Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation explored the teaching for transfer experiences of two second language (L2) writing teachers who taught an undergraduate-level academic writing course at an American university. Focusing on how the two teachers approached undergraduate source-based writing instruction, with a specific focus on transfer, this study sheds light on the nature and challenges of teaching for transfer in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context, an area that is underdeveloped in the current L2 writing scholarship. Guided by theoretical perspectives concerning reading-writing connections, especially reading to write, and learning transfer, a qualitative case study was conducted through a variety of data gathering instruments, such as teacher interviews, teacher stimulated recalls, classroom observation field notes, video recording, instructional artifacts, and focal student interviews. Participants of the study included two teachers and three focal students from the two teachers' classes. A key point regarding the teachers was that they brought different backgrounds concerning formal knowledge of transfer into their teaching. By following the two teachers' instructional practices throughout a full academic term (16 weeks), this study sought to provide an in-depth and holistic picture of how the two teachers handled transfer in their classrooms. The findings of this study revealed that, overall, the two teachers addressed various dimensions of transfer, including: (a) transfer between reading and writing, (b) transfer between L1 and L2, (c) transfer between instruction and major writing assignments, (d) transfer between instruction and in-class writing practices, (e) transfer across major writing tasks, and (f) transfer beyond the 1902 course. However, there were differences between them in terms of how they treated those dimensions of transfer with respect to their approaches and to the amounts of instructional time they allocated to them. Despite these differ (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); Newell George (Committee Member); Francis Troyan (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; English As A Second Language; Pedagogy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, EDU Teaching and Learning

This dissertation explores seven second language (L2) undergraduates' learning experiences in a First-Year Writing (FYW) course at an American university. While the FYW course is designed from the perspective of first-language (L1) composition scholarship and focuses, broadly speaking, on analytical writing and the related development of critical thinking skills, the English as a Second Language (ESL) writing courses most of the participants had taken are designed from the perspective of second language (L2) writing scholarship and the development of more fundamental writing skills. Thus, employing a qualitative case-study approach, the present study was especially interested in the L2 students' transition from ESL to FYW, as this kind of study is not common in writing scholarship, though many L2 writers participate in both types of courses, thus generating a need for such an investigation. Driven by the theoretical frameworks of knowledge telling versus knowledge transforming, writing to learn, as well as transfer of learning, data was collected through interviews, journals, think-aloud protocols, classroom observations, field notes, and text-based artifacts. Participants included seven L2 undergraduates from Honduras, Bangladesh, and China recruited from three different sections of FYW; two FYW instructors; and the director of the First-Year Writing Program. Five of the L2 students (those from China) had taken one or two ESL writing courses at the university before they took the FYW course, and their experiences were of particular interest during the study. By following the participants throughout a 15-week semester as they engaged the various FYW course assignments, the study produced an in-depth look at their task representations of what they were asked to do and how they responded to the course activities and expectations. The findings reveal, first, that the seven L2 undergraduates used their first languages (L1) in various situations when the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Alan Hirvela (Advisor); DeWitt Scott (Committee Member); Halasek Kay (Committee Member); Selfe Cynthia (Committee Member) Subjects: Composition; Curriculum Development; Education; English As A Second Language; Higher Education; Literacy

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, EDU Teaching and Learning

This study investigated the intelligibility of Chinese graduate students to their Indian, Chinese, Korean, and American peers. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine the teaching priorities for English for Academic Purposes in the US, where listeners have a wide variety of native languages. Research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), International Teaching Assistants, and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has not provided sufficient empirical data on the factors that affect intelligible English communication among academic professionals with many native languages (L1). SLA has focused on the processes and factors affecting the acquisition of second language (L2) phonology; and ITA research has focused on the communication needs of international graduate students teaching American undergraduates. Both perspectives examine the intelligibility of foreign-accented speech to native English-speaking listeners. World Englishes (WE) and ELF argue for more research from the perspective of L2 listeners, which thus far has largely been limited to linguistic descriptions and case studies. A psycholinguistic word-recognition-in-noise study was designed to examine to what extent a talker's L1 and segmental pronunciation accuracy affected intelligibility, and how this varied by a listener's L1 and word familiarity. Participants included 6 male graduate students (Chinese & American) as talkers and 72 graduate students (Indian, Chinese, Korean, & American) as listeners. The oral English proficiency level of the international participants was held constant at “graduate TA certification” and all American listeners were natives of Ohio. Talkers were recorded reading 60 sentences from the Bamford-Kowal-Bench Standard Sentence Lists, revised for American English. The stimuli were mixed with white noise at a +5 dB signal-to-noise ratio and presented in a counterbalanced design to listeners, who transcribed the sentences they heard. Intelligibility was calculated using a dich (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Keiko Samimy PhD (Advisor); Mary Beckman PhD (Advisor); Shari Speer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Language; Linguistics; Mathematics Education; Science Education