Adult English Language Learner Pathway to Literacy Initiative

In 2017, Kari Moore of Exodus Refugee Immigration and Ginger Kosobucki of the Immigrant Welcome Center met and discussed the unique needs Kari had noticed in her beginning literacy learners at Exodus. In 2018, Ginger led the Immigrant Welcome Center’s Adult ELL Research Project, which exposed the need for more classes geared for literacy-level learners, as well as more teacher training. In 2020, Kari and Ginger collaborated to lead professional development opportunities for Indianapolis teachers, including ATLAS Study Circles and a 2-day TESOL training with an expert from Literacy Minnesota. Since that time, they have formed a cohort -- the Pathway to Literacy development team -- consisting of teachers from programs around the city. The team has developed a 10-week pilot program, an assessment tool, and a website all designed to more effectively serve the needs of adult immigrants and refugees developing literacy skills for the first time. The Adult ELL Pathway to Literacy Initiative, a collaborative effort among educators in Indianapolis, is an attempt to provide access to vulnerable learners who have had limited access to educational opportunities.

Code-meshing Projects in K-12 Classrooms for Social and Linguistic Equity

To contest monolingualism, which oppresses language diversity in U.S. classrooms, Horner et al. (2011) called for a translingual approach to language differences. As much of the literature on translingualism has remained at a theoretical level, writing teachers have been seeking to enact this disposition in their classrooms pedagogically. As a response to this, code-meshing (Young, 2004, 2013; Canagarajah, 2006, 2011) can be used as a pedagogical application of the translingual approach. This paper conceptualizes code-meshing as translingual pedagogy and explores how it can be used in K-12 contexts by examining documented K-12 classroom examples of code-meshing projects in the studies of Zapata and Laman (2016) and Pacheco et al. (2017). Despite the concerns that critics have voiced, the examples show that code-meshing can be used as an effective pedagogical tool for developing the translingual disposition, supporting students’ multilingual identity, and discussing social and linguistic equity in K-12 settings. While the structural limitations for translingual pedagogy are not unforeseen, teachers and researchers should be encouraged to collaborate and keep developing translingual pedagogy for linguistic and social equity.

COVID-19 and Pandemic Teaching: Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning and English Learner Teachers

The purpose of this study is to illuminate how English Learner (EL) teachers in the Great Lakes region responded to the sudden shift to emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) at the onset of COVID-19 school closures in March 2020. Using an online survey, we examined how EL teachers from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin continued legal provisions of instruction and service through the end of the 2019-2020 school year. We look closely at the state of Indiana, a state with a more recent immigrant population and where requirements for EL licensure and preparation are not yet required. Although findings show that schools and districts violated legal requirements for ELs, this is polarized by the lack of required training and licensure in Indiana among those serving in the role of EL teacher.

Exploring Secondary Teachers’ Willingness to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs

The growing English language learner (ELL) population is expanding in the United States from concentrated, urban areas to smaller, rural school districts in which mainstream content teachers provide most instruction for these students (DelliCarpini & Alonso, 2014). Most mainstream content teachers at the secondary level, however, have had little or no training in teaching ELLs and do not currently provide the differentiated instruction necessary for ELLs to be successful (Musanti & Pence, 2010; Rubinstein-Avila & Lee, 2014). Previous research has explored teacher attitudes toward ELLs in mainstream classes and the teacher beliefs related to teacher identity, teacher responsibility, and self-efficacy which all emerge as relevant to teaching ELLs. However, there is no prior research on the association these three factors potentially have with teachers’ willingness to differentiate their instruction for ELLs in mainstream classrooms. This study explored these three factors of identity, responsibility, and self-efficacy as well as EL training, their relationship to each other, and their potential correlation with a teacher’s willingness to differentiate (WTD) instruction for ELLs in a mainstream classroom. Results indicate that identity and responsibility correlate most with a willingness to differentiate, but self-efficacy, along with several other emergent factors, are also relevant.

Sound and Simple Approach to an Extensive Reading Project

The evidence is undeniable that extensive reading (ER) improves reading comprehension, vocabulary, and motivation. Nevertheless, ER is often neglected in ESL classrooms. In order to introduce ER to more ESL teachers’ repertoires, this article will present a developed, principled, and practical ER project suitable for almost any classroom teaching situation. Readers will gain an overview of the literature surrounding ER and be provided with practical ideas, resources, rubrics, activity descriptions, and examples from the author’s personal practice of ways to implement an ER project in their institutions and classrooms.

Motivational Strategies in English as Foreign Language Teaching: a research review

The paper aims to review and synthesize the research literature relating to the use and effectiveness of motivational strategies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. First, an overview is presented of the prestigious empirical studies (10) across the world that provided evidence for the impact of motivational strategies on enhancing students’ English learning motivations. Then, different research methodologies are assessed, effective motivational strategies both across different cultural contexts and culture-dependent are identified and the outcomes of the applications of motivational strategies are discussed. Finally, the limitations of the related research are explored and implications for future motivational strategies research are provided.

Tutors’ and Multilingual Writers’ Narrative Framing of Writing Center Visits

This study explores how first-year multilingual writers in a classroom community make sense of their first university writing center visits. Employing narrative analysis of student journals, this study illustrates differences in themes writers discuss in their narratives of first writing center visits and themes in self-reflections on their writing. Comparing narratives in student journals and tutor report forms, this study also presents the congruities and discrepancies between writer and tutor views of a session. Writer emphasis on grammar when narrating writing center visits contrasts with writer emphasis on development in self-reflections on their writing. When tutor and writer session descriptions differ, tutors emphasize discussion of development and organization while writers emphasize sentence-level accuracy. Without scaffolding of strategies for writing center use, first-year multilingual writers may privilege sentence-level feedback in their early understanding of the writing center, resulting in a more limited experience of writing center support.

Building the Bridge Between Schools and Families through Assessment of Young English Language Learners

Teachers of English Language Learners have a unique opportunity to connect with families through observation, documentation, and assessment of these children. Using a developmentally appropriate and asset-based approach, assessment information can be collected and shared with families to engage them in the learning process. This article provides the practical steps of using a variety of primarily formative assessment methods by which teachers of ELL's can build this vital bridge to families successfully.

Code-switching Between English and Russian with Russian Heritage Speakers, Born and Raised in Russian-speaking Families in the USA

Code-switching is one of the major areas in the field of Bilingualism. Code-switching describes the processes of switching between languages among those who know and speak more than one language. This article will analyze the code-switching between Russian and English in Russian heritage speakers. They are first year students at a large Midwestern university, born in the U.S. to Russian-speaking parents. They have been taking university Russian classes for two semesters. The students were asked to record two five-minute dialogues with their parents who also speak Russian and English. There was neither instruction to use solely Russian, nor the use of English was prohibited. The goal of the research was to count and analyze the instances of code-switching between Russian and English, and prove or reject the hypothesis that there would be fewer code-switching instances in the dialogue devoted to a family holiday versus the dialogue devoted to university classes. The dialogue topics were furnished beforehand, however, no preparation was asked. The speech was asked to be spontaneous and natural. The findings proved the hypothesis that code-switching instances in the first dialogue were less frequent, so the students were mainly using only one language - Russian - without switching to English very often. The second dialogue revealed more code-switching instances as was initially supposed. Conclusions and directions for future research are presented.