Publication Date

2011

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT)

First Advisor

Susan Barduhn

Abstract

Colleges are experiencing budget crises on a paramount scale and are funding programs that place higher demands on students to be able to read academic texts in specific fields of study. Unfortunately, students are often overwhelmed with the level of reading and the types of content that they encounter. Even more often, L2 (Second Language) learners are often left out of academic reading instruction in the college-level ESL classroom, and therefore rarely advance into academic pathways. This paper seeks to define and articulate the use of explicit reading instruction to help L2 learners become better readers in English, particularly of more demanding texts. By providing them with reading strategies and modeling what good readers do, these students can make great gains in reading critically, mindfully, and across different areas of content. This in turn, will allow them to pursue academic pathways, and become more self-sufficient and successful. In this paper, I will include personal examples of my own ESL classroom, and include approaches to explicit instruction such as the Reading Apprenticeship model in order to illustrate models of reading instruction.

Disciplines

Adult and Continuing Education and Teaching | Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education

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