Low Educated Second Language and Literacy (LESLLA) For Adults

Impact of Alphabetic Print Literacy Level on Oral Second Language Acquisition
Martha Bigelow, Elaine Tarone, Kit Hansen, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
This exploratory study documents the impact of alphabetic print literacy on Somali L1 adolescents’ acquisition and use of oral English L2 skills. Oral tasks include recast, elicited imitation, and oral narrative. Results show systematic differences related to alphabetic print literacy.
Room: The Fan

Are these Learners Learning Disabled or Teaching Disabled?
Robin Lovrien Schwarz, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA
Learners with low or no literacy are reported in many programs to have mild to severe learning difficulties. A closer look reveals that often problems are “pedagogically induced” – the result of basic learning needs not being taken into account.
Room: Church Hill

Balancing Literacy Instruction for Second-language Learners
David Red, Fairfax County Public Schools Adult & Community Education, Virginia
The importance of “lower-level” skills in reading has been devalued in second-language instruction, especially in the absence of research in this area. The importance of teaching these skills and appropriate methods for doing so are the subject of this presentation.
Room: Carytown

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Memory, L2 Reading, and Lexicon
Jeanne Kurvers, Tilburg University, Netherlands
Ineke van de Craats, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
In this paper the results will be discussed of a study on the relationship between working memory capacity and learning L2 vocabulary and learning how to read and write. Literate and non-literate adults and children will be compared.
Room: The Fan

Specialized Teaching Methods Used to Assist Pre-literate and Non-literate ESOL Adults in Literacy Acquisition
Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL
This paper is on the identification of processes used by pre-literate/non-literate adult ESOL students in their attempt to acquire literacy. Information will be provided on the students’ use of a visual route versus a phonological route during literacy acquisition.
Room: Church Hill

The Role of Literacy in the Development of L2 Morpho-syntax from an Organic Grammar Perspective
Anne Vainikka, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Martha Young-Scholten, Newcastle University (UK)
Literacy involves general cognition, where a modular view of acquisition rules out influence of literacy on the development of L2 competence (Tarone & Bigelow 2005). Where low-literate adults fossilize at a basic L2 grammar (Klein & Perdue 1997), we see the influence of literacy primarily on access to input, but consider modification of the strong modular position for morpho-syntactic development.
Room: Carytown

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Development of Word Recognition Skills in a Second Language
Jeanne Kurvers, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
How do adult illiterates learn to read and write in a second language? Is the learning to recognize written words similar to what is known from young children? In this presentation, some results of research on the development of word recognition skills of illiterate adult migrants learning to read Dutch as a second language will be presented. The outcomes are discussed in the context of different models of beginning reading stage versus non-stage models. Besides, the results in semi-intensive courses of 15 hours a week are compared to those of adults who only went to school a few hours a week.
Room: The Fan

English Language/Literacy Learners in US Prisons
William R. Muth, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
Approximately 50,000 (28 percent) of adults incarcerated in the US Federal Prison System are non-citizens. Most are English language learners. Workshop reviews literacy-related issues related to: demographics, education policy, reading patterns, and teaching and learning prison. Room: Church Hill

Comparing Effects of Individual Cognitive Differences on L2 English in College-educated and Low-educated Learners of English as a Second Language
Alan Juffs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Guillermo Rodriguez, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Recent second language acquisition research has questioned whether L2Aers process the L2 using the same kinds of algorithms as native-speakers. This paper focuses on differences between college-educated and non-college-educated Spanish-speaking learners of ESL in reading sentences containing ambiguities. It examines the roles played by cognitive and socio-cultural factors in explaining some of these differences.
Room: Carytown

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• Classroom literacy practices of entry-level ESOL learners in England
  James Simpson, University of Leeds, UK
  This paper concerns ESOL learners who are long-term UK residents and who have little foundational L1 literacy. What are their salient characteristics? How do ESOL tutors meet their literacy needs? The paper draws on two studies to address these questions.


• Adult literacy project in East Timor
  Danielle Boon, Ministry of Education, Dili, East Timor.
  The first part of the presentation will be a description of the adult literacy project in multilingual East Timor that will result in a new national literacy program. The second part will be an outline of the research plans on adult literacy learning in East Timor.

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Obstacles for our Low-literacy Learners to Overcome
(Church Hill Room)

• The impact of literacy on the awareness of word boundaries
  Jeanne Kurvers, Department of Linguistics, University of Tilburg, Netherlands, and
  Roeland van Hout, Department of Linguistics, Radboud University, Netherlands
  Being aware of the different words in language input is of major importance for beginning language learners. It is difficult for non-native speakers of a language to distinguish when one word ends and another begins. Whether this ability to mark word boundaries is dependent upon the level of literacy is explored in this paper. Implications for second language teaching in literacy courses is also explored.


• Obstacles on highway L2
  Ineke van de Craats, Department of Linguistics, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
  The communicative approach is the teaching method most often applied in L2 instruction of low-schooled learners. As a consequence learners may know many words but little grammar. This paper will show how L2 learners stick to their L1. How can this obstacle be overcome?


• Using written text in ESL literacy: trouble with deixis in imagined spaces
  Anne Whiteside, University of California at Berkeley, City College of San Francisco.
  This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of uses of text in an ESL literacy classroom. Students with decoding skills but not much experience with school-based practices had trouble negotiating the deixis of text.

What our Learners Bring and Don’t Bring to the Classroom
(Carytown Room)

• Voices of the pre-literate and those who teach them
  Robin Schwarz, Lesley University
  A qualitative study of preliterate learners and those who teach them reveals some hard truths about where these learners are starting and what their teachers realize or do not realize about the implications of that.


• The social and cultural capital a Somali teen bring to school
  Martha Bigelow, University of Minnesota
  This presentation will share a case study of a Somali teenage girl’s social and cultural capital. It will challenge deficit discourses and describe the need for schools to play a greater role in sharing cultural capital. Implications for teaching, policy and language learning will be explored.

Approaches and strategies for working with literacy level learners
(The Fan Room)

• Responding programmatically to low-literacy adult language learners
  MaryAnn Florez, Arlington Education and Employment Program (REEP), Arlington, Virginia
  Deborah Jones, Arlington Education and Employment Program (REEP), Arlington, Virginia
  The REEP program in Arlington, Virginia, is exploring a number of strategies to address the needs of students with low literacy skills. The presenters will provide an overview of REEP’s efforts, from curricular considerations to special projects and staff training.


• Classroom interaction and the illiterate second language learner
  Susanna Strube, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
  This project addresses the problem of learning to speak a second language by illiterate adult learners in a second language classroom. Certain preliminary observations and impressions concerning intervention and language production will be presented.


• Needs assessment and literacy-level adult English languages learners
  Lynda Terrill, Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
  If adult English language learners feel their needs are being met they are more likely to sustain their motivation than if they feel their needs are not being addressed. This presentation describes effective approaches to needs assessment with literacy-level learners.

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