Reading skills are critical for English as a Second Language (ESL) students in higher education to achieve academic success. However, effective ways to promote student success in ESL reading courses are under-researched. Identifying factors that may enhance the quality and outcomes of learning ESL reading is essential. One such factor identified…

There is limited research on second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning which provides fine-grained descriptions of how vocabulary explanations (VE) are interactionally managed in beginning-level L2 classrooms where learners have a limited L2 repertoire, and how the VEs could contribute to the learners' conceptual understanding of the…

The study documented the dynamic process of designing and implementing instructional interventions in an online course of Japanese language and culture at a two-year college. The results have impact in three distinct areas: pedagogical, theoretical, and methodological. First, the interventions that encouraged student agency with rich…

This is a design study meant to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating three rather different theoretical perspectives for future efforts in multimedia instructional design. A multimedia instructional grammar program contextualized within the teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) was developed and evaluated. The program design was…

This article reports on a study investigating ways students from Japan studying English as a second language at an American community college encounter cultural dissonance in their classroom interactions. I take a sociocognitive view rooted in the work of Bakhtin and Vygostky to explore the ways language, culture, and cognitive processes interplay…

Since its inception in 2002, the National Center for Education Research (NCER) in the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) has funded over 700 education research grants and over 60 education training grants. The research grants have supported exploratory research to build theory or generate hypotheses on factors that may affect educational…

This essay describes how interclass collaboration in the context of an in-depth interdisciplinary discussion and analysis of global problems can yield significant benefits in the development of ESL students' sense of efficacy, their literacy, and their critical thinking skills. Collaborative lessons expose the students to new and varied…

Members of a site of the California Writing Project conducted the study in this article in partnership with a large, urban, low-SES school district where 93% of the students speak English as a second language and 69% are designated Limited English Proficient. Over an eight-year period, a relatively stable group of 55 secondary teachers engaged in…

Reading comprehension plays a key role in academic success in today's classrooms. Literature Circles (LCs), a learner-centered collaborative reading activity, brings together the ideas of cooperative learning, independent reading, and reader response theory to enhance students' reading comprehension as well as their motivation toward learning…