English-speaking Peers Research Articles

Acculturation, Perceptions about Seeking Mental Health Care, and Utilization of Mental Health Services among US-based South Asians.

To examine the relationship between acculturation, cultural perceptions surrounding mental health (MH) burden and utilization of MH services among South Asian (SA) adults in the United States. Cross-sectional study. Online survey. Four hundred five SA adults (≥18 years old) residing in the United States. Cross-sectional study of acculturation, attitudes toward MH burden, and MH service utilization was conducted via online survey. Multivariate logistic regression models were employed to understand how these factors were associated with MH service utilization. Utilization of MH services. Among the 405 participants, 49.0% identified as immigrants (75.1% Indian, 8% Bangladeshi, 5.5% Pakistani, and 3.8% from other SA countries). Current utilization of MH services was associated with comfort conversing in English (odds ration [OR]=5.99; 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.63, 27.02), having English-speaking peers (OR=3.80; 95% CI=1.12, 12.93), and having family (OR=2.37; 95% CI=1.21, 4.64) and peers (OR=5.64; 95% CI=1.71, 18.66) who used MH services. Participants with mostly SA peers (OR=0.48; 95% CI=0.23, 0.97) reported lower lifetime MH service utilization, and those with positive perceptions about MH burden reported higher lifetime utilization (OR=1.04; 95% CI=1.01, 1.09). Comfort expressing emotions in English, knowledge of family/peer MH service use, and type of social connections were associated with MH service utilization among SA immigrants. Interventions should aim to increase SA languages in which MH services are offered and to engage with SA communities to increase acceptance of MH service utilization.

What difficulties do children learning English in addition to another language experience with English oral language? A systematic review

ABSTRACT Within the majority of English-speaking settings, children learning English as an additional language (CLEAL) underperform academically relative to their monolingual, English-speaking peers. This systematic review (preregistration: https://archive.org/details/osf-registrations-zgmha-v1) identifies the elements of the English oral language where these children experience difficulty. We focused on research measuring an English oral language outcome for CLEAL between the ages of 3 and 7 and their age-matched, monolingual English-speaking peers. We searched PsycINFO, Web of Science, British Education Index and Linguistics and Language Behaviour s, for studies published between 2015 and 2024, written in English. Of the 2125 records identified, 20 were eligible for inclusion, with a low-to-moderate risk of bias. Overall, our target group performed significantly worse in tests of English receptive and expressive vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, listening comprehension, embedding, collocational knowledge and areas of narrative skill and phonological production. However, these children were comparable with their peers in other areas of narrative skill, lexical and pragmatic understanding, elements of morphological production and areas of phonological production and processing. Overall, while the picture is mixed, highlighting the need for further study of oral English in CLEAL, this review strengthens existing arguments for vocabulary and syntax acquisition as appropriate targets for intervention.

Unpacking Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs on Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Mathematics and Science Teaching for English Language Learners

With an increasing number of English Language Learners (ELLs), the landscape of public schools in the United States has been rapidly changing. However, ELLs’ academic performance is consistently lower than their native English-speaking peers’ and many in-service teachers feel ill-prepared to teach ELLs in a culturally and linguistically responsive way. This is especially true for mainstream teachers who teach STEM-related subjects. This study explores how pre-service elementary school teachers perceive culturally and linguistically responsive mathematics and science teaching practices for ELLs. A qualitative research design with interviews and constant comparative analysis was employed. Pre-service teachers’ lively voices that unpack their beliefs on the characteristics of culturally and linguistically responsive math and science teaching are illustrated around teachers’ scaffolding strategies, ELLs’ learning experiences, and environments. Suggestions for teacher educators, education scholars, and practitioners are provided to advance the discourse of how to better prepare teachers to teach mathematics and science to ELLs.

Effective teaching strategies for teaching mathematics to young gifted English learners

Project BRIDGE was launched as a response to the underrepresentation of English learners in gifted education. Through Project BRIDGE, high-ability English learners were able to access the same rigorous academic content as their native English-speaking peers. The present study compared intervention and comparison teachers' instructional behaviors in curriculum planning and delivery, accommodation in individual differences, problem solving, critical thinking strategies, creative thinking strategies, language strategies. The data on student-teacher interactions in second-grade math classes were collected through structured observation and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results showed that the intervention teacher was more effective than the comparison teacher in: 1) establishing high expectations for student performance; 2) implementing activities that promote critical and creative thinking; 3) engaging students in active classroom talk; and 4) providing supports for language development.

How do cohesion features inform science instruction for English learners?: A comparison study of digital and printed science texts

ABSTRACT Cohesion plays an important role in science texts as their comprehension depends much on structural and textual signalling, which demonstrates the organisation of the text, the logical links of ideas, and the intended purpose of the writer. Particularly, research has shown that English learners (ELs) rely more on cohesive markers than their English-speaking peers during the reading process. To promote students’ reading comprehension in science, understanding how cohesion features are used to construct texts and providing pertinent instructions are important for practitioners. This study investigated a series of cohesion features commonly adopted in middle school science texts in the U.S. – in digital and printed texts respectively, through Coh-Metrix – and compared their frequency using Hotelling’s T-Squared test. This study is one of the pioneer studies that incorporated digital texts for cohesion analysis. Inclusion of the digital texts is meaningful as the pandemic facilitated technology uses in the U.S public school and elsewhere. Results showed that (1) commonly used cohesion features included additive connectives, 2nd person pronouns, and local referential cohesion, and (2) compared with the printed version of science texts, the digital version presented higher cohesion as indicated by index scores. The instructional implications for practitioners are discussed.

A 4-year longitudinal study examining lexical and syntactic bootstrapping in English Language Learners (ELLs) and their monolingual peers.

Current models of the affinity between syntax and vocabulary are complex and recognize the contribution of bootstrapping and computational processes. To date, the mutual facilitation between these two constructs over time has not been studied in second language (L2) school children. The present study investigated longitudinally the direction and strength of the associations between syntactic and vocabulary skills in English Language Learners (ELLs; N = 409, 204 females, M age = 78 months, low socioeconomic status backgrounds) and their monolingual English-speaking peers (EL1; N = 157, 92 females, M age = 77 months, low socioeconomic status backgrounds). Children were assessed annually from Grade 1 to Grade 4 on a syntactic and a vocabulary task. Overall, autoregressive cross-lagged analyses indicated that early syntax predicted later vocabulary and vice versa, yet, the magnitude of prediction varied across groups. Notably, in the early stages of L2 learning, the predictive power from vocabulary to syntax was stronger than that in the opposite direction. Moreover, the predictive power from vocabulary to syntax was consistently stronger in the ELL than in the EL1 group. The results suggest that, in general, with sufficient quantity and quality of exposure to the L2, lexical and syntactic bootstrapping coexist. However, among novice young ELLs, bootstrapping is stronger from vocabulary to syntax than the other way around. Results underscore the importance of studying the relations between vocabulary and syntax longitudinally, and caution about an injudicious application of L1-based models to young L2 children's language development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How different are English learners from their native English-speaking peers? Evidence of equivalent lexical competence in classroom conversations

ABSTRACT We address the concern that classification of English learners (ELs) primarily based on standardized tests does not accurately reflect what students know and can do with English. While qualitative classroom discourse analyses show that ELs’ language-in-use is not as limited as test scores indicate, available evidence is sparse and prone to unintentional biases. Informed by sociocultural theory, we performed a series of quantitative analyses of student conversations during academic tasks at a larger scale. We analyzed 833 conversation transcripts between pairs of K-12 students in science and English language arts (ELA) classrooms. To uncover patterns of lexical resources in different interactions, word frequency and correlation analyses were performed for three dyadic configurations: two English-only students (EO-EO), two ELs (EL-EL), and the heterogeneous combination (EO-EL). Results showed that lexical size was only significantly different among grade-level bands despite EL-EL dyads’ conversations being shorter in length in ELA. Relative to EO-EO dyads’ language use, in general, EL-EL dyads maintained better word-frequency correlations in science-specific language, while EO-EL dyads maintained strong correlations in ELA-specific language. The findings suggest that attention to authentic language use between peers in class could be more informative than discrete tests and more effective to scaffold EL learning.

Foucault and Starobinski

In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault sweeps both bibliographical references and academic deference aside, thumbing his nose at historians of medicine and initiating a bras d’honneur towards traditional historiography. In this article, we will first recall the context of the reception of Foucault’s translation, where we see Anglo-Saxon readers swinging between admiration and repulsion when reading The Birth of the Clinic. An archeology of Medical Perception. We will then demonstrate how Jean Starobinski’s account of it, “Gazing at Death”, differs from those of his English-speaking peers. Finally, we will explain why we read in it the critical relationship, in every sense of the word, that Foucault and Starobinski maintained throughout their lives.

Fijian school students’ Fiji English speech sound acquisition

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate Fijian students’ acquisition of Fiji English speech sounds. Method: Participants were 72 multilingual students (5–10 years) living in Fiji who spoke the Fijian or Fiji Hindi dialects of Fiji English. The students’ productions of single words from the Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) were analysed according to dialect using the Children’s Independent and Relational Phonological Analysis (CHIRPA). Result: Most English consonants were acquired by 6;0. English consonants that were not in the inventories of Fijian or Fiji Hindi were the last acquired, while those that were common between English and the two languages were some of the earlier acquired consonants. Percentage of consonants correct (PCC) for Fiji English was significantly lower for Grade 1 students (M = 93.01, SD = 0.07) in comparison to Grade 4 students (M = 99.03, SD = 0.01). Plosive and nasal sounds were acquired by 90% of the students earlier than fricative, approximant and affricate sounds, though acquisition of some plosive and fricative sounds varied between Fiji English dialects. All word-initial consonant clusters were acquired by 90% of the students by 9;6, with r-clusters tending to be the latest acquired. The acquisition of word-final consonant clusters was highly variable as students often produced appropriate dialectal variants. Conclusion: Multilingual Fijian children may acquire English specific sounds later than their monolingual English-speaking peers. Consideration of the language environment and analysis of the speech sample with reference to the child’s dominant English dialect is imperative for valid identification of speech sound disorder (SSD) in children who speak different dialects of English.

How the Amount of Teacher Spanish Use interacts with Classroom Quality to Support English/Spanish DLLs’ Vocabulary

ABSTRACT Research Findings: We examined the amount of preschool lead/assistant teachers’ English/Spanish language use and relations between quality of teacher-child interactions, and Dual Language Learners’ (DLLs) English/Spanish bilingual vocabulary in 31 English-medium Head Start classrooms. Measures in this study included (a) children’s conceptual English/Spanish bilingual receptive and expressive vocabulary, (b) classroom quality via systematic observation, (c) video coding of the amount of utterances of teacher Spanish use in classrooms, and (d) a set of child- and teacher-level covariates. Results showed that Spanish was used much less than English by both teachers and DLLs. DLLs spoke more Spanish than teachers and directed most Spanish to peers. For high levels of Emotional Support, teachers’ Spanish use was significantly negatively associated with English/Spanish bilingual expressive and receptive vocabulary. For low levels of Emotional Support and high levels of Instructional Support, higher amounts of teachers’ Spanish use were significantly positively associated with higher levels of children’s English/Spanish bilingual expressive and receptive vocabulary. Practice or Policy: Emotionally-supportive practices may enable monolingual teachers to facilitate their DLLs’ learning through creatingrelationships that may counteract strain from language barriers. Spanish instruction provides asupportive effect for DLLs and may contribute to closing English language andliteracy disparities between DLLs and English-speaking peers.

Everybody Does It: The Pragmatics and Perceptions of International Chinese Graduate Students and their American Peers Regarding Gossip

Integrating natural observation, interviews, and quantitative analysis, we used a mixed design to compare the socio-linguistic judgments of international Chinese students at a private University on the East Coast of the United States (US) with those of their native English-speaking peers regarding a critical incident involving gossip. Ninety-two participants evaluated alternative sociolinguistic strategies offered in addressing the incident on semantic differential scales. Judgments by each group regarding four alternative responses were surveyed and compared. Twenty participants, ten from each group, participated in semi-structured interviews. Themes were developed through a recursive process: interpretations were validated by a bilingual bicultural expert. Several distinctions in judgments emerged. The most preferred alternative to dealing with a group gossiping about a friend for Americans was to say honestly that it made them uncomfortable while Chinese participants preferred requesting a change in topic. Such contrasts were found to be representative of underlying sociocultural values for each group. Intercultural pragmatic distinctions such as these could lead to pragmatic failure and have the potential to interfere with the development of intercultural friendship among the members of the two groups. Implications for pedagogy and developing cross-cultural insight are offered.

Preschool Children’s Engagement and School Readiness Skills: Exploring Differences between Spanish-speaking Dual Language Learners and Monolingual English-speaking Preschoolers

ABSTRACT Research Findings: The study examined the relationship between Spanish-speaking DLL children’s engagement within the preschool classroom with teachers, peers, and tasks and their school readiness skills compared to monolingual English-speaking peers. Results suggested that DLL children had lower language skills and phonological awareness by the end of the preschool year. However, children’s positive engagement with teachers mediated the relationship between DLL status and children’s language skills. Finally, the relationship between children’s engagement and school readiness outcomes differed by whether children are DLL or monolingual; for DLL children, positively engaging with teachers, peers, and tasks were positively associated with their receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness, and print knowledge skills. Practice or Policy: The findings highlight how children’s classroom engagement, particularly DLLs, is associated with their school readiness outcomes. That is, DLL and monolingual children are experiencing different levels of engagement expose potential inequities in the levels of quality experienced within classrooms. Classrooms must maximize the opportunities for DLLs to practice their language skills with peers, in particular, across languages as a way of supporting their development.

Enabling Nurse-Patient Communication With a Mobile App: Controlled Pretest-Posttest Study With Nurses and Non–English-Speaking Patients

BackgroundThere is growing concern regarding the implications of miscommunication in health care settings, the results of which can have serious detrimental impacts on patient safety and health outcomes. Effective communication between nurses and patients is integral in the delivery of timely, competent, and safe care. In a hospital environment where care is delivered 24 hours a day, interpreters are not always available. In 2014, we developed a communication app to support patients’ interactions with allied health clinicians when interpreters are not present. In 2017, we expanded this app to meet the needs of the nursing workforce. The app contains a fixed set of phrases translated into common languages, and communication is supported by text, images, audio content, and video content.ObjectiveThis study aims to evaluate the efficacy of the communication app to support nursing staff during the provision of standard care to patients from non–English-speaking backgrounds when an interpreter is not available.MethodsThis study used a one-group pretest-posttest sequential explanatory mixed methods research design, with quantitative data analyzed using inferential statistics and qualitative data analyzed via thematic content analysis. A total of 134 observation sessions (82 pretest and 52 posttest) of everyday nurse-patient interactions and 396 app use sessions were recorded. In addition, a total of 134 surveys (82 pretest and 52 posttest) with nursing staff, 7 interviews with patients, and 3 focus groups with a total of 9 nursing staff participants were held between January and November 2017.ResultsIn the absence of the app, baseline interactions with patients from English-speaking backgrounds were rated as more successful (t80=5.69; P<.001) than interactions with patients from non–English-speaking backgrounds. When staff used the app during the live trial, interactions with patients from non–English-speaking backgrounds were rated as more successful than interactions without the app (F2,119=8.17; P<.001; η2=0.37). In addition, the level of staff frustration was rated lower when the app was used to communicate (t80=2.71; P=.008; r=0.29). Most participants indicated that the app assisted them in communicating.ConclusionsThrough the use of the app, a number of patients from non–English-speaking backgrounds experienced better provision of standard care, similar to their English-speaking peers. Thus, the app can be seen as contributing to the delivery of equitable health care.

Diabetes Technology Experiences Among Latinx and Non-Latinx Youth with Type 1 Diabetes.

Diabetes technologies, such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors (CGM), have been associated with improved glycemic control and increased quality of life for young people with type 1 diabetes (T1D); however, few young people use these devices, especially those from minority ethnic groups. Current literature predominantly focuses on white patients with private insurance and does not report experiences of diverse pediatric patients with limited resources. To explore potential differences between Latinx and non-Latinx patients, English- and Spanish-speaking young people with T1D (n = 173, ages 11-25 years) were surveyed to assess attitudes about and barriers to diabetes technologies using the Technology Use Attitudes and Barriers to Device Use questionnaires. Both English- and Spanish-speaking participants who identified as Latinx were more likely to have public insurance (P = .0001). English-speaking Latinx participants reported higher Hemoglobin A1c values (P = .003), less CGM use (P = .002), and more negative attitudes about technology (generally, P = .003; and diabetes-specific, P < .001) than either non-Latinx or Spanish-speaking Latinx participants. Barriers were encountered with equivalent frequency across groups. Latinx English-speaking participants had less positive attitudes toward general and diabetes technology than Latinx Spanish-speaking and non-Latinx English-speaking peers, and differences in CGM use were associated with socioeconomic status. Additional work is needed to design and deliver diabetes interventions that are of interest to and supportive of patients from diverse ethnic and language backgrounds.

Representing agents, patients, goals and instruments in causative events: A cross-linguistic investigation of early language and cognition.

Although it is widely assumed that the linguistic description of events is based on a structured representation of event components at the perceptual/conceptual level, little empirical work has tested this assumption directly. Here, we test the connection between language and perception/cognition cross-linguistically, focusing on the relative salience of causative event components in language and cognition. We draw on evidence from preschoolers speaking English or Turkish. In a picture description task, Turkish-speaking 3-5-year-olds mentioned Agents less than their English-speaking peers (Turkish allows subject drop); furthermore, both language groups mentioned Patients more frequently than Goals, and Instruments less frequently than either Patients or Goals. In a change blindness task, both language groups were equally accurate at detecting changes to Agents (despite surface differences in Agent mentions). The remaining components also behaved similarly: both language groups were less accurate in detecting changes to Instruments than either Patients or Goals (even though Turkish-speaking preschoolers were less accurate overall than their English-speaking peers). To our knowledge, this is the first study offering evidence for a strong-even though not strict-homology between linguistic and conceptual event roles in young learners cross-linguistically.

Lost in the Transition: The Cost of College-Readiness English Standards Misalignment for Students Initially Classified as English Learners

ABSTRACT Using linked, individual-level data from a large metropolitan K-12 district and a large urban community college district in California, we examine whether indicators of college-readiness for graduating high school students who were initially classified as English Learners (ELs) are honored in community college course placement. In particular, we explore (1) whether there is misalignment in course assignment levels among former EL students between the K-12 and community college sector based on high school readiness metrics; and (2) if misalignment exists, we investigate its extent among various levels and identities of EL students. We employ an integrated capitals and funds of knowledge framework to emphasize students’ assets in the form of resources, knowledge, and skills while also acknowledging the role of education systems in reproducing social inequities. We find that along with students who speak Spanish at home, Latina/o, and Black students, former ELs who met college-readiness standards experienced the highest levels of inter-sector English misalignment (over 75%). Our results show a negative association between experiencing inter-sector misalignment and college credit accumulation. After controlling for course placement, background, and academic characteristics our analysis suggests that despite facing higher levels of inter-sector misalignment relative to other students, former ELs manage to accumulate five to six more transferable degree units than their monolingual English-speaking peers. The findings suggest a need for even greater inter-sector communication and accountability between legislators, K-12, and postsecondary leaders to ensure that state-level college-readiness standards are properly defined and consistently used in the transition from high school to college.

Verb Errors in 5th-Grade English Learners’ Written Responses: Relation to Writing Quality

The ability to express oneself through written language is a critically important skill for long-term educational, emotional, and social success. However, despite the importance of writing, English Learner students continue to perform at or below basic levels which warrants additional efforts to identify specific areas of weakness that impact writing quality. To that end, this study aims to describe the effect of verb accuracy on writing quality ratings of 5th-grade written expository samples. This study examines the responses of 243 students in the 5th grade who differed in English proficiency. The sample included 112 English Learners and 131 English-proficient students. Verb error patterns in written samples by English Learner students are described and compared to the patterns of their monolingual English-proficient peers. Group differences were examined in verb accuracy, types of verb errors, and overall grammaticality. A regression analysis was used to examine verb accuracy as a predictor of writing quality. Findings showed that English Learner students demonstrated more verb errors than their English-speaking peers and the total number of verb errors was a significant predictor of writing quality ratings.

A multidimensional approach to Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers’ narrative skills (Un enfoque multidimensional de las habilidades narrativas de los niños preescolares bilingües inglés/español)

ABSTRACT We identify language and discourse skills in 54-month-old Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers and their English-speaking monolingual peers, using multiple measures. Forty-one Spanish–English bilingual and 25 English monolingual children, all US born, viewed an eight-minute wordless video. The bilingual children recounted the story once in English and once in Spanish, in counterbalanced order. The story retellings were transcribed and coded for discourse skills (narrative length, narrative components and uses of evaluative language) and language skills (number of words, number of different words, MLUw). No difference was found in the two groups´ overall language or discourse skills, assessed in the narrative production, with the exception of certain uses of evaluative language. Within the bilingual group, all measures, except MLUw, were highly correlated across the two languages. Our multidimensional analysis of narrative structure and use of evaluative language sheds light on certain differences between the ways in which English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals organize their narrative discourse. We discuss the advantages of using this multidimensional approach in assessing bilinguals´ language and discourse abilities in narrative production.

Perception of accent in bilingual French/American-English children by native adult speakers

In a previous study, Dodane and Bijeljac-Babic (2017) found that French/AmericanEnglish children aged 3;6 to 6;0, bilingual from birth, produced disyllabic words which had acoustic properties for lexical stress (f0, syllable duration and intensity) that differed from those of monolingual peers, showing cross-linguistic influences. In order to check whether these acoustic differences between the productions of bilingual children and those of their monolingual French- or American English-speaking peers were perceptible by native monolingual adults, we investigated the perception of these words by French and American English native speakers. Using an Elo rating task, participants were asked to indicate in each trial which word out of two competitors was produced by a bilingual child. Words were produced by French- or American English-speaking monolingual children and by two groups of bilinguals, one dominant in French and the other in American-English. The results clearly show that both French and American English monolingual adults were successful in distinguishing the bilingual children from their monolingual peers, but only if they were not dominant in the language of the raters. The relationship between the acoustic correlates of word stress produced by children and the perception of some “accent” by native adult speakers seems more intricate than expected and is further discussed.

Investigating student performance on an assessment tool to support the development of English learners’ argumentation skills

The goal of this project was to design a scaffolded learning activity that develops English learners’ (ELs) argumentation skills. In this study, we investigated how middle school ELs interacted with a game-enhanced scenario-based assessment of argumentation skills (named Seaball). The target skills included identifying and classifying opinions on a controversial issue. Various features, such as language-based accommodations, were embedded in the assessment design to make the tasks more accessible to ELs. Immediate performance feedback was also provided in the assessment. We conducted a pilot study with 163 middle school students (including 96 ELs and 67 native English speakers as a control group) to both examine their performance and evaluate the effectiveness of the accommodations. Results indicated that English proficiency levels were significantly related to student performance in Seaball, and that ELs were outperformed by their English-speaking peers. Additionally, while survey data revealed that students considered the language accommodations embedded in the task to be helpful (e.g. the glossary accommodation), the accommodations had no significant impact on Seaball performance. Both ELs and non-ELs generally agreed that they benefited from receiving immediate feedback in the task. The findings suggest that the approach to designing EL accommodations for students engaging in ELA tasks employed in this work may be promising. Further, this approach has potential to guide the design of formative assessments intended to support ELs in learning ELA argumentation skills.