Purpose: This paper aims to illustrate how first-generation immigrant youth who are English language learners respond to graphic novels and what literacies they acquire from reading and discussing graphic texts. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on qualitative discourse data collected from an afterschool program with five…

Thousands of students in California learn English as a second language in schools that utilize exclusively monolingual--English Only--literacy programs. With such programs students do not have the opportunity to use the knowledge of their first language in order to acquire and master their second language. The project of cooperative bi-literacy…