Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2012 A syntax-based reading intervention for English as second-language learners Christina Tausch Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons Recommended Citation Tausch, Christina, "A syntax-based reading intervention for English as second-language learners" (2012). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3571. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3571 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. A SYNTAX-BASED READING INTERVENTION FOR ENGLISH AS SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNERS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Sciences and Disorders by Christina Tausch First State Examination for Teachers, Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, 2003 Diploma, Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz University Hannover, 2006 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2008 August 2012 DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my grandparents, Ursula and Henning Rodewald, for their unconditional love and support of all my academic endeavors. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My goal of completing my doctoral studies would not have been accomplished without the support and encouragement of many. I would like to thank my family and friends for all they have done for me, especially my grandparents who always encouraged me to pursue my dreams. I am very grateful to my former mentor and friend Birgit Luetje-Klose who introduced me to holistic language intervention approaches for German as second-language learners. Thank you for believing in me and for challenging me to reach my goals, even if they included a move across the ocean. Your guidance and mentorship throughout my graduate programs in Hannover shaped my research interests, and I thank you for all the opportunities to be actively engaged in the research process. Thank you to the faculty, students, and staff of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Department for welcoming me into your community and for providing a place to ask questions and to grow as a researcher. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my major professor, Dr. Jan Norris. Without you, I would have never started this challenging journey. Thank you for all the Wednesday night meetings, all the discussions, and for your confidence in me. I truly appreciate your clinical and academic guidance over the last several years. Your enthusiasm for language and literacy and your dedication to your work and students have tremendously influenced my academic development and research endeavors. Thank you to my committee members, Dr. Hoffman, Dr. Pierce, and Dr. Jin for guiding me through the dissertation process and for all your valuable contributions and critical feedback. I am very grateful to you all for constantly challenging me, for providing different theoretical perspectives and for preparing me to become a better researcher and writer. iii I would like to thank all participating students, their families and their teachers, specifically Ms. Paula Harding for all her help with the organization of the study and her enthusiasm about the intervention program. Thank you to the clinicians who administered the intervention, Laura Davis, Mary Elizabeth Dilday, Zainab Maqsood, Rebecca Repp, Amy Sewell Upton, and Angelle Villarrubia. This project would not have been possible without your help. Thank you to all fellow doctoral students, specifically to Crystal Randolph for all your contributions to this study, Mona Alkadi and Janet Bradshaw for all your feedback and encouragement throughout the last years, not to mention all the long hours at the library. I would like to thank Nikki Curtis for all our ongoing discussions about literature, theoretical concepts and conference projects- I will never forget our travelling adventures and will always be grateful for all the advice and suggestions you gave me. My colleagues and friends from the Leibniz University in Hannover and the Academic Programs Abroad Office at LSU deserve thanks for their understanding and support, especially during the last difficult years in my program. Thank you for being my critics and my cheerleaders. I am thankful to all other faculty members, colleagues, and friends from other universities and research institutions who guided me during the last years and shared their expertise with me. Last, but not least, thank you to all my friends from the IM for being my family away from home and a special thank you to Judith and James Oxley for their continued support and confidence. I am forever grateful for the friendship you have shown me since I arrived in Louisiana. Thank you all for helping me to complete this part of my journey. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………. iii LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………………………… vi LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………….. vii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………… viii INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………….. 1 METHODS……………………………………………………………………………. 41 RESULTS……………………………………………………………………………... 65 DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………………… 78 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………. 93 APPENDIX A: PARENT CONSENT FORM………………………………………… 106 APPENDIX B: CHILD ASSENT FORM……………………………………………. 108 APPENDIX C: PARENT INFORMATION…………………………………………… 109 APPENDIX D: PARENT LANGUAGE QUESTIONNAIRE……………………….. 110 APPENDIX E: LESSON PLANS FOR POWERPOINT INTERVENTION………… 111 APPENDIX F: LESSON PLAN FOR PHONEMIC AWARENESS INTERVENTION.. 126 APPENDIX G: EXAMPLES FOR PHONEMIC AWARENESS STORIES………… 128 APPENDIX H: EXAMPLES FOR PHONEMIC AWARENESS PROBES………….. 130 APPENDIX I: EXAMPLES FOR SENTENCE COMBINING PROBES……………. 134 APPENDIX J: FIDELITY MEASURE……………………………………………… 137 APPENDIX K: POWERPOINT INTERVENTION STORIES……………………... 138 APPENDIX L: APPROVAL FORMS………………………………………………. 141 VITA…………………………………………………………………………………... 146 v LIST OF TABLES 1. Demographic Characteristics of Experimental and Control Students……….. 43 2. Profile of Subject’s English Proficiency Performance on the English Language Development Assessment (ELDA)…………………………………………….. 46 3. Group Comparisons for the English Language Development Assessment…….. 47 4. Profile of Oral and Written Language Abilities on Individually Administered Instruments at Pretest for Experimental and Control Students………………… 50 5. Means, Standard Deviations and Group Differences for Language Scores And Age by Treatment Group……………………………………………………. 51 6. Medians, Mean Ranks and Group Differences for Reading Scores by Treatment Group……………………………………………………………….. 51 7. Schedule of PowerPoints and Grammatical Structures Introduced by Day And Week………………………………………………………………………. 58 8. Schedule of Phonemes Introduced by Day and Week…………………………... 61 9. Comparison of Group Gains for Sentence Combining by Receptive English Language Proficiency…………………………………………………………… 67 10. Comparison of Group Gains for Word Ordering by Receptive English Language Proficiency…………………………………………………………… 68 11. Comparison of Group Gains for Written Sentence Combining by Receptive English Language Proficiency………………………………………………….. 70 12. Pre- and Posttest Median Scores for Isolated Word Recognition (BRI)………... 71 13. Profile of Level Changes in Isolated Word Recognition……………………….. 71 14. Pre- and Posttest Median Scores for Word Recognition in Context (BRI)…….. 72 15. Profile of Level Changes in Word Recognition in Context……………………. 73 16. Pre and Posttest Median Scores for Reading Comprehension (BRI)……………. 73 17. Profile of Level Changes in Reading Comprehension…………………………… 74 vi LIST OF FIGURES 1. Scaffolded PowerPoint Slide with animations………………………………. 52 2. Visual Grammar Noun card with mnemonics superimposed into letter to provide parts of speech…………………………………………………... 53 3. Phonemic Awareness Story…………………………………………………. 53 4. Phonic Faces picture cards…………………………………………………. 54 5. Consonant Placement Chart………………………………………………… 54 6. Word Train………………………………………………………………….. 55 7. Visual Grammar Pronoun card with mnemonics superimposed into letter to provide parts of speech…………………………………………………… 59 8. Mean Pretest and Posttest Scores for TOLD:I Sentence Combining Subtest.. 66 9. Mean Pretest and Posttest Scores for TOLD:I Word Ordering Subtest……… 67 10. Mean Pretest and Posttest Scores for TOLD:I Written Sentence Combining Subtest…………………………………………………………… 69 11. Mean Scores for Dibels Oral Reading Fluency Probe over Six Weeks…….. 75 12. Mean Scores for Dibels Retell Probe over Six Weeks………………………. 76 13. Mean Scores for Sentence Combining Probe over Six Weeks……………... 77 14. Mean Scores for Decoding Probe over Six Week……………………………. 77 vii ABSTRACT Students with English as second language (ESL) are typically behind monolingual peers in reading comprehension even when phonemic awareness skills, phonics and word recognition are at grade level. The lack of syntactic awareness is one of the reasons cited in multiple studies (August & Shanahan, 2010; Da Fountoura & Siegel, 1995; Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Lesaux et al., 2006; Chong, 2009). This study investigated the