Promoting Student -Led Literature Discussions for Second Language and Literacy Development

204 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007.This study explored how a student-led literature discussion in an out-of-school book club offers young ESL learners the opportunity to improve their second language and literacy learning. A group of privileged English language learners in grades 4-5 were observed during a 60-minute-long book club that took place twice weekly in a local public library over a period of four months. The data sources included field notes, 32 audio-taped literature discussions, interviews, and written surveys with students and their parents, students' response journals, and the researcher's journal. To describe the verbal interactions among students during student-led literature discussions, constant comparative analysis was conducted in combination with discourse analysis based on the following research questions: (a) What are the characteristics of the student talk that occurred during the student-led literature discussion in an out-of-school book club? (b) How do the participating students interact with their peers to co-construct the meaning of the texts they read during the student-led literature discussion? (c) What is the contextual support provided by the teacher to address the emerging problems during the student-led literature discussion? (d) How do the participating students and their parents articulate their experiences of the book club? What, if any, changes in the student's L2 performances are observed by the students, their parents, and the teacher? The student talk during the student-led literature discussion was characterized by the students' control of topic and its management, engagement in higher-order thinking, and collaboration, featured by a variety of interaction strategies---correcting, providing information, eliciting, elaborating, and explicit supportive behavior. The results of this study revealed that there was a spread of the effect from participation in reading to other L2 language skills---writing, vocabulary, and speaking, as well as higher-order thinking skills. The teacher in this study facilitated successful collaboration among students by teaching them discussion skills and introducing theme-based L1 and L2 materials with hybrid language practices. This study emphasizes the value of embedding reading comprehension strategy instruction in a literature discussion and extends the understanding of Vygotskian social constructivism applied to L2 language and literacy learning by exploring interactions among nonnative English learners.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD