The purpose of this study was to describe how Black males access and perceive academic discourse when situated in an academic probation class. Recognizing time management, test preparation, and other learning and study strategies as hidden features of the curriculum, the academic probation course addressed these features through explicit…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to determine the extent to which preservice teachers could identify various academic language markers (general academic and discipline-specific vocabulary, passive voice, nominalization, logical connections, and referents--pronouns and synonyms) in complex texts and describe the language that make texts…

This mixed methods study examined how preservice teachers developed awareness and beliefs about design features and academic language features when choosing and evaluating digital math games for English language learners. The overarching research question for this study was, "How do preservice teachers develop awareness and beliefs about…

In language acquisition, writing is the most challenging skill that English learners must master. Students often struggle at the beginning of their writing process with idea generation. Due to students' low academic achievement and their struggles, online mind mapping is suggested as a useful tool to support language students' brainstorms and idea…

Over recent decades, the maker movement has expanded from the private sector, libraries, and higher education institutions to K-12 schools. While many studies provide implications of STEM and maker activities and their effects on learning in informal settings, few have framed such investigations within the context of a makerspace in K-12 schools.…

The ability to use citations correctly becomes an essential skill that needs to be learned by all students, American or international, enrolling in an institution of higher learning in the United States. The difficulties that student writers, particularly second-language writers, experience with source use in academic writing have been widely…

The primary purpose of this qualitative narrative study was to explore the lived experiences of international PhD students who used academic English literacy during their research for their theses/dissertations. The second purpose of this study was to identify ways international PhD students mitigated academic language challenges for their…

The aim of this study was to determine why, although rigorous standards in English language arts (ELA) have been adopted in a northwestern state and were designed to build toward college readiness, high school students graduating from a college readiness curriculum are not college ready in the area of writing. The purpose of the research was to…

A growing body of research has focused on Black and Latino males in community colleges, but the research has stopped short of exploring how they experience the academic language of the community college. The purpose of this qualitative, narrative study was to explore the stories of Black and Latino males at a community college in Maryland to…

As online collaboration continues to normalize in the post-pandemic digital age, how students engage online through collaborative learning has grown in importance. Web 2.0 has led to a shift in learner engagement that impacts the ways students interact with class content, and this provides opportunities for more meaningful collaboration and…

This dissertation examines how the transmission of language ideologies on a US campus shapes Chinese international students' experiences regarding English academic writing. The study is motivated by past research that demonstrates the challenges of mastering English academic writing, particularly for people who did not speak English early in life.…

This study was focused on adult English language learners (ELLs) that described their experiences with language acquisition in an elementary, middle, or high school in the United States. The problem addressed in this qualitative descriptive study was that public schools were unable to handle the academic inadequacies of ELLs as well as the…

Academic speech in the higher education community is an important form of communication and connection for scholars. Metacognition of academic speech for international multilingual graduate students is an understudied area. The purpose of the current study was to understand metacognition during academic speech for international multilingual…

Multilingual college students often struggle with writing and revising for academic purposes. This dissertation explored the effectiveness of a Concept-Based Language Instruction (C-BLI) approach to teaching revision processes to college-level multilingual writers. Although a significant body of research exists on effective feedback on…

This phenomenological study research presents an option to use both discourse in the native language and technology as an alternative to improve the understanding of mathematics in secondary education. 13 students whose native language is Spanish attended a high school in a large urban school district in the Southwest of the United States,…