and social service fields. The study applies the Job Demands and Job Resources Model to understand this link. The findings of this study support the need to better support a diverse and resilient workforce in the health and social service fields to achieve racial equity for an ever-growing Asian population

THE LANGUAGE OUTCOMES OF HMONG DUAL-LANGUAGE IMMERSION PROGRAM

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a K-12 Hmong dual-language immersion program on kindergarten through fifth-grade Hmong students’ academic performance in the category of reading Hmong and English. Moreover, the parents of those students were investigated concerning specific factors they used in choosing a dual-language immersion program for their child. Hmong bilingual students have different perspectives about their cultural identities, retaining the Hmong culture, and learning English when the Hmong language was used as the instructional language. It was also imperative to determine the most prevalent factor that parents consider when selecting a program with a Hmong focus language. This study employed quantitative design to investigate a) the Hmong and English reading level for the Hmong dual-language third, fourth, and fifth-graders, b) the students\u27 dominant language, and c) the parents\u27 reasons for enrolling their children in the HDL program. ANOVA and descriptive statistics were used to analyze data collected from the Hmong Reading Assessment, the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment, the Twelve Bilingual Dominance Scale, and the parent Likert-scaled questionnaire. The results indicated that years of HDL experience can boost dual-language students’ MCA reading scores while they maintain Hmong reading proficiency. The Twelve Bilingual Dominance Scale indicated that most of the HDL students identified themselves as balanced Hmong and English learners. Parents\u27 reasons for HDL enrollment was primarily due to language preservation and home life support

Reading Perceptions of Hispanic English Language Learner Families in New York City

Historically, Hispanic English language learners (ELLs) in the United States have had low reading achievement and low high school graduation and college entry rates, which has limited their employment opportunities. Although research indicates parental involvement is important to reading success, little is known about Hispanic ELL parents\u27 perspectives on their children\u27s reading development. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to understand how parental involvement in 3rd grade Hispanic ELLs\u27 reading development, as perceived by their families, may contribute to these students\u27 reading proficiency. The framework for this study was Hedegaard\u27s model of children\u27s learning and development. The participants were 5 mothers of 3rd grade Hispanic ELLs at an urban public school in a large city in the Northeastern United States. Interviews with participants were analyzed for open and axial codes using NVivo software to identify themes and patterns. Study results revealed that mothers of Hispanic ELL students were involved in and had a positive view of their children\u27s reading development. However, participants perceived their lack of English language skills as a barrier to their parental involvement in their children\u27s reading development; they also viewed siblings, teachers, libraries, and technology as major resources to help their children develop their reading aptitude. This study supports social change by providing information to schools and administrators, the latter of whom may be able to improve reading programs in ways that can help Hispanic ELL families to promote their children\u27s reading development

The Road Ahead for State Assessments

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards offers an opportunity to make significant improvements to the large-scale statewide student assessments that exist today, and the two US DOE-funded assessment consortia -- the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) -- are making big strides forward. But to take full advantage of this opportunity the states must focus squarely on making assessments both fair and accurate.A new report commissioned by the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), The Road Ahead for State Assessments, offers a blueprint for strengthening assessment policy, pointing out how new technologies are opening up new possibilities for fairer, more accurate evaluations of what students know and are able to do. Not all of the promises can yet be delivered, but the report provides a clear set of assessment-policy recommendations. The Road Ahead for State Assessments includes three papers on assessment policy.The first, by Mark Reckase of Michigan State University, provides an overview of computer adaptive assessment. Computer adaptive assessment is an established technology that offers detailed information on where students are on a learning continuum rather than a summary judgment about whether or not they have reached an arbitrary standard of "proficiency" or "readiness." Computer adaptivity will support the fair and accurate assessment of English learners (ELs) and lead to a serious engagement with the multiple dimensions of "readiness" for college and careers.The second and third papers give specific attention to two areas in which we know that current assessments are inadequate: assessments in science and assessments for English learners.In science, paper-and-pencil, multiple choice tests provide only weak and superficial information about students' knowledge and skills -- most specifically about their abilities to think scientifically and actually do science. In their paper, Chris Dede and Jody Clarke-Midura of Harvard University illustrate the potential for richer, more authentic assessments of students' scientific understanding with a case study of a virtual performance assessment now under development at Harvard. With regard to English learners, administering tests in English to students who are learning the language, or to speakers of non-standard dialects, inevitably confounds students' content knowledge with their fluency in Standard English, to the detriment of many students. In his paper, Robert Linquanti of WestEd reviews key problems in the assessment of ELs, and identifies the essential features of an assessment system equipped to provide fair and accurate measures of their academic performance.The report's contributors offer deeply informed recommendations for assessment policy, but three are especially urgent.Build a system that ensures continued development and increased reliance on computer adaptive testing. Computer adaptive assessment provides the essential foundation for a system that can produce fair and accurate measurement of English learners' knowledge and of all students' knowledge and skills in science and other subjects. Developing computer adaptive assessments is a necessary intermediate step toward a system that makes assessment more authentic by tightly linking its tasks and instructional activities and ultimately embedding assessment in instruction. It is vital for both consortia to keep these goals in mind, even in light of current technological and resource constraints.Integrate the development of new assessments with assessments of English language proficiency (ELP). The next generation of ELP assessments should take into consideration an English learners' specific level of proficiency in English. They will need to be based on ELP standards that sufficiently specify the target academic language competencies that English learners need to progress in and gain mastery of the Common Core Standards. One of the report's authors, Robert Linquanti, states: "Acknowledging and overcoming the challenges involved in fairly and accurately assessing ELs is integral and not peripheral to the task of developing an assessment system that serves all students well. Treating the assessment of ELs as a separate problem -- or, worse yet, as one that can be left for later -- calls into question the basic legitimacy of assessment systems that drive high-stakes decisions about students, teachers, and schools." Include virtual performance assessments as part of comprehensive state assessment systems. Virtual performance assessments have considerable promise for measuring students' inquiry and problem-solving skills in science and in other subject areas, because authentic assessment can be closely tied to or even embedded in instruction. The simulation of authentic practices in settings similar to the real world opens the way to assessment of students' deeper learning and their mastery of 21st century skills across the curriculum. We are just setting out on the road toward assessments that ensure fair and accurate measurement of performance for all students, and support for sustained improvements in teaching and learning. Developing assessments that realize these goals will take time, resources and long-term policy commitment. PARCC and SBAC are taking the essential first steps down a long road, and new technologies have begun to illuminate what's possible. This report seeks to keep policymakers' attention focused on the road ahead, to ensure that the choices they make now move us further toward the goal of college and career success for all students. This publication was released at an event on May 16, 2011

Informing Writing: The Benefits of Formative Assessment

Examines whether classroom-based formative writing assessment - designed to provide students with feedback and modified instruction as needed - improves student writing and how teachers can improve such assessment. Suggests best practices