Challenges Faced by English Language Learners on the Alberta English Language Arts 30-1 Reading Diploma Examination
Abstract
English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian high schools face numerous challenges when studying literature written in English. In Alberta, ELL high school graduates face difficulty when taking a reading diploma exam at the end of the English Language Arts (ELA) 30-1 course in grade 12. Students have to grapple with subtleties of meaning, low frequency vocabulary, metaphor, and the abundance of reading they have to do in the limited time of the exam. The aim of this study is to evaluate ELLs’ performance on the ELA 30-1 Reading exam and the factors that affect this performance. Through the lenses of sociocultural theory (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006), the study assesses the role of socio-economic characteristics, student background and individual qualities. Test characteristics are also reviewed as possible factors that challenge ELLs.
Hierarchical regression analysis demonstrates that ELL status by itself explains less than 1% of the reading score variance. Time spent in an English-speaking environment explains another 4-5%, and other social factors have very low or no predictive power. Individual student characteristics (represented by high school grade point average) have the strongest effect, explaining about 25% of the variance. Shared variance in the regression models suggests the interrelatedness of all the factors. Students do recognize the effect of their first language (L1) and culture on their reading performance in English, and a significant difference is found between mean reading scores of the seven largest L1 groups in the study, even after years spent in Canada, school characteristics, and parents’ educational attainment were entered as covariates. Although differential item functioning analysis (NSs vs. ELLs) does not reveal major test bias against ELLs, most items are found to be of high linguistic complexity, which may challenge ELLs and compromise the test validity in the ELL group.
Taking these findings into account, the dissertation proposes recommendations for policy, pedagogy, and curriculum and test design.
Description
Keywords
Education--Bilingual and Multicultural, Education--Language and Literature, Education--Reading, Education--Secondary, Education--Tests and Measurements
Citation
Pavlov, V. (2015). Challenges Faced by English Language Learners on the Alberta English Language Arts 30-1 Reading Diploma Examination (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25246