Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item CROSS-LINGUISTIC TRANSFER OF SPELLING SKILLS IN SPANISH-SPEAKING ADULT ESL LEARNERS(2016) Bai, Yu; MacSwan, Jeff; Martin-Beltran, Melinda; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Spelling is an important literacy skill, and learning to spell is an important component of learning to write. Learners with strong spelling skills also exhibit greater reading, vocabulary, and orthographic knowledge than those with poor spelling skills (Ehri & Rosenthal, 2007; Ehri & Wilce, 1987; Rankin, Bruning, Timme, & Katkanant, 1993). English, being a deep orthography, has inconsistent sound-to-letter correspondences (Seymour, 2005; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). This poses a great challenge for learners in gaining spelling fluency and accuracy. The purpose of the present study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of English vowel spellings in Spanish-speaking adult ESL learners. The research participants were 129 Spanish-speaking adult ESL learners and 104 native English-speaking GED students enrolled in a community college located in the South Atlantic region of the United States. The adult ESL participants were in classes at three different levels of English proficiency: advanced, intermediate, and beginning. An experimental English spelling test was administered to both the native English-speaking and ESL participants. In addition, the adult ESL participants took the standardized spelling tests to rank their spelling skills in both English and Spanish. The data were analyzed using robust regression and Poisson regression procedures, Mann-Whitney test, and descriptive statistics. The study found that both Spanish spelling skills and English proficiency are strong predictors of English spelling skills. Spanish spelling is also a strong predictor of level of L1-influenced transfer. More proficient Spanish spellers made significantly fewer L1-influenced spelling errors than less proficient Spanish spellers. L1-influenced transfer of spelling knowledge from Spanish to English likely occurred in three vowel targets (/ɑɪ/ spelled as ae, ai, or ay, /ɑʊ/ spelled as au, and /eɪ/ spelled as e). The ESL participants and the native English-speaking participants produced highly similar error patterns of English vowel spellings when the errors did not indicate L1-influenced transfer, which implies that the two groups might follow similar trajectories of developing English spelling skills. The findings may help guide future researchers or practitioners to modify and develop instructional spelling intervention to meet the needs of adult ESL learners and help them gain English spelling competence.Item PRACTITIONER-RESEACH AS DISSERTATION: EXPLORING THE CONTINUITIES BETWEEN PRACTICE AND RESEARCH IN A COMMUNITY COLLEGE ESL CLASSROOM(2013) Jain, Rashi; Valli, Linda; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Traditional notions around research and teaching tend to project the two as separate, often conflicting, activities. My dissertation challenges this perceived dichotomy and explores points of connections, or continuities, between teaching and research through my own practice as an adjunct community-college English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor as well as a doctoral candidate at a research-intensive university. I use Wenger's (1998) framework of communities of practice to locate my practitioner research at the intersections of the academic community and the teaching community. I also employ Cochran-Smith and Lytle's (2009) ideas around the dialectic of practice and research to conceptualize the integration of research and practice in my dissertation project. I employ a pluralistic approach to the dissertation design and procedures by drawing upon and adapting elements from different research traditions and approaches in ways that best fitted my integrated practitioner research. Keeping doability and ethicality as my guiding principles, I provide authenticity to the thesis report by writing with deep reflexivity. With inquiry as my ongoing stance, I identify ways in which I integrated teaching and research: by primarily harnessing teaching tools to do research, and research tools to teach. I then propose that practitioner inquiry is an ongoing process, wherein the practitioner researcher analyzes in-depth a specific aspect of her pedagogy post-instruction to make research non-parasitic on teaching. I provide an example of such an ongoing inquiry by analyzing deeply a specific aspect of my own instruction--global Englishes and translinguistic identities in my ESL classroom. I thus make a case for engaging in practitioner inquiry that integrates teaching and research, and discuss the implications of my dissertation work for teacher preparation and professional development, doctoral education, TESOL and community college practice, as well as practitioner research at large. I finally conclude my doctoral thesis by reimagining myself as a pracademic: a coherent unified and hybrid identity that allows me to be both a practitioner and an academic at the same time without privileging either role; and invite my readers to push the boundaries of their own thinking about the roles of teachers and researchers in the academy.Item Pre-task planning time and working memory as predictors of accuracy, fluency, and complexity(2012) Nielson, Katharine Brown; DeKeyser, Robert; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Working memory, which accounts for the ability to process information in the face of interference, is critical to second language acquisition (SLA) and use. The interaction of working memory capacity (WMC) with specific pedagogical interventions is a logical place for empirical SLA research, both to examine the cognitive processes underpinning second language performance and to identify instructional treatments that may differentiate learners based on their WMC. A good candidate for such an examination is planning time, a pedagogical intervention that has been the subject of extensive empirical research, which has, thus far, been largely unrelated to WMC. The study undertaken here considers WMC along with two different types of pre-task planning time (guided and unguided) as predictors of the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of learners' discourse. Ninety-two intermediate ESL students from seven classes at a community college participated in this study by completing two different working memory span tasks as well as two different "there-and-then" oral story-telling tasks. The treatment condition of the story-telling tasks was manipulated so that learners' performance could be considered in terms of provision of pre-task planning (± planning), type of planning (guided vs. unguided), and order of planning (planning first or planning second). The results demonstrate that the relationship among type of planning time, order of planning time, and WMC is complex. Task order had a clear effect on learners' production, regardless of the provision of planning time. When learners began the series of story-telling tasks under the + planning condition, their output on the subsequent, unplanned task varied according to whether they had first received guided or unguided planning time. In addition, guided planning time and unguided planning time also have very different effects on learners' production, with guided planning time promoting a focus on accuracy at the expense of complexity and unguided planning time fostering fluency. Finally, this study indicates that task conditions can affect learners with high and low WMC in different ways. Learners with high WMC are more likely to comply with complex story-telling instructions, improving their focus on grammatical form at the expense of fluency, whereas learners with low WMC are more likely to improve their fluency as a result of task repetition, regardless of the task conditions.Item SURVIVING AND THRIVING: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO THE LIVES OF FIVE FILIPINA TEACHERS IN A U.S. URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT(2011) Nones-Austria, Maria Dolores; HUGHES, SHERICK; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study centers five Filipina non-native English speaking (NNES) teachers, who teach English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). It explores how we construct our identities as persons and as teachers who are surviving and thriving in one U.S. public urban school district. This study emphasizes the meanings of our experiences as language learners and as ESOL teachers in relation to our identity construction, and highlights the effects of cultural, linguistic and interpersonal elements on our identity transformation. The specific purpose of this study is to seek alternatives to (1) develop and enrich our understanding of the diverse learning and teaching journeys of Filipina NNES ESOL teachers that Mid-Atlantic Public Schools (MAPS) hired between 2005 and 2006, (2) understand and co-construct our identities as supported and marginalized, (3) look at other Filipina NNES ESOL teachers to juxtapose their experiences to my own, as a person with an insider/outsider perspective, and (4) to use our narratives to inform MAPS and other U.S. school district's efforts to recruit, support and retain Filipino teachers as well as other international teachers. Through narrative life history interviews, email follow-up interviews, informal conversations, and questionnaires, the study explored Filipina NNES ESOL teachers' experiences of becoming and being ESOL teachers in MAPS. The study hopes to encourage local and state policy makers and curriculum developers to design professional development plans for Filipino teachers, and to encourage researchers to do further research on the lived experiences of other K-12 international teachers; which may include groups such as Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Hispanic, Indians, Nigerians, Jamaicans, etc. through additional qualitative research designs like case study, portraiture and ethnography.