best practices for fostering english literacy among esl
TRANSCRIPT
Best Practices for Fostering English Literacy
among ESL Immigrant Students
Olusola O. Adesope, Tracy Lavin & Terri ThompsonCanadian Council on Learning
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Immigration in Canada
• Census 2006– 6,186,950 immigrants
– 19.8% of Canadian population
• Population growth
• Skilled workforce
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Do immigrant students face academic
obstacles?
• YES (Worswick, 2001)– Immigrant students do not perform as well as non-immigrant
students
– Unless they arrived in Canada before age 2
• NO (Zhou, 1997)– Perform at or above the levels of non-immigrant students
– Less likely to drop out of school
– More likely to pursue PS studies
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Do immigrant students face academic
obstacles?
• Overall, immigrant students are at least as successful
as non-immigrant—and often more successful (Thiessen, 2007)
• But some groups of ESL immigrant students face steep
challenges and achieve at dramatically lower levels
than other students (Garnett, 2008)
• Many immigrant students have trouble leveraging their academic success in the labour market
(Gilmore, 2008)
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Literacy
• Adult immigrants face significant literacy
barriers
• IALS (prose literacy):– 280 vs. 245
– 43% vs. 64% below Level 3
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Relevant factors
• ESL Status– ESL learning may pose literacy difficulties
– Counterbalanced by the cognitive benefits of bilingualism?
• Country of Origin– Immigrants’ country of origin seems to be related to
achievement
• Academic domain– Outcomes for ESL immigrant students differ across academic
domains.
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Research Questions
• What are the effects of different strategies in teaching English literacy to ESL immigrant students?
• How do these effects vary when strategies are used in
different settings and educational levels?
• How do teaching strategies affect different outcome
constructs such as reading, writing, comprehension and decoding?
• How are effect sizes conditioned by methodological features of the research?
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Search Strategy• Databases (N=3,692)
– Academic Search Premier
– PsycINFO
– Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts
– ERIC (including British and Australian ERIC)
– Web of Science
– Education Full Text
– Syntax: “ESL” OR “English as a second lang*” OR “immigrant students” OR “reading strategies” OR “meta*” OR “systematic review” …
• Hand Searching (N=75)
– Reference sections from meta-analyses and background reviews
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First Inclusion
• Two researchers reviewed the
– Titles
– Abstracts
– Keywords of all captured articles
• Applied inclusion criteria
• Performed double-screening
– Test reliability of the process
– 45 articles reviewed by 2 researchers
– Cohen Kappa was .88
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Inclusion/Exclusion Criteria
Program guidesEditorial / opinion piecesDescriptive studiesBooks
EmpiricalExperimental research
METHODOLOGY
Speaking is the only outcome measured
ReadingWriting
MEASURED OUTCOMES
Identified teaching strategies
INTERVENTION
ESDFrench Canadian SpeakersStudents with learning
disabilities
Immigrant ESL students in an English speaking country.
K-12Public or private schools
POPULATION
EXCLUSIONINCLUSION
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Second Inclusion
• Each study coded by two researchers
– Elimination based on selection criteria
– Data extraction based on pre-defined coding instructions /
manual
• Double-screening
– 38 randomly chosen articles randomly reviewed by 2 researchers
– Cohen Kappa was .92
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Result of Inclusion/Exclusion
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Extraction of the standardized mean difference
effect size
•Cohen’s d
dN
g )94
31(
−
−=
•We used Hedge’s g, the unbiased estimate of the effect size
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Extraction of the standardized mean difference
effect size
•Inverse variance weight w
•Weighted mean effect size
22)(2
)(2
gnnnn
nnnnw
cece
cece
++
+=
∑∑
=
i
ii
w
ESwES
)(
•Standard error of the mean
∑=
iES w
SE1
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Extraction of the standardized mean difference
effect size
•Confidence Intervals
•Homogeneity of variance statistic, Q
),(96.1
),(96.1
ESU
ESL
SEESES
SEESES
+=
−=
∑ −= .)(2
ESESwQ ii
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Are English Literacy Teaching Strategies
Effective?
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
.76* 4426UK
.40*222,692USA
.193293Canada
.43*293,411All
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
.61*5525Writing
.294523Multimedia-Assisted
Reading
.39*161,758Systematic Phonics
/Guided Reading
.52*4605Collaborative Reading
Intervention
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
.58* 101,141Mixed Comprehension
and Decoding
-.15 4248Decoding
.38* 152,022Comprehension
Nature of Reading
.57*7682Writing
.38*222,729Reading
Outcome Constructs
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
.62* 3261Secondary (9-12)
.41* 6874Intermediate (4-8)
.41* 202,276Primary (K-3)
Educational Level
.162126Pull-Out Room
.48*252,729Classroom
Setting
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
.53* 101,263Mixed/Others
.19 3293French
.41*161,855Spanish
First Language
.561254High
.40*202,491Low
SES
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Meta-Analysis:Studies comparing ESL best practices to traditional reading methods
-.09 2212Others
.65* 91,061Non-Random
.37*182,138Random
Assignment of
Participants
.38*212,426High
.54*8985Medium
Confidence in ES
Derivation
MkN
Effect size (g)
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Interpreting the meta-analysis
• Across several instructional conditions, settings and
methodological features:
– ESL interventions were associated with increased reading
and writing
– Reading and writing interventions produced a medium
effect on learning
• Effect moderated by first language of immigrants
– If French, intervention not significantly effective
– If Spanish or others, interventions were effective
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Implications
• ESL best practices in US and UK appear to work
better than those adopted in Canada.
• Interventions focused on decoding do not appear to be successful
• Re-evaluate practices, further research
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Thanks to our
• Director of Research and Knowledge Mobilization– Charles Ungerleider
• Information Retrieval Specialist– Will Durland
• Reviewer– Maggie Mak
• Funders– Canadian Council on Learning
– Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network