The purpose of my dissertation study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of English language instructors about the use of multimodal digital technologies in the teaching of academic writing. Writing academically in English as a second language (L2) is complex and multilayered for international students, and multimodal digital literacy…

As the online education market continues to expand globally, teaching and advertising have converged in digital spaces in unprecedented ways. Driven by the attention economy, independent online educators must compete to cultivate a consumer base. To attract followers, they must engage not only in online teaching activities but also in…

In recent decades, a plethora of empirical work has indicated that collaborative writing (CW) affords more opportunities for collective scaffolding and language negotiation (Li & Kim, 2016; Li & Zhu, 2013; Storch, 2019) and promotes the development of second language (L2) writing skills (Bikowski &Vithanage, 2016; Storch, 2013; Strobl,…

"Generation Z" multilingual writers are caught up in a globalized/globalizing and superdiverse linguistic and cultural contact zone as well as a neoliberal political and institutional environment. To understand how they inhabit their idiosyncratic literate worlds and practice their differences, I aligned myself with an ethnographic case…

For high school science teachers working with students who are in the beginning stages of English learning, it can be difficult to engage English learner (EL) students in using language that is accessible to understand complex scientific concepts. Improving EL students' access to science education is an important component of diversifying…

This dissertation focuses on four Indonesian education migrant families' navigations of language, literacy, and identity in transnational spaces. It argues for a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of international students pursuing their education in the USA with their accompanying family members. Drawing on conceptual framework of…

Adolescent newcomer students bring a wealth of linguistic and cultural resources to their learning environments--resources that become even more dynamic when combined with those of their peers. While a significant body of research has explored students' deployment of multilingual resources through translanguaging, most of this work does not…

This dissertation research is a longitudinal classroom ethnography in a second-grade classroom in a public Northeastern suburban school. It is a story of surprise for me as researcher, as I discover the multiplicity of how engagement can be conceptualized in this English-medium classroom with emergent bi/multilingual children. As tensions flowed…

This study explores the interplay of bilingualism, identity, literacy and culture for CubanAmerican students in the Cuban diaspora. I contextualize their experiences within the social, historical, and political background of Cuban immigration, situating their stories within the conflicting narratives of Cuban-American imagination in the U.S., to…

Recent progress in the discipline of computer applications such as the advent of web-based communication, afforded by the Web 2.0, has paved the way for novel applications in language learning, namely, social networking. Social networking has challenged the area of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) to expand its research palette in order to…

Although much research has gone into the sociolinguistics of the linguistic landscape (space for and language of public signs) in the "peripheral," non-native contexts of English Language use and users, none has been specifically devoted to a Nigerian context. This dissertation is intended to fill this wide gap. Focusing on the Ibadan…

Grounded in discourse analytic and language socialization paradigms, this dissertation examines issues of language and social identity construction in children attending a Russian Heritage Language Orthodox Christian Saturday School in California. By conducting micro-analysis of naturally-occurring talk-in-interaction combined with longitudinal…

Digital technologies surround our lives today and many adolescent students are actively engaged in reading and writing through multimodal digital technologies. The omnipresence of digital technologies in today's society inevitably influences students' literacy practices. Thus, there is an imminent need on the teacher's part to infuse technologies…

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity…