best practices for fostering english literacy among esl

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

3

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

4

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

14


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

15


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)

18


.61*5525Writing

.294523Multimedia-Assisted

Reading

.39*161,758Systematic Phonics

/Guided Reading

.52*4605Collaborative Reading

Intervention

MkN

Effect size (g)

19


.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)

20


.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)

21


.53* 101,263Mixed/Others

.19 3293French

.41*161,855Spanish

First Language

.561254High

.40*202,491Low

SES

MkN

Effect size (g)

22


-.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

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Contacts

• Olusola [email protected]

• Tracy Lavin

[email protected]

• Terri [email protected]

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