IN A COLLEGE ADJUNCT MODEL: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC CASE STUDY

College adjuncts are designed to assist Generation 1.5 ESL students to develop academic language proficiency, learning strategies, and study skills necessary for succeeding in connected mainstream courses. Despite the abundance of literature, little ethnographic research has been done on content-based language adjuncts. This study views the adjunct program as a culture situated in the larger context of the university mainstream and describes how teaching and learning take place in such an academic culture influenced also by the students ’ home cultures. Multiple data collection methods, such as interviews, document examination, and observations, are used for triangulation. The findings indicate that the adjunct reading courses in the program have been a major effort in socializing the students into the academic culture of the university. In this mainstreaming process, the students are also provided with various opportunities and ways to acknowledge their own experiences and to respectfully discuss and analyze content-course reading materials with the unique lenses that their own cultures have given them. The study reveals that there are a lot more complexity, dilemmas, reflexivity, efforts, and at times even struggles to a successful adjunct program/course than its outward success can tell