A Qualitative Study of Out-Of-Class Learning Opportunities Among First Year
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A Qualitative Study of Out-of-class Learning Opportunities among First Year ESL Freshmen in a College Town Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Yin Lam Lee, B.A., M.A. Graduate Program in Education and Human Ecology The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Professor David Bloome, Co-advisor Professor Alan Hirvela, Co-advisor Professor Caroline Clark Copyrighted by Yin Lam Lee 2012 Abstract This dissertation describes a five-month qualitative study of how five ESL learners and their twenty two native speaking peers socially constructed learning opportunities in out- of-class settings in a college town in the Midwest in the 2009/10 academic year The study was driven by a gap in the literature about college level ESL learners’ social interaction and its relationship to their ESL learning. The core participants were five ESL freshmen at the college level: two from China, two from Japan, and one from Honduras. The non-core participants were twenty-two native speaking peers of the core participants, ranging from freshman to senior level at the college. The theoretical framework was built upon interactional sociolinguistics. The research design was based on ethnographic inquiry. The corpus of data included fieldnotes, interviews, diaries written by the participants, artifacts collected from the participants, and participant observations, which consisted of both audio and video recordings of the participants’ social interactions apart from class time. Microethnographic discourse analysis was used to analyze the transcriptions of participant observation, which formed the major part of the data corpus. The empirical findings of this study serve as a rich data corpus about the kinds and nature of out-of-class social events engaged by college level ESL learners. A structural pattern emerged from the discourse analysis of the participant observations, i.e., initiation, ii negotiation, uptake/acknowledgement (INU/A). In addition, a new framework capturing out-of-class learning opportunities was also generated through grounded theorizing. The new framework contributes to the fields of TESOL and literacy education both theoretically and empirically. On the theoretical level, it highlights that out-of-class learning is a dialogic, dialectic, and discursive process. On the empirical level, it serves as a rich data corpus documenting the out-of-class social interactions among ESL learners from January 2009 to May 2010. iii Dedicated to God and my parents, Cheungwa Li, and Yim Lau iv Acknowledgements My interest in TESOL and literacy education is closely related to my family history and the diasporas that happened in Southeast Asia in the late 1970s, when my family moved from mainland China to Hong Kong. My parents were both college- educated professionals in China, but their qualifications were not honored by the Hong Kong society, one of the major reasons being the English education that was missing in the mainland higher education system. Because of the relocation to Hong Kong, we suddenly turned into a disenfranchised new immigrant family, and I felt embarrassed that my parents were not proficient in Cantonese (a local vernacular) and English (an official language required in school and the workplace due to the colonization policy of the United Kingdom). Before 1997, when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China, being proficient in English was important for survival purposes. As such, my parents took nighttime ESL classes in order to climb up the social and economic ladders. I witnessed how they struggled with ESL classes and I felt their pain, so I gradually became interested in TESOL and literacy education. The calling of my life is to explore new ways to help new immigrants learn English. My doctoral studies journey began in 2006 when I decided to take the challenge and move to Columbus, Ohio, a city that is nothing like Hong Kong or any of the other v metropolitan cities in which I ever lived. But then I realized that it was the people around me who shaped and reshaped me as an educational researcher in the past five years. First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my two advisors, Dr. David Bloome and Dr. Alan Hirvela. Without their guidance in the past years, I would never be able to accomplish my goal as an educational researcher. Dr. Bloome and Dr. Hirvela inspired me in many ways during my dissertation writing stage, and I am indebted to them for their generous guidance and support. I am also indebted to Dr. Clark, Dr. Samimy, Dr. Haneda, Dr. Miller, Dr. Lather, Dr. Walker, Dr. Noda, and Dr. Li, who shared with me their expertise and experience in language education. Also, I would like to extend my gratitude to my friends in Columbus, OH: Ada & Louis So, Michael Johnson, Shiau Jing Guo, Huili Hong, Heather Hill, Ruilan Zhao, Sanghee Ryu, Hanning Chen, Nan Meng, and Xiaohuan Tan. Thank you very much for sharing your lives with me! vi Vita January 19, 1979…………………………………………………………….Born in China 2002…..B.A. (Double-major in Linguistics & Translation) The University of Hong Kong 2004………...M.A. (Computer-aided Translation) The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2006….……..M.A. (Applied English Linguistics) The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2007-2009…....Research Associate, Foreign Language Center, The Ohio State University 2011-2012………………………………...Graduate Associate, The Ohio State University 2012…...Ph.D. (Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Education) The Ohio State University Publications Lee, Y.L. (2010). The application of Bakhtinian theories on second language reading comprehension: A qualitative case study. Reading Matrix, 10(2), 222-242. Lee, Y.L. (2011). Conceptualizing the dialogic discourse between adult immigrants and their learning resources in an ESL class. Ohio TESOL Journal, 4(1), 16-18. Lee, Y.L. (2011). Students’ and teachers’ appropriation of faith and biblical teaching: A reflection. TESOL CELT Caucus Newsletter, 3(2). Lee, Y.L. (2012). Reappropriating my professional identity as a nonnative speaking ESL instructor in a college town. TESOL NNEST Caucus Newsletter, February. Fields of Study Major Field: Education and Human Ecology Area of Emphasis: Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Language Education Cognate Area: Discourse Analysis, Qualitative Research vii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………....................ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..v Vita, Publications, and Fields of Study….……………………………………………..vii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………xiii List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………...xv List of Photographs……………………………………………………………………..xvi List of Illustrations……………………………………………………………………...xvii Chapter One: Introduction Introduction……………………………………………………..…………...…...1 Statement of the Research Problem………………………………………...........3 Significance of the Study………………………………………………………...7 Setting and Participants of the Study……………………………………………10 Definitions of Key Terms………………………………………………….….....10 Accommodation, Assimilation, & Acculturation……………………......10 Acquisition versus Learning…………………...………………………...12 Appropriation……………...……………………………………………..13 College Town……………………….……………………………………14 Discourse………….…………………………………………...…………14 ESL Freshmen…………………………….………………………...……14 viii Interaction…………………………………………………………...…..15 Learning Opportunities………………………………………...………..15 Literacy Events and Practices…………………...…………………...….16 Native Speaking Peers……………………..…………………………....16 Out-of-class Learning………………………………………………...…16 Qualitative Study………………………………………………...…...…17 Second Language Acquisition……………………………………......…18 Speech Community…………………………………………….......……18 Language Socialization…………………………..…………………...…19 Socially Competent Participants………………………...………...…….19 Research Bias and Assumptions……………………………………………...…20 Outline of the Dissertation…………………………………………………..…..20 Chapter Two: Theoretical Framework and Literature Review Introduction………………………………………………………………...……21 Theoretical Framework……………………………………………………….…21 The Evolution of the Construct of Learning Opportunities……………………..23 Social Aspects of Learning in Second Language Acquisition…………………..27 Literature Review of Out-of-class Learning among ESL Learners……………...32 Chapter Three: Methodology Contextual Information………………………………………………………….38 Participants………………………………………………………………38 ix Core Group: Five first year ESL students ………………………38 Noncore Group: 22 conversational partners of ESL students…...39 Research Site…………………………………………………………….40 My Role as a Researcher………………………………………...……....46 Qualitative Inquiry…………………………………………………...………….47 Research Design………………………………………………………………...50 Research Timeline………………………………………………………...……..54 Discussions on Data Collection Methods……………………………………….55 Fieldnotes……………………………………………………………….55 Diaries…………………………………………………………………..55 Collection of artifacts from the core participants ……………………...56 One-on-one structured interviews with the core participants…………..56 One-on-one structured interviews with noncore participants……….….57 Participant observation………………………………………………....57 Data Analysis………………………………………………………………..….63 Using a Microethnographic Approach to Analyze the Video Recordings from Participant Observations…………………………………………………….…67 Other Means of Data Analyses………………………………………………...70 Chapter Four: Findings Grand Tour……………………………………………………………..74 Participation in Tutorial Sessions………………………….…...76 x On-campus Employments……………………………………....81 Lunch and Dinner Gatherings…………………………….…….86