INVESTIGATING THE READING ENGAGEMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
LEARNERS: A CASE STUDY OF FOUR MIDDLE SCHOOL ELLS
By
Maria Selena O. Protacio

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillments of the requirements
for the degree of
Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education – Doctor of Philosophy
2013

ABSTRACT
INVESTIGATING THE READING ENGAGEMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE
LEARNERS: A CASE STUDY OF FOUR MIDDLE SCHOOL ELLS
By
Maria Selena O. Protacio
This study investigates the reading engagement of four middle school English
Language Learners (ELLs) in their English or English as a Second Language (ESL)
classroom. Engaged readers are those who address the four components of reading
engagement – motivation, strategic knowledge, constructing meaning from texts, and
social interactions. In this study, I focused on five questions: (1) What motivates middle
school ELLs to read? What discourages middle school ELLs from reading?; (2) What
strategic knowledge do middle school ELLs draw upon when reading?; (3) How do
middle school ELLs construct meaning (such as conceptual knowledge) from texts?; (4)
How do middle school ELLs engage in social interactions around texts?; and (5) How do
motivation, strategic knowledge, construction of meaning from texts, and social
interactions interact to make up ELLs’ reading engagement?
Four middle school students from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds were
chosen as participants for this case study research. Two ELLs were previous focal
students from the author’s practicum research on ELL reading motivation, while two
other students were invited to participate based on their low reading engagement levels.
Data included in this case study research include semi-structured interviews, field notes
from classroom observations, comprehension assessments, reading activity inventories,
and student artifacts.

Findings from this case study research indicate that each focal student had a
different reading engagement profile. Three key findings emerged from a cross-case
analysis of the focal students’ reading engagement. First, all four components are
essential to consider and address with ELL reading engagement. Second, ELL reading
engagement is situational, and instructional practices must be used in classroom contexts
in order to foster ELL reading engagement. Finally, results of this dissertation revealed
that ELL identity is also an essential component of ELL reading engagement. The
implications for practice and ELL reading engagement research are discussed.

DEDICATION
To my husband, John.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to give praise to God for guiding me throughout this endeavor.
There were moments this task seemed insurmountable. But then I remembered, “I can do
anything through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13), and I was able to write
this dissertation one page at a time. To God be the glory!
Thank you to the participants of my dissertation, especially to Jonathan, Nabila,
Farshad, Oliver, Ms. Costa, and Mrs. Blake. I am grateful that they let me in their
classrooms and they willingly shared their stories with me. It was a privilege to get to
know each of one of them.
Thank you to my advisor and dissertation director, Dr. Guofang Li, who has
supported me throughout this process. I am so fortunate to have been mentored by such
an accomplished scholar and writer. I am grateful for her patience and feedback on every
rough (and sometimes very rough) draft that I sent. Under Dr. Li’s tutelage, I have
developed as a writer and researcher.
Thank you to Dr. Patricia Edwards for her support throughout my doctoral
program. Pat always provided encouraging words and support and always reminded me
to stay positive throughout this process.
Thank you to the other members of my guidance and dissertation committees,
Drs. Peter Youngs, Anne-Lise Halvorsen and Susan Florio-Ruane, for their feedback and
guidance throughout my entire doctoral program.
Thanks to my parents, Chito and Marisa Protacio for the wonderful opportunities
they provided for me in my formative years. Because of them, I was able to develop as a

v

bilingual and bicultural individual, which has, in turn, influenced my research interests.
Thanks for the constant support and prayers throughout my doctoral program.
Thank you to my sister, Guada Protacio, for her help in transcribing the
interviews and the think-aloud portions of the comprehension assessments of this
dissertation. Anyone who has ever transcribed an interview knows that it is such a tedious
task. I am also thankful for Guada for double-checking my references as I was rushing to
send a completed draft to my committee.
Thank you to Michelle Schira Hagerman, who is probably the only other person
aside from my dissertation committee who has read almost every page of this entire
dissertation. I am grateful for Michelle’s wonderful suggestions as she listened to me
drone on about my dissertation.
Thank you to Shannon Sweeney and Sarah Little. After each of our Skype
meetings, I felt motivated to write and tackle the dissertation. Thanks also to Lisa
Hawkins, Carlin Borsheim, Kristy Brugar, Amy Lark, Bakar Razali, Jackie Sweeney, and
many others for the gift of friendship.
I am extremely lucky to have been able to write this dissertation while I
completed my first year of a tenure-track position at Western Michigan University.
Thank you to my colleagues Susan Piazza, Lauren Freedman, Esther Gray, and Karen
Thomas for their support and prodding to ensure that I completed this big book report on
time!
I also want to acknowledge the support of my master’s advisor, Loukia Sarroub.
Had it not been for her support, I do not know if I would have gotten the graduate

vi

research assistantship at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which started the whole
process of graduate studies in the United States.
I am also indebted to the Department of Teacher Education and College of
Education at Michigan State University for all the financial support I received throughout
my program such as the Summer Research Fellowship, Research Development
Fellowship, and Research Enhancement Fellowship. I was also extremely fortunate to
have received the Jere and Arlene Pintozzi Brophy Fellowship which allowed me to
devote my summer to analyzing dissertation data.
Finally, thank you to my wonderful husband, John Damian, for his endless
support and understanding throughout this whole dissertation process and throughout the
six years that it took me to earn a PhD. Thank you for your constant encouragement,
reminders, and hugs as I struggled at times to write this dissertation. I could not have
asked for a better husband!

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xi
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ xii
CHAPTER 1: Introduction and Review of Related Literature ........................................... 1
Reading Engagement: What the Research Has Found .................................................6
What is Reading Engagement? ..............................................................................7
Motivation ...........................................................................................................11
Perceived competence ....................................................................................11
Access and exposure to texts ..........................................................................12
Instrumental motivation..................................................................................13
Integrative motivation ...................................................................................14
Family influences ...........................................................................................15
Strategic Knowledge ...........................................................................................17
Social Interactions ...............................................................................................20
Constructing Meaning From Texts ......................................................................23
Summary..............................................................................................................27
Conceptual Framework .............................................................................................28
The expectancy-value model ...............................................................................28
Sociocultural theory .............................................................................................30
Summary ..............................................................................................................32
CHAPTER 2: Methodology ..............................................................................................33
Research Design ...................................................................................................33
Positionality of Researcher ...................................................................................36
The School Setting ................................................................................................38
The Participants ....................................................................................................40
Student participants .........................................................................................42
Jonathan .................................................................................................42
Nabila .....................................................................................................43
Oliver .....................................................................................................44
Farshad ...................................................................................................44
Teacher Participants .........................................................................................45
Data Collection .....................................................................................................50
Observations ....................................................................................................51
Interviews .........................................................................................................52
Reading Activity Inventory .............................................................................55
Student artifacts ..............................................................................................56
Qualitative Reading Inventoy-5 ......................................................................57
Data Analysis .......................................................................................................59

viii

CHAPTER 3: A Portrait of A Seemingly Engaged Reader: A Case Study of a SeventhGrade Chinese ELL ...........................................................................................................63
Getting to Know Jonathan ........................................................................................64
Adjusting to Middle School Life ...............................................................................65
Motivation ..................................................................................................................71
Intrinsic motivation .............................................................................................72
Series/Genre ........................................................................................................75
Compliance .........................................................................................................76
Strategic Knowledge ..................................................................................................80
Constructing Meanings from Texts ...........................................................................86
Social Interactions .....................................................................................................92
Providing “help” for peers ..................................................................................93
Support for reading .............................................................................................97
Jonathan: A Seemingly Engaged Reader ..................................................................100
CHAPTER 4: “I Really Hate This Kind of Reading”: A Case of an Eighth-Grade ELL’s
Situational Reading Engagement ..................................................................................103
Getting to Know Nabila ...........................................................................................104
Adjusting to Middle School Life ............................................................................105
Contradicting Motivations ......................................................................................110
Social motivation ..............................................................................................112
Interest ..............................................................................................................115
Book characteristics ..........................................................................................117
Strategic Knowledge ................................................................................................119
Strategic knowledge during academic reading ..................................................120
Strategic knowledge during pleasure reading ....................................................129
Constructing Meanings from Texts .........................................................................133
Social Interactions ...................................................................................................137
Engaging in book discussions ...........................................................................138
Social interactions for support ...........................................................................140
Absence of family interactions around books ...................................................142
Nabila as a Semi-Engaged Reader ............................................................................146

CHAPTER 5: “Reading is Just a Waste of Time”: Investigating the Disengagement of a
Seventh-Grade ELL .........................................................................................................149
Getting to Know Farshad ..........................................................................................150
Adjusting to Middle School Life .............................................................................151
Motivation ................................................................................................................154
Expectancy and value .......................................................................................156
Genres ...............................................................................................................159
Compliance .......................................................................................................160
Strategic Knowledge ................................................................................................162
Constructing Meanings from Texts .........................................................................170
Social Interactions ...................................................................................................176
Farshad: A Disengaged Reader ................................................................................180
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CHAPTER 6: “I Like Reading for Knowledge”: The Hidden Reading Engagement of an
African ELL ....................................................................................................................183
Getting to Know Oliver ............................................................................................184
Adjusting to Middle School Life .............................................................................185
Motivation ................................................................................................................192
Strategic Knowledge ................................................................................................195
Constructing Meanings from Texts .........................................................................204
Social Interactions ...................................................................................................209
Oliver’s Contrasting Reading Engagement Profiles .................................................214

CHAPTER 7: Discussion ................................................................................................216
Summary of Findings ..............................................................................................218
Motivation ...........................................................................................................218
Strategic knowledge ............................................................................................220
Constructing meanings from texts ......................................................................222
Social interactions ...............................................................................................224
Reading Engagement: Collectively Looking at the Components .............................229
Reading Engagement from an Expectancy Value Framework ................................236
Identity Matters with ELL Reading Engagement .....................................................239
CHAPTER 8: Implications for Reading Engagement Research and Practice .................243
Pedagogical Implications ..........................................................................................243
Motivation ...........................................................................................................243
Strategic knowledge ............................................................................................245
Constructing meanings from texts ......................................................................246
Social Interactions ..............................................................................................247
Addressing ELLs’ Expectancies and Values toward Reading ...............................248
Incorporating Engaging Instructional Practices.......................................................249
Addressing Identity Matters .....................................................................................250
Implications for ELL Reading Engagement Research ............................................251
Directions for Future Research ................................................................................253
Conclusion ..............................................................................................................254
APPENDICES .................................................................................................................256
APPENDIX A: Interview Protocol with New Focal Students ................................257
APPENDIX B: Interview Protocol with Previous Focal Students ...........................259
APPENDIX C: Interview Protocol for Teachers ......................................................261
APPENDIX D: Reading Activity Inventory.............................................................262

REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................269

x

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1

Research Questions and Corresponding Data Sources

35

Table 2

Overview of Focal Students

42

Table 3

List of Provisional Codes

60

Table 4

Frequency and Examples of Jonathan’s Comprehension
Strategy Use

82

Table 5

Frequency and Examples of Nabila’s Comprehension
Strategy Use in QRI Assessments

123

Table 6

Results of Oliver’s Comprehension Assessments

197

Table 7

Frequency and Examples of Oliver’s Comprehension Strategy
Use

199

Table 8

Summary of Focal Students’ Reading Engagement

227

Table 9

Summary of Instructional Practices which Affirm or Hinder
Reading Engagement

234

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1a

A sample entry in Nabila’s reading log

111

Figure 1b

Key to Figure 1a

111

Figure 2a

Nabila’s reading log entry with recommendations for Mrs.
Blake

114

Figure 2b

Key to Figure 2a

114

Figure 3a

Farshad’s reading log entry

168

Figure 3b

Key to Figure 3a

168

Figure 4a

Farshad’s reading log entry which shows an example of
evaluation

169

Figure 4b

Key to Figure 4a

169

Figure 5a

Farshad’s completed book report template

174

Figure 5b

Key to Figure 5a

175

xii

CHAPTER 1
Introduction and Review of Related Literature
[A good reader is] someone, not specifically who enjoys reading, but who knows
that reading would help them and put their heart into reading. You don’t read for
the purpose of reading; you read for the purpose of learning, I guess. You don’t
have to like the book, but you just have to have the heart to learn it. -- Jonathan,
7th grade ELL
In the past two decades, much attention has been given to the motivation and
engagement of middle school and high school students with regard to reading (Guthrie,
2008; Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006).
Many of these studies have found that as students move from elementary school to
middle school, there is generally a decline in reading motivation and reading engagement
(Guthrie, Alao, & Rinehart, 1997; Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Kelly & Decker, 2009;
McKenna, Conradi, Lawrence, Jang, & Meyer, 2012; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth,
1995; Loera, Rueda, & Nakamoto, 2011; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). Even as students
progress through middle school, reading motivation continues to decline with each grade
level (Kelly & Decker, 2009; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006).
The statement at the beginning by Jonathan (all names are pseudonyms), a
seventh-grade Chinese student, illustrates that he understood that while reading should be
pleasurable, there is also a greater purpose for reading, and that is to learn. The interview
excerpt also indicates that Jonathan was likely an engaged reader. However, the
unfortunate reality is that many middle school students, whether they are English

1

Language Learners (ELLs) or not, are unmotivated and disengaged with reading
(Guthrie, Wigfield, & Klauda, 2012; Kelly & Decker, 2009). Even students who enter
middle school with a positive disposition towards reading may leave with a decreased
level of motivation. For example, Unrau and Schlackman (2006) found that intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation to read decreased significantly as middle school students moved
from sixth to seventh grade and seventh to eighth grade. The decreasing level of reading
engagement also translates to a decline in the amount of time middle school students
spend on reading (Guthrie, Alao, & Rinehart, 1997; Kelly & Decker, 2009; National
Center for Education Statistics, 2010). Studies have reported a relationship between
reading engagement and reading achievement (Guthrie, McRae, & Klauda, 2007; Guthrie
& Wigfield, 2000; Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 1999; Lau & Chan, 2003; Morgan
& Fuchs, 2007; Mucherah & Yoder, 2008). In other words, students who are disengaged
readers are also those who typically have lower levels of reading achievement. For
example, Mucherah and Yoder (2008) found that middle school students who had lower
levels of reading motivation performed lower on a standardized reading test compared to
peers who were motivated readers.
The decline in reading engagement of middle school students can be attributed to
a few key challenges. First, middle school students are expected to read more challenging
texts as a result of the more complex and abstract subject matter encountered in their
classes (Guthrie & Klauda, 2012; Guthrie & Davis, 2003; O’Brien & Dillon, 2008). In
addition, students predominantly read textbooks in their content-area classrooms, and
they have limited access to diverse and interesting reading materials. Those who do read
for pleasure need to find time to read their books of interest in their own time as they

2

likely do not encounter books that interest them in their content-area classes (Alvermann,
2005; Pitcher et al., 2007). Second, the types of tasks students are assigned in relation to
reading are often constricting, providing students with little to no choice about the tasks
or projects they need to complete (Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Hall, Burns, & Edwards, 2011;
O’Brien & Dillon, 2008). Third, assessments at the middle school are often more formal,
requiring students to have sufficient levels of reading comprehension in order to correctly
answer test questions. Students with lower levels of comprehension may find it more
difficult to exhibit their full understanding of concepts through formal assessments
(Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Hall et al., 2011).
Entering middle school is a critical transition period for all students, but this
transition is even more complex for ELLs (Walqui et al., 2010). Transitioning to middle
school and engaging in reading activities is even more tenuous for ELLs for several
reasons. Many middle school ELLs are still in the process of acquiring English
proficiency or mastering academic English proficiency; thus, understanding the difficult
texts and abstract subject matter is even more demanding for them (Bernhardt, 2009;
Goldenberg, 2008). In addition, ELLs may not have the requisite prior knowledge, both
in terms of cultural knowledge or content knowledge, needed to fully comprehend texts
and discussions provided in their middle school classrooms. Some ELLs may also be
intimidated to participate in academic discussions with their mainstream peers, which
limits the social interactions in which they engage. Next, ELLs may lack the repertoire of
strategic knowledge, such as knowing how to monitor their comprehension or determine
the meaning of unknown words, which will allow them to become better readers.
Considering these overwhelming demands, it is unsurprising that it is at the middle
3

school level where the achievement gap in reading widens between ELLs and their
mainstream peers (Fry, 2007). For instance, results of the 2011 National Assessment of
Education Progress (NAEP) revealed 77 percent of eighth-grade native English speakers
were at or above basic on the reading section whereas only 29 percent of ELLs scored at
that level. Furthermore, 33 percent of eighth-grade native English speakers were at or
above proficient on the reading section compared to only 3 percent of ELLs.
Given the poor performance of middle school ELLs in reading and the
relationship between reading engagement and achievement (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000),
there is a need to closely examine the potential of reading engagement to improve middle
school ELLs’ academic performance. Students with high levels of reading engagement
are those who are (a) motivated to read, (b) use strategies when reading, (c) use reading
as a way to construct meaning from texts, and (d) participate in social interactions around
reading (Guthrie & Anderson, 1999; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). Engaged readers are
those who want to read and learn from reading through these four processes. Although
cultivating engaged ELL readers is a goal, it is not an instantaneous process for ELLs, or
any student for that matter, to become engaged. However, it must also be noted that
engagement is not dichotomous, with readers being either engaged or disengaged. Rather,
reading engagement could be perceived as a continuum with levels on each of the reading
engagement components shifting based on various reading situations.
In my practicum study on middle school ELLs’ reading engagement, I specifically
explored the reading motivation of upper elementary ELLs. I found that some ELLs were
motivated readers of English texts (Protacio, 2010), and some were not as motivated.
Students who were motivated readers wanted to read English texts because of social
4

motivation, instrumental motivation, and high levels of perceived competence. Given the
research which has shown that reading motivation, an integral part of reading
engagement, steeply declines when students transition to middle school (Kelly & Decker,
2009; McKenna et al., 2012; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006), I wanted to know more about
how these ELLs’ reading engagement might change in the middle school setting. What
motivates ELLs to engage in reading English texts, and what discourages them from
reading in the middle school setting? Were those students who had high reading
motivation in their upper elementary years able to sustain the motivation when they were
in middle school? What are the differences between learners with different engagement
levels? These are some of the questions that served as the impetus for this dissertation
research.
Despite the promise of reading engagement in facilitating ELL reading
achievement, there have only been a few studies conducted on this topic (Arzubiaga,
Rueda, & Monzo, 2002; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007; Loera, Rueda, & Nakamoto, 2011;
Robinson, 2010; Sturtevant & Kim, 2010). In addition, none of these studies investigated
all four components--motivation, strategic knowledge, constructing meaning from texts,
and social interactions--of reading engagement.
Quantitative studies have revealed general patterns of reading engagement
(Guthrie et al., 2007; Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, & Cox, 1999; Lau & Chan, 2003;
Morgan & Fuchs, 2007). However, there is a need for additional research that documents
the reading engagement experiences specifically of ELLs in and out of middle school
classrooms to better understand what prompts them to be engaged or disengaged with
reading in their daily experiences using alternative research methods. Because reading is
5

embedded in a sociocultural context (e.g., Alvermann, 2009; Au, 2007), a qualitative
research design is better positioned to describe the nuances of students’ engagement with
texts which quantitative research cannot capture or document.
In order to fill this gap in literature, I set out to conduct a qualitative study, which
would provide a more complete picture of ELLs’ reading engagement. For this
dissertation research, I conducted a case study to describe and interpret four middle
school ELLs’ reading engagement in their English as a Second Language (ESL) or
English classroom to better understand the literacy development of young adolescent
ELLs. Specifically, I focused on the following research questions:
1. What motivates middle school ELLs to read? What discourages

middle school ELLs from reading?
2. What strategic knowledge do middle school ELLs draw upon when

reading?
3. How do middle school ELLs construct meaning (such as conceptual

knowledge) from texts?
4. How do middle school ELLs engage in social interactions around

texts?
5. How do motivation, strategic knowledge, construction of meaning

from texts, and social interactions interact to make up ELLs’ reading
engagement?
Reading Engagement: What the Research Has Found
In this section, I discuss factors that have been identified in the literature as
relating to reading engagement and the reasons it is necessary to present a multifaceted
6

picture of ELLs’ reading engagement using qualitative methods of research. I first
provide an overview of reading engagement wherein I define and briefly describe each of
the components of reading engagement. Then, I review literature for each of the four
reading engagement components, focusing specifically on studies that have focused on
ELLs or students from diverse backgrounds in the United States. Specifically, I discuss
the research in relation to each component while pointing out the gaps in the reading
engagement literature. I conclude this section by summarizing the gaps and describing
the ways in which this dissertation attempts to fill the gaps in the literature. I argue that
studies have provided a limited view of ELL reading engagement by neglecting to
provide a holistic picture of reading engagement since there are no studies which address
all four components with a focus on ELLs. To redress this significant gap in the research
base, I therefore argue the importance of conducting an in-depth case study to fully
understand the multiple facets of ELL reading engagement.
What is Reading Engagement?
Reading engagement can be conceived of as the fusion of the cognitive and
motivational aspects of reading (Taboada & McElvany, 2009). Guthrie and Anderson
(1999) have defined reading engagement as “the joint functioning of motivation,
conceptual knowledge, strategies, and social interactions during literacy activities” (p.
20). Guthrie and Anderson’s definition offers a quaternary view of reading engagement,
and it is this definition that grounds the theoretical and methodological rationale for this
dissertation research. Each of these four components has been found, in some part, to
account for aspects of reading engagement. In what follows, I define each component,

7

making special note of the research that has justified its inclusion in Guthrie and
Anderson’s definition.
The first component to reading engagement is reading motivation, which is
defined as “the values, beliefs, and behaviors surrounding reading” (Guthrie, 2011, p.
177). In other words, motivation is what drives students to want to read. Out of the four
components of reading engagement, motivation has been the focus of most research
studies; these studies have focused on many different facets of motivation (Guthrie &
Wigfield, 2000). For example, numerous surveys have been conducted on students’
reading motivation, reading attitudes, and reading interests (Baker & Wigfield, 1999;
Ivey & Broaddus, 2001; Guthrie & Wigfield, 1997; Kelly & Decker, 2009; McKenna et
al., 2012; McKenna et al., 1995; Worthy, Moorman, & Turner, 1999). Other studies have
specifically examined students’ self-concept as readers and the values they place on
reading (Marinak & Gambrell, 2010; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). These, and other
studies, have offered a multitude of factors which affect students’ reading motivation
such as opportunities for choice, instructional strategies, students’ perceptions of
themselves as readers, and interesting texts and reading materials.
The next component of reading engagement is strategic knowledge. Engaged
readers understand and use comprehension strategies, which are defined as “deliberate
efforts by a reader to better understand or remember what is being read” (Shanahan et al.,
2010, p. 11). Examples of comprehension strategies which have been found to be
effective in helping students better understand texts are questioning, integrating prior
knowledge, monitoring comprehension, drawing inferences, and summarizing (Almasi &
Fullerton, 2012; Harvey & Goudvis, 2007; Shanahan et al., 2010). It has been posited that
8

readers who have strategic knowledge are better able to comprehend texts compared to
those who do not (Guthrie & Anderson, 1999; Guthrie, Wigfield, & Perencevich, 2004).
The third component of reading engagement is social interaction. A common
understanding of social interaction in the reading engagement literature is that students
participate in discussions to share and increase their understanding of texts (Guthrie,
2011; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Guthrie et al., 2004). Students may join a book club or
participate in informal conversations with peers or family members and share what they
have learned from texts. Social interactions can also take the form of collaborating on a
project centered on a text or exchanging books with friends.
The last component is conceptual knowledge, which involves the acquisition of
knowledge from reading (Guthrie & McCann, 1997; Guthrie et al., 2004). Out of the four
reading engagement components, conceptual knowledge is the most nebulous and
difficult to define. In the seminal research on reading engagement, Guthrie et al. (1996)
designed a classroom-based reading program called concept-oriented reading instruction
(CORI), which integrated reading, writing, and science instruction. Conceptual
knowledge in Guthrie et al.’s (1996) study was rooted in content-area literacy instruction.
Since the contexts of this study are English and ESL classrooms, I use the term
constructing meaning from texts rather than conceptual knowledge. In its simplest form,
constructing meaning from texts as operationalized in this study is students’ abilities to
acquire information or knowledge from in or out-of school reading. With engaged
reading, the primary purpose is to make meaning. In a middle school English Language
Arts or ESL class, there are several ways in which students can construct meaning
through reading. Ideas students can learn through reading include (1) a better
9

understanding of an author’s technique in contrasting the point of views of characters in a
story; (2) the ability to readily identify the central theme or idea of a text; or (3)
understanding the textual structures an author employs in a particular genre (Common
Core State Standards Initiative, 2011). It is also through reading that students can make
connections with personal experiences.
Researchers have noted the complex relationship among the four reading
engagement components (Guthrie & Anderson, 1999; Guthrie et al., 2007). Guthrie and
Anderson (1999) explained the interconnectedness of these components:
When students are intrinsically motivated, they learn to use cognitive strategies
for reading. These reading strategies, such as recognizing words, comprehending,
predicting, summarizing, and self-monitoring, when properly deployed and fully
executed, lead to conceptual understanding. Social interaction patterns in the
classroom can amplify or constrict students' intrinsic motivations, their use of
self-regulated strategies, and their attainment of deep conceptual knowledge. As
students gain conceptual knowledge [or make meaning from texts], their sense of
self-efficacy grows and their motivations for reading increase. (p. 20)
While the reading engagement components are interrelated, I have chosen to
review the literature one component at a time. The rationale for this is that no study on
ELLs’ reading engagement has focused on all four components in one research study. In
fact, the only studies which have focused on reading engagement holistically are those by
Guthrie and his colleagues (e.g. Guthrie et al., 2004; Guthrie et al., 1996), and these
studies focused mainly on the influence of CORI on mainstream students’ reading
engagement. Because of the absence of studies which investigated all four components
10

specifically with ELLs, I have organized the following section by discussing research
findings on each individual component of reading engagement.
Motivation
Out of the four components of reading engagement, motivation is certainly the
one that has received most of the research attention in relation to ELL reading
engagement. The research on ELLs’ reading motivation has generally revealed the
following: (a) ELLs’ motivation to read is related to their perceived competence in
reading; (b) access to interesting and appropriate texts is related to ELLs’ motivation to
read; (c) ELLs are motivated when they understand the instrumental value of reading; (d)
the families of ELLs influence their reading motivation; and (e) ELLs are motivated to
read to fit in to their new environment (Arzubiaga et al., 2002; Casey, 2008/2009; Cho et
al., 2010; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007; Loera, Rueda, & Nakamoto, 2011; Protacio, 2010;
Robinson, 2010; Rueda, MacGillivray, Monzo, & Arzubiaga, 2001; Sturtevant & Kim,
2010). In what follows, the research base for each of these findings is reviewed.
Perceived competence. ELLs enter US schools with various schooling
experiences and English abilities (e.g. Peregoy & Boyle, 2000; Rubinstein-Avila, 2003).
Thus, their competencies in reading English texts vary greatly. Research has shown that
ELLs’ level of motivation to read is related to their perception of how well they read in
English (Cho et al., 2010; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007; Protacio, 2010). ELLs will be more
motivated to read if they think they can be successful at reading; conversely, if they have
had little success with reading English texts, then their motivation to read English texts is
low. Researchers found that ELLs were more motivated to read when they could read
books that were more challenging rather than books that had linguistic simplicity (Cho et
11

al., 2010). Reading these moderately challenging books boosted ELLs’ confidence in
their own reading. In contrast, Ivey and Broaddus (2007) found that ELLs who were just
beginning to acquire reading skills in English were motivated to read simple
informational texts with engaging photographs as their limited English literacy skills
constricted their ability to engage with more complex texts.
Access and exposure to texts. Many studies focusing on ELLs’ motivation
and/or literacy development highlighted the importance of exposure and access to a
diverse set of texts (Casey, 2008/2009; Chun, 2009; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007; Meltzer &
Hamann, 2004; Smythe & Neufeld, 2010). ELLs need access to books from diverse
genres that are well matched to their reading abilities. For example, Chun (2009)
suggested that graphic novels are a type of text that would motivate ELLs to read. In
Chun’s research study, ELLs exhibited higher levels of interest when reading the graphic
novel Maus in their ESL classroom. While the ELLs still encountered challenges in
reading this graphic novel, the students showed more enthusiasm for this text. This study
provides evidence of how using a non-traditional type of genre might facilitate increased
motivation among middle school ELLs. Reading culturally relevant trade books may also
motivate ELLs to read (Ivey & Broaddus, 2007). Students may be able to activate their
prior knowledge on familiar experiences or make connections to ideas and concepts in
these texts to which the students can relate. Adolescent ELLs need and deserve access to
a wide variety of texts, both printed and electronic, since the quality and diversity of
reading material is related to reading engagement (Alvermann, 2005; Biancarosa &
Snow, 2004; Meltzer & Hamann, 2004). As Feger (2006) noted, the textbooks for ELLs
that focus on grammar are useful only for those who have recently arrived to the U.S.
12

Instead, ELLs should also have access to more authentic, meaningful reading (Li &
Zhang, 2004) rather than texts solely focused on low level skills. This wide variety of
texts is not a luxury; rather, it is a key facet of creating and sustaining a learning
environment that supports literacy development (Meltzer & Hamann, 2004).
Instrumental motivation. Another factor that is related to ELLs’ reading
motivation is instrumental motivation. When ELLs understand the instrumental value of
reading, they are more motivated to read. In my practicum research, instrumental
motivation -- operationalized as the motivation to do something because of its perceived
benefits or practical advantages (Dornyei, 2003a, 2003b; Gardner & Lambert, 1972;
Masgoret & Gardner, 2003) -- was the factor which had the highest mean in a reading
motivation survey given to 132 upper elementary ELLs (Protacio, 2010). The survey
results also revealed that instrumental motivation was one of four factors which
differentiated those who self-reported to be motivated readers and those who did not. In
other words, instrumental motivation was an important contributor to ELLs’ reading
motivation. In addition, through interviews with focal students, I found that ELLs were
cognizant of the ways in which reading helped them become more proficient in English.
Researchers have also found that ELLs are more motivated for their academics in general
and reading specifically when they could see how what they were learning was essential
to their career goals (Conchas, 2006; Rubinstein-Avila, 2003/2004; Sturtevant & Kim,
2010). In a case study of Miguel, a middle school ELL with low literacy engagement,
Rubinstein-Avila (2003/2004) found Miguel’s engagement increased when he could link
literacy activities to his career aspiration.

13

However, research has also shown statistically significant differences for
instrumental motivation based on both proficiency level and grade level (Protacio, 2010;
Sturtevant & Kim, 2010). In my practicum study, I found that as students progressed
through school, their levels of instrumental motivation decreased. In other words, the
fourth graders in the study were more motivated to read because they placed more
pragmatic value of reading compared to the fifth-and-sixth grade students surveyed. The
level of ELLs’ proficiency in English is also a factor in relation to instrumental
motivation. In their survey of middle school ELLs, Sturtevant and Kim (2010) identified
a statistically significant difference between ELLs who were beginning readers in English
and ELLs who were more advanced readers on survey questions focusing on the
instrumental value of reading. ELLs who were just beginning to learn how to read in
English placed a higher value on reading compared to those who were intermediate and
advanced English readers. These are troubling results as they indicate that as students
progress through school and improve their English skills, they are less motivated to read
because they do not see the practical benefits of reading in English. Both of these studies
relied on survey methods to gather data, and the researchers did not elaborate on the
reasons for the decreased levels of reading motivation. Thus, through qualitative research,
we can better document the reasons why ELLs might not be as instrumentally motivated
to read in English as they progress through school or as they become more proficient in
English.
Integrative motivation. Integrative motivation is a “positive
interpersonal/affective disposition toward the L2 [second language] group and the desire
to interact with and even become similar to valued members of that community”
14

(Dornyei, 2003a, p. 5). If applied to reading motivation, ELLs who are integratively
motivated want to read English books to learn more about the American culture or
become valued members in the American community. Integrative motivation can play an
important role in ELLs’ reading engagement. My practicum research revealed that
students who engaged in social interactions around reading did so with American peers.
Focal students revealed they preferred to discuss reading with their American classmates.
One reason is that ELLs from their native countries are sometimes unable to read at their
level. Reading in English provides ELLs with a way to participate in social interactions
with American peers and, by extension, have a deeper cultural connection with their new
community (Protacio, 2010). In addition, reading helped students learn about the
American culture. For instance, it was through reading that Nabila learned information
about how holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrated in the US.
Through reading, ELLs are allowed a glimpse into the American way of life.
Family influences. Researchers have also specifically investigated the
relationship of family influences on ELLs’ reading motivation. Findings in this section
reveal the interplay of multiple motivational factors in ELL reading motivation.
Families play a role in helping ELLs see the instrumental value of their
academics. In a qualitative study, Robinson (2010) reported that family members
provided ELLs encouragement to read. While the family members were not avid readers
themselves, they made sure to advise ELLs to continue to read in English in order to do
well academically. Robinson also found that ELLs were motivated to read so they could
do well in school because of the pressure they felt from their families to receive good
grades. Similarly, the middle school ESL students in Sturtevant and Kim’s (2010) study
15

were encouraged by family members to study well and to read. Some participants in
Sturtevant and Kim’s (2010) study were also motivated to continue to improve their
English literacy abilities because these ELLs helped their immigrant parents in
understanding English texts.
Family involvement in literacy activities is also important in motivating ELLs to
read in English. Researchers have found that ELLs whose families engaged in Spanish
and English cultural or literacy activities at home valued reading compared to students
whose families did not (Arzubiaga et al., 2002; Rueda et al., 2001). Other researchers
have looked at the explicit link between immigrant parents’ involvement with reading
and its relation to children’s motivation. Through survey research, researchers found that
parental involvement in reading (e.g. listening to children read, reading to children,
giving children choices about reading materials) was linked to higher reading motivation
for ELLs (Loera et al., 2011). Thus, family influence is a factor to consider in relation to
ELL reading motivation.
Through this section, it is evident there is a substantial amount of research on
ELLs’ reading motivation. The findings of the studies included in this section of the
review suggest that numerous factors are at play when motivating ELLs’ reading
motivation. It is also noteworthy to point out that while this section provides a substantial
amount of information about motivation, very few of the research studies included in this
review were conducted within the classroom context. Many of the studies relied on selfreports from the students through surveys or utilized data solely from interviews (e.g.,
Cho et al., 2010; Robinson, 2010).

16

Dornyei (2009) argues that learner characteristics, such as motivation, cannot be
evaluated without taking into account the individual’s interaction within a specific
environment, such as a classroom context. He also highlighted the need for a better
understanding of the interplay among a language learner, the language being learned, and
the environment in which the language is being acquired (Dornyei, 2009). Therefore, if
Dornyei’s argument is applied specifically to ELL reading motivation, there is a need to
examine ELLs within the classroom context to obtain a more comprehensive view of
their motivation to read in English. As Baker, Afflerbach, and Reinking (1996) point out,
“underlying the engagement perspective is the assumption that diverse instructional
context can better prepare students for reading in a wide range of situations, as expected
in literate societies” (p. xvi). Despite the importance of examining the classroom context,
Ivey and Broaddus’ (2007) research was the one classroom-based study found through a
review of the literature. However, in their formative experiment, they focused only on the
Latino/a population, which does not reflect the diverse populations of ELLs in ESL and
English classrooms in U.S. public schools.
Strategic Knowledge
In comparison to reading motivation, less research has been conducted on ELLs’
strategic knowledge. The few studies that have focused on this topic have generally
revealed three key findings: (a) ELLs who are good readers utilize numerous
comprehension strategies while reading, (b) ELLs who are strategic readers are able to
“transfer” comprehension strategies from reading in one language to another; and (c)
struggling ELL readers are able to learn to use comprehension strategies with focused

17

instruction (Cho et al., 2010; Jimenez, 1997; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1995; 1996;
Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002).
Research focused on mainstream students’ comprehension has found that good
readers utilize comprehension strategies to increase their understanding from texts
(Almasi & Fullerton, 2012; Duke & Pearson, 2002; Duke, Pearson, Strachan, & Billman,
2011; Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1996; Shanahan et al., 2010). The same conclusion
generally holds true for ELLs (Jimenez et al., 1995, 1996). In a mixed methods study
focused on the strategic knowledge of middle school ELLs, researchers found that
successful English readers were students who used multiple comprehension strategies-such as clarifying unknown vocabulary, monitoring comprehension, making inferences,
asking questions, and connecting prior knowledge--while reading in English (Jimenez et
al., 1996). Conversely, ELLs who were not proficient readers often did not use such
strategies to improve their comprehension (Jimenez et al., 1996). The non-proficient ELL
readers were able to monitor their comprehension and realize they did not understand the
text, but they could not use strategies such as clarifying unknown vocabulary to improve
their comprehension of the text (Jimenez et al., 1996). Poor ELL readers were also less
likely to use higher order strategies such as summarization and making inferences to
better comprehend what they were reading.
ELLs who are successful readers of English texts are also able to transfer their
knowledge of comprehension strategies from one language to another (Jimenez et al.,
1995, 1996; Mokhtari & Sheorey, 2002). According to Jimenez et al. (1996), middle
school students in their study indicated there were several comprehension strategies they
used--such as questioning, rereading, evaluating, and monitoring--regardless of the
18

language in which they were reading. For example, the students knew they needed to
monitor their comprehension more when reading in their less dominant language. In
addition, these students used additional strategies such as searching for cognates and
translating as a way for them to better comprehend texts. Successful ELL readers had an
enhanced awareness of the importance of using various strategies between their two
languages to overcome comprehension hurdles.
Research conducted with struggling ELL readers has shown promise of increasing
students’ strategic knowledge through targeted instruction. Jimenez (1997) used a
formative experiment design to implement eight cognitive strategy lessons with Latina/o
students who were reading up to four grade levels below their current grade. Students
were provided strategy instruction on an individual basis with a focus on three key
comprehension strategies: integrating prior knowledge, formulating questions, and
figuring out unknown vocabulary. Results indicated that through lessons wherein the
strategies were modeled and demonstrated in both English and Spanish, these struggling
ELLs were able to use and provide an improved understanding of the strategies.
In a more recent study, researchers worked with fourth-grade ELLs, who scored
below the twenty-fifth percentile on a standardized test, in order to provide targeted
instruction on a specific comprehension strategy (Cho et al., 2010). Researchers
conducted an intervention study using an adaptation of the Directed Reading-Thinking
Activity (DR-TA), which is a problem solving discussion strategy designed to support
comprehension. Students were instructed to pause at predetermined sections in texts and
asked to make predictions. Following the intervention, students were able to make more
substantial and focused predictions compared to the initial data (Cho et al., 2010).
19

Overall, these studies show the discrepancy in the strategic knowledge between
good ELL readers and poor ELL readers. Similar to findings with mainstream, native
English speaking students, research has shown that ELLs who are better comprehenders
are those who utilize multiple comprehension strategies while reading. Fortunately,
Jimenez’s (1997) research shows promise in that poor ELL readers, even those reading
four grade levels below their actual grade, can increase their strategic knowledge given
intensive and individualized instruction.
While the studies of Jimenez and his colleagues provides important information
about the strategic knowledge of middle school ELLs, the samples used in their studies
were fairly homogenous. These studies focused on Latina/o middle school students. More
data needs to be obtained about the strategic knowledge of a more diverse group of ELLs.
Jimenez et al.’s (1996) research also supports the idea that ELLs who are
proficient readers utilize many reading comprehension strategies while those who are
struggling readers do not. While the gap in the number of strategies have been
documented in terms of varying proficiency levels, there is not research providing data on
the differences of ELLs’ strategic knowledge and strategy use because of varying reading
engagement levels. Given that I utilized think-alouds in this study, I am afforded an
opportunity to investigate more closely on whether or not ELLs who are disengaged are
aware of comprehension strategies and if so, when they employ these strategies when
reading.
Social Interactions
Much research has supported the idea that social interactions contribute
substantially to students’ levels of reading engagement. Research on native English
20

speaking students’ reading motivation showed that students are more likely to be engaged
to read when they can participate in social interactions around reading rather than
viewing reading as an isolated and solitary activity (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Guthrie et
al., 1996; Lapp & Fisher, 2009; Strommen & Mates, 2004). Out of the studies which have
focused on ELLs’ reading engagement, few focused specifically on the social interaction
component. Thus, the literature in this section is based on the ELL literature which has
indicated that social interaction is an important component to ELLs’ literacy
development. According to the ELL literature, social interactions around reading provide
(a) opportunities for engaged ELL readers to have discussions with others; (b)
membership within a community of readers; and (c) additional support for ELLs for
reading.
Engaged readers enjoy participating in discussions around those who also enjoy
reading, such as peers, teachers, parents, or other family members (Feger, 2006; Klauda,
2003; Lapp & Fisher, 2009; Protacio, 2010; Strommen & Mates, 2004). In their research
in a diverse classroom, Lapp and Fisher (2009) reported that students enjoyed
participating in their classroom book club. These students were highly engaged in this
social interaction as they discussed characters, provided insights, and synthesized across
texts. The peer discussions allowed students to voice their interests and share their ideas
around a common text. As another example, in my practicum research, social interactions
around reading emerged as a primary factor in motivating ELLs to read. Focal students
reported they regularly participated in conversations around reading with various
individuals. Some engaged in social interactions with family members such as a parent or

21

sibling while others frequently participated in discussions around books with friends
(Protacio, 2010).
Participating in social interactions around reading also provides students
membership in a community of readers. In such a community, students experience less
anxiety with their academics compared to students who are placed in highly competitive
classrooms (Conchas, 2006). In classrooms where there is a sense of community, students
work together to better understand the concepts and ideas they encounter in the texts they
are reading. For example, Smythe and Neufeld (2010) reported high levels of student
engagement among middle school ELLs when students were able to work collaboratively
on a digital story project which they were planning to post on their class website. The
nature of the digital projects allowed ELLs to work collaboratively by providing
suggestions and feedback to one another. While this study was focused on digital
storytelling, the authors found the opportunity to engage in social interactions increased
the level of engagement that ELLs had for the project.
Social interactions also foster a collaborative environment where students in
general, and ELLs specifically, can assist one another to better appreciate texts and
acquire knowledge from reading (Cho et al., 2010; Guthrie et al., 2004; Lapp & Fisher,
2009; Protacio, 2010). As Guthrie (2011) indicated, through small-group interactions,
students should add to each other’s interpretations of texts in order for everyone to come
to a collective understanding about texts they are discussing. For ELLs, participating in
social interactions around texts provides access to other individuals who can assist with
their comprehension by exposing them to others’ perspectives and points of view (Cho et
al., 2010; Lapp & Fisher, 2009; Protacio, 2010). These social interactions provide
22

opportunities for ELLs to share cultural, linguistic, and intellectual resources (Cuero &
Dworin, 2007). For example, peers may serve as translators for other students who have
limited English skills (Cho et al., 2010).
The literature reviewed in this section indicated that social interactions contribute
to ELLs’ reading engagement by providing them membership within a community of
readers. In addition, ELLs have access to more resources when provided opportunities to
engage in collaborative interactions with their peers. However, little research has
documented the types of social interactions in which middle school ELLs participate and
how these experiences might directly influence their reading engagement. The studies
reviewed in this section did not intend to focus on social interactions specifically. For
instance, Smythe and Neufeld’s (2010) study was focused on the influence of digital
storytelling on ELLs’ literacy development. The increase of students’ engagement levels
was a tangential finding. Thus, details about the quality and content of these social
interactions were not provided. In my study, I was able to focus specifically on what
kinds of social interactions occur through classroom observations. Then, I gathered
information through interviews on how these social interactions relate to ELLs’ reading
engagement.
Constructing Meaning from Texts
Engaged readers understand that the purpose of reading is to acquire knowledge
and make meaning from texts (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). Baker, Dreher, and
Guthrie (2000) describe how engaged reading is related to the acquisition of knowledge.
The heart of engagement is the desire to gain new knowledge of a topic, to follow
the excitement of a narrative, to expand one’s experience through print. Engaged
23

readers can find books of personal significance and make time for reading them.
The investment of time is rewarded by the experience of immersion in the text
itself. Engaged readers draw on knowledge gained from previous experiences to
construct new understandings, and they use cognitive strategies to regulate
comprehension so that goals are met and interests are satisfied. (p. 2)
The acquisition of information and the desire to gain new knowledge becomes
even more important in the middle school context as the subject matter being taught
becomes more abstract and complex (Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Hynd, 1999). Thus, it is
even more pertinent to investigate how students make meanings from texts and what they
learn from reading. In previous studies on reading engagement, the focus has been more
on students’ performance on standardized reading comprehension assessments (Guthrie,
et al., 2007; Guthrie et al., 1999; Taboada, Tonks, Wigfield, & Guthrie, 2009) rather than
looking at what, in particular, they have learned from reading. In studies conducted on
ELL students’ reading engagement, even less has been reported about ELLs’ construction
of meaning through reading. For example, Ivey and Broaddus (2007) conducted a
formative experiment with adolescent Latino/a students who were just beginning to
speak, read, and write in English. Because of the students’ emerging English skills, the
researchers focused primarily on finding texts at the ELLs’ lower reading levels that
students would find interesting. Although Ivey and Broaddus indicated their study was
focused on reading engagement, they focused mostly on students’ motivation and
touched upon strategic knowledge; they did not report on what students learned from
reading these texts, nor did they talk about the social interactions in which students
participated.
24

Fairbanks’ (2000) qualitative study is one of the few studies which has provided
data on how students made meaning from reading. She found that adolescents were
engaged when given the opportunity to conduct an inquiry project focused on a relevant
topic to their lives which were connected to family, school, or community issues. In her
two-year qualitative research in a middle school with a large immigrant student
population, Fairbanks documented students’ development as literacy learners. Students
focused on issues such as gang violence, which affected them because their school
neighborhood was home to several gangs. Other students focused on school policies such
as the implementation of a dress code. Aside from reading narratives which contained
themes similar to their topics of inquiry, students then had to find other sources such as
newspapers and library books. Others, such as those who were researching homelessness,
had to locate and contact local agencies which support the homeless. Fairbanks reported
that ELLs were highly engaged with this project, and each student reported learning a
great deal about the topic they were investigating. Fairbanks did not go into much detail
into what the students learned, nor did she provide examples of the student work
completed for this instructional unit. Rather, she provides evidence of students’ positive
reactions about the opportunity to explore a personally relevant topic in-depth.
Guthrie and his colleagues (1996) conducted one of the few studies that have
documented actual conceptual knowledge gained when reading engagement is targeted in
an integrated literacy and science unit. Even though the following two studies were not
conducted with ELLs or diverse populations, I include these in the review because of the
limited knowledge about this component in the ELL reading engagement literature.
Guthrie et al. (1996) developed performance assessments (consisting of seven distinct,
25

but connected tasks), which allowed students to apply what they learned from their CORI
unit wherein they explored different science concepts. Some of the tasks included
drawing, writing, and applying what they learned to a related problem. The researchers
found statistically significant differences in the students’ abilities to search for
information in multiple texts, represent acquired knowledge in both drawing and writing,
and transfer conceptual knowledge to new situations.
Other work by Guthrie and his colleagues have also found that when reading
engagement is targeted in classrooms through CORI, students’ performance on
standardized reading comprehension assessments improve. Guthrie et al. (2007)
conducted a meta-analysis of eleven quasi-experimental studies focused on CORI, which
is an instructional strategy which embeds reading instruction within a content area such
as science so students can participate in inquiry projects around topics of interest. Within
a CORI instructional unit, there are structures in place that support each of the four
components of the engagement model. For example, in order to address motivation,
students are allowed to choose the texts they want to read which will help them address
their focus. Students are also encouraged to collaborate so that they can exchange ideas
and develop their expertise together on an area of investigation. To address strategic
knowledge, teachers will then introduce and explain specific comprehension strategies
that students should use in order to acquire the information that will answer their inquiry
questions. Lastly, students are able to construct meaning from the texts they read in
completing their inquiry projects (Guthrie et al., 2004). Results of the meta-analysis of
CORI studies indicated that this instructional approach had a substantial impact on
students’ performance on standardized reading comprehension assessments (Guthrie et
26

al., 2007). In other words, when students’ reading engagement was targeted, their levels
of comprehension increased, which would then most likely lead to their ability to learn
and construct meaning from what they were reading.
In sum, the studies reviewed in this section show there are a very limited number
of studies focused specifically on how readers have constructed meaning from texts,
particularly with the ELL population. With the exception of one study by Fairbanks
(2000), little research has provided a naturalistic description of how ELLs construct
meaning from the texts they are exposed to in middle school classrooms and what they
learn from these texts.
Summary
This review of literature indicates that while there is a firm foundation of
knowledge about ELLs’ motivation to read and strategic knowledge about reading, the
social interactions and meaning construction components have been overlooked in the
ELL reading engagement literature. To offer a holistic and comprehensive view of
reading engagement, all four components must be addressed in one in-depth study.
Studies have mostly focused on single components of reading engagement, and thus,
there are fragmented views about ELLs’ reading engagement. In addition, many of the
studies reviewed relied on single sources of data for their studies. While each of these
methods provides pertinent information, they do not afford researchers to present a
multifaceted picture of reading engagement. Lastly, majority of the studies on ethnic
minority populations focused on students from Latino/a backgrounds. As the ELL
population is becoming increasingly diverse, more research on under-researched
populations is needed (Garcia, Jensen, & Scribner, 2009; Goldenberg, 2008).
27

Through this dissertation research, I attempted to fill the gaps in the reading
engagement literature by conducting a classroom-based, in-depth case study on young
adolescent ELLs from diverse racial backgrounds focusing on all four components—
motivation, strategic knowledge, constructing meaning from texts, and social
interactions-- to provide a holistic description of ELLs’ reading engagement (or
disengagement). This holistic perspective is especially needed in order to fully
understand the literacy development of young adolescent ELLs and how these students
might develop into engaged or disengaged readers.
Conceptual Framework
Aside from the literature on reading engagement discussed in the previous
section, the conceptual framework of this study is guided by the expectancy-value
framework and sociocultural theory. Since an integral part of reading engagement
involves reading motivation, there is a need to incorporate aspects of a motivational
theory in order to better understand reading engagement. While there are several possible
motivational theories that could be utilized, for this study I have focused on the
expectancy-value framework. Further, by utilizing sociocultural theory in this study, I
acknowledge the roles that ELLs’ social and cultural backgrounds play in influencing
their engagement with reading. Sociocultural theory allows me to emphasize the broader
picture of the social and cultural contexts and how they play a part in cultivating reading
engagement. In this section of the dissertation, I briefly discuss each theory. Throughout
each section, I make explicit connections with how each theory informs the study.
The expectancy-value model. The motivational framework that is most
applicable to the study is the expectancy-value model (Eccles et al., 1983). Eccles and her
28

colleagues posited that for motivation to occur, individuals must both believe they will
succeed at a task and must also value the activity. Both expectancy for success and value
of the activity or task must be present; the interaction of these two components influence
one’s performance, effort, and persistence at the task they face (Wigfield & Eccles,
2000). From an expectancy-value framework, ELLs need to think of themselves as
capable readers in order to become motivated. In addition, they need to understand the
value of reading or outcomes of reading. If ELLs consider themselves poor readers or if
they do not value reading, then most likely then this will influence their reading
motivation levels.
Studies have documented that expectancy and values regarding reading decline
from elementary to middle schools (Guthrie, Alao, & Rinehart, 1997; Henk, Marinak, &
Melnick, 2012; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). Guthrie et al. (1997) offer an explanation
on the declining levels of reading motivation of students at the middle school level: “As
children get older, their competence beliefs and expectancies for success tend to become
more sensitive to success and failure experiences...Less successful students lose their
intrinsic motivations for reading due to their eroding sense of competence” (p. 440). In
other words, when students have repeatedly experienced failure or encountered numerous
challenges with reading or tasks associated with reading, it becomes increasingly more
difficult to address students’ perceived competence as readers. Given that ELLs may
have experienced challenges in acquiring English proficiency and learning the grade level
content, focusing on their perceived competence and the value they place on reading
becomes even more important. If students’ motivation has been documented to decline,
then the reasons behind this decline must be addressed in middle school classrooms.
29

Thus, in this study, I closely examine focal students’ perceived competence and
instrumental motivation (value) since this likely influences their motivation and
correspondingly, their reading engagement.
Sociocultural theory. While the expectancy-value framework focuses on factors
at the level of the individual, sociocultural theory provides a broad picture. Rather than
focusing only on the individual, those who ascribe by sociocultural theory examine the
individual’s interaction within the larger sociocultural context (Alvermann, 2005, 2009;
Au, 2007; Rueda et al., 2001). In other words, one's literacy development is influenced by
his or her social context and cultural backgrounds (e.g. Au, 1997; Gee, 1996). As Gee
(1996) posited, each individual has his/her own “identity kit” or Discourse, which he
characterized as “composed of ways of talking, listening, (often, too, reading and
writing), acting, interacting, believing, valuing, using tools and objects, in particular
settings at specific times, so as to display and recognize a particular social identity” (p.
128). Below, Gee (1996) provides further elaboration on the concept of Discourse.
A Discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language,
other symbolic expressions, and ‘artifacts’, of thinking, feeling, believing,
valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially
meaningful group or ‘social network’, or to signal that one is playing” a socially
meaningful ‘role’. (p. 131)
Gee’s conception of Discourse indicates that individuals are shaped by their
context and their inclusion in social groups. It is through membership in these social
networks that individuals learn how to act and talk in ways that are expected of members
of their Discourse. It is also through this that individuals learn what should be valued and
30

what could be considered as successful. If applied to reading, it follows that one’s
Discourse may influence or dictate the role of reading in his/her everyday life. Discourse
can help shape a student’s reading identity.
Au (1997) provides an application of sociocultural theory to the field of reading.
Below, she describes how one's perception of reading is influenced by social and
contextual factors.
A sociocultural perspective begins with the assumption that reading, like other
higher mental functions, is essentially social in nature. Even reading a book alone
can be considered a social activity, because the reader is engaged with the author,
the book is written in a language developed through long periods of use by other
people, and the reader’s concepts and schemata for responding to the book borrow
from the thinking of others and result from previous social interactions...Learning
to read cannot logically be separated from the particular milieu in which it takes
place. When children learn to read, or fail to learn to read, they do so in a
particular social, cultural, and historical environment. (p. 184)
Hence, in this study, I cannot examine ELL reading engagement without
considering the social contexts and cultural backgrounds of these students. ELLs’
perceptions of what it means to be a reader might differ based on their social contexts and
cultural background. For instance, in Sarroub’s (2005) study on young adolescent
Muslim females, reading the Quo’ran was the most valued literacy practice, and young
women who were able to recite from the Quo’ran provided honor to her family,
regardless of her academic achievement in school.

31

By using a sociocultural lens in this proposed study, I considered the ELLs'
backgrounds as I analyzed the data in order to describe what ELL reading engagement
entailed. Similar to Rueda et al. (2001), I would argue that ELL reading engagement
cannot be truly understood without viewing it through a sociocultural lens.
Summary
The multifaceted nature of reading engagement calls for numerous theories to be
utilized to guide this research. While motivational theory is certainly important in
examining ELLs’ individual beliefs and values with regard to reading, the idea that
reading is a social and cultural activity must be considered. Thus, sociocultural theory
should be utilized to consider how social and cultural contexts influence ELL reading
engagement. Furthermore, examinations need to be conducted on how ELLs’ primary
Discourse can influence the construction of reader identities.
To sum, in this chapter, I discussed the purpose and background of the study,
pointing out that this dissertation attends to the gap in the field on the reading
engagement of ELLs at the middle school level. Then, I reviewed the relevant research on
reading engagement and its components, focusing in particular on the ELL literature and
described a theoretical framework drawing on sociocultural theory and motivational
theory. The focus of Chapter 2 is the methods employed for this case study research. In
particular, I provide more information on the data collection procedures, data sources,
and data analysis which I used for this research. In chapters 3 through 6, I present the
results of this research with a case study on each focal student. In Chapter 7, I present a
discussion of a cross-case analysis of reading engagement across the four focal students.
In Chapter 8, I provide implications for both research and practice.
32

CHAPTER 2
Methodology
The aim of this dissertation study was to fill the gaps in the reading engagement
literature by conducting a classroom-based, in-depth case study on young adolescent
ELLs from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. In this chapter, I first provide an
overview of the research design, and I explain why a case study design is appropriate to
answer the research questions. Second, I describe my positionality as the researcher.
Next, I introduce the setting of the study, both in terms of the school context and
classroom contexts. Fourth, I discuss the different data collection procedures utilized in
the study. Lastly, I describe the analytic procedures I employed in order to make sense of
the data.
Research Design
Dyson and Genishi (2005) posited that case studies are used to examine “the
meaning people make of their lives in very particular contexts” (p. 9). In the case of this
dissertation research, a case study approach was utilized in order to examine four focal
students’ reading engagements in their English or ESL classroom. A case study design is
well suited to address the research questions for this study as it makes use of multiple
qualitative data collection techniques (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Creswell, 2003; Merriam,
1988; Yin, 1989) in order to address the multifaceted components of reading engagement.
As Yin (1989) argued, the unique strength of a case study over other research methods is
“its ability to deal with a full variety of evidence -- documents, artifacts, interviews, and
observations” (p. 20).

33

While previous studies that have focused on components of ELLs’ reading
engagement have utilized qualitative methods such as interviewing (e.g. Cho, Xu, &
Rhodes, 2010; Robinson, 2010), they did not utilize numerous qualitative data collection
methods within a single study in order to provide a holistic description of reading
engagement. Various sources were used in this study to gather data on each of four
components of reading engagement, motivation, strategic knowledge, conceptual
knowledge, and social interaction, which allowed me to offer a quaternary view of
reading engagement. Table 1 provides an overview of the data sources which helped
answer each of the research questions.

34

Table 1
Research Questions and Corresponding Data Sources
1. What
motivates
middle school
ELLs to read?
What
discourages
them from
reading?

2. What
strategic
knowledge do
middle school
ELLs draw
upon when
reading?

3. How do
middle
school
ELLs
engage in
social
interactions
around
texts?

4. What
conceptual
knowledge
do middle
school ELLs
gain when
reading?

5. How do
motivation, strategic
knowledge,
conceptual
knowledge, and
social interactions
interact to make up
ELLs’ reading
engagement?

Classroom
Observations

X

X

X

Student
interviews

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

Teacher
interviews
RAI
QRI

X

X

X

X

X

Student
artifacts

X

35

X

One of the strengths of this dissertation research in relation to other studies on
ELL reading engagement is that it was conducted within actual middle school classrooms
with a diverse immigrant population. Thus, this study allows an in-depth investigation
into the various factors which influenced ELLs’ reading engagement. Having a sustained
presence in classrooms also afforded the observation and documentation of situations in
which focal students were engaged with or disengaged from academic reading.
Spradley (1979) indicated that one way of thinking about fieldwork in qualitative
research is that rather than researchers studying people, it could be considered that
researchers are “learning from people” (p. 3). In connection to this idea, the use of a case
study design allowed the focal students the opportunity to share what factors influenced
their engagement to read in English. By using a case study design, I was also in a better
position to describe ELLs’ reading engagement by observing them on multiple occasions
within their classroom context, engaging them in in-depth interviews and informal
conversations, and collecting student artifacts that speak to their reading engagement
(Merriam, 1988; Yin, 1989).
Positionality of Researcher
Merriam (1988) emphasized the importance of the researcher’s role in qualitative
research since he or she is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis. As
such, in this section, I describe my background to be forthcoming about how my
experiences may have influenced this research study. I am a biliterate, bicultural woman
who has had a similar educational experience to the ELLs in this dissertation study. I
came to the United States when I was five years old, unable to speak a word of English. It
was through my experiences in a U.S. public school that I learned to speak the language,
36

and in so doing, I ended up forgetting how to speak my native language, Tagalog. Even
though I was completely fluent in English by the time I was in fifth -grade, upon moving
to a school in California, I was placed in an ESL classroom, and my classmates were
mostly new immigrants from Mexico. The following year, my family and I returned to
our native country, the Philippines, and I was once again thrust into a school system
where I needed to learn the language in order to be academically successful. Learning a
language also means learning a country’s culture and customs (Agar, 1996), which I
learned from both my experiences acculturating to the U.S. as a young child and my readjustment to my native culture and norms as a young adolescent in the Philippines.
Thus, my background as a second language learner helped sensitize me to the experiences
of ELLs in schools.
I was also an English teacher in the Philippines, where students learn English as a
second language. While I taught at a school with a homogenous student population in
terms of academic achievement, my students’ reading engagement levels varied greatly.
My own reading engagement has always been fairly high, especially when given
autonomy in choosing reading materials. As a high school English teacher, I wanted to
motivate my students to read English texts beyond what they read for my class and their
other content-area classes. I encouraged my students to always bring a text they would
read for pleasure in my class during independent reading time. However, despite my
prodding, I had a few students who would not bring any reading materials, insisting there
were no reading materials that were of interest to them. This experience prompted me to
pursue a graduate degree in literacy education since I wanted to learn more about reading
motivation and engagement to encourage more students to become engaged readers.
37

The topic of this dissertation is the cross-section of my experiences as both a
language learner (of English and Filipino) and a teacher of language learners. I relate
these experiences to be forthcoming about my subjectivity as a researcher. Having
undergone similar experiences as a child and young adolescent, it was difficult at times to
separate my researcher identity from my identity as a teacher, as a former ELL, and as a
bilingual, bicultural individual. These identities likely influenced the subjectivity which I
have brought to my interpretation of the data I collected throughout this research process.
As Peshkin (1998) argued, “One’s subjectivity is like a garment that cannot be removed.
It is insistently present in both the research and non-research aspects of our life” (p. 17).
He urged researchers to confront and be conscious of the subjectivity they bring to the
research process. By elaborating on my own background as a language learner and
English language teacher, I have shared the experiences which might influence and shape
my interpretations of the reading engagement or disengagement of the focal students.
The School Setting
This study was conducted at Ford Middle School (FMS), which was a seventhand-eighth grade suburban school in a Midwestern state. During the 2011-2012 school
year, the school had a diverse student population composed of 522 students. These
students represented 27 countries and numerous native languages. Forty-three percent of
students qualified for free or reduced lunch. According to the school’s annual report,
during the 2011-2012 school year, FMS did make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in
English language arts and mathematics. However, FMS was named a focus school
because there was a wide gap in the scores of high and low achievers across the different
content areas. FMS planned to address these issues by “focusing on student engagement,
38

using research-based instructional strategies, providing additional support in reading,
establishing professional learning communities among staff, providing direct vocabulary
instruction, and implementing positive behavior supports, and implementing the
Common Core Standards” (FMS Annual Report, 2012, p. 1). The following information
was provided in the school’s annual report about the students’ performance on the yearly
statewide assessment:
th

• 72 percent of 7 grade students met or exceeded the reading component
th

• 59 percent of 7 grade students met or exceeded the writing component
th

• 55 percent of 7 grade students met or exceeded the math component
th

• 77 percent of 8 grade students met or exceeded the reading component
th

• 45 percent of 8 grade students met or exceeded the math component (pp. 23).
FMS is the only middle school in its district. Students at FMS have access to
many resources. One of the distinct advantages of FMS is its huge library with books and
magazines of various genres that cater to students’ different interests. There are also
approximately 25 computers in two areas around the library. Scattered around the library
are tables where groups of students can gather and meet. There are also individual carrels
for students to use to study. Another facility in FMS is a new two-level auditorium,
which is used for school assemblies and productions.
In terms of resources for ELLs, there were two ESL classes, which were taught by
the ESL teacher, Mrs. Blake. She did not have any paraprofessionals as support

39

personnel. Instead, Mrs. Blake relied on community volunteers and pre-service teachers
from the local university for additional help in the ESL classroom. One class period was
specifically for seventh-grade ELLs, and it served as a resource room where ELLs can
obtain support for their academics. For newcomers, this was also the class period in
which they received intensive English instruction. Another class period was for both
seventh and eighth-graders. The initial part of the class was devoted to academic
vocabulary instruction. Students who were advanced in their English proficiency and who
were enrolled in a mainstream English class then proceeded to the library and used the
rest of the period for academic support. Meanwhile, ELLs who were still in the early
stages of acquiring English proficiency were provided English instruction through
reading and writing activities.
The Participants
In this section, I first describe the selection of focal students for this dissertation.
Next, I provide an introduction to each focal student (cf. Table 2). Finally, I provide
background information on the two classroom teachers who were involved in the study.
One of the purposes for this dissertation was to better understand reading
engagement among ELLs. In order for this to be possible, there needed to be a range of
reading engagement levels among the focal students in order to examine the reasons why
some ELLs become engaged readers while others do not. In total, I had four participants.
I had met two highly engaged readers during a previous study I had conducted (Protacio,
2010), and I selected two less engaged readers were from the ESL class in the school. As
mentioned in an earlier chapter, an impetus of this dissertation was to determine if and
how two of my previous participants’ motivations for and engagement in reading had
40

changed upon entering middle school. In my previous study, Jonathan and Nabila had
fairly high reading motivation (Protacio, 2010). Because I wanted to get a range of
engagement levels, I needed to invite students who were not as engaged with reading to
participate in this research study.
Although there were fourteen total students in the ESL class, my pool of choices
was limited. There was another graduate student who was conducting an intervention
study on vocabulary with a small sample of the students in the ESL class. I did not ask
any of her participants to be in my case study research because of the time commitment
of both studies.
Based on my initial observations and teacher recommendation, I asked Farshad, a
seventh-grader from Afghanistan, and Oliver, an eighth-grader from Congo, to be focal
students. I decided to invite Farshad because he was a student who openly resisted having
to read for Reading Month. I wanted to delve more into his resistance to reading.
Meanwhile, I chose to ask Oliver to participate because he was a fairly quiet student in
the ESL class. He never took the initiative to participate in discussions, and often would
be staring into space during the discussions in ESL class. I wanted to know more about
Oliver and how he might be engaged or disengaged with reading.
In sum, Nabila, Farshad, and Oliver were my focal students in the ESL class, and
Jonathan was my focal student in the seventh-grade English class. In the section that
follows, I provide background information on each focal student.

41

Table 2
Overview of Focal Students
Name

Grade

Years in U.S. Native Country

Native
Language

Receiving ESL
Services

Farshad

7

6

Afghanistan

Farsi

Yes

Jonathan

7

4

China

Mandarin

No

Nabila

8

6

Afghanistan

Dari

Yes

Oliver

8

8

Congo

French

Yes

Student participants
Jonathan. Jonathan was a seventh-grader who was originally from China. He
arrived in the United States in 2008 when his family moved to the country so his father
could be a visiting scholar in the engineering department of a large state university. His
mother, who worked as an accountant in China, became a stay-at-home mother, devoting
most of her time to taking care of Jonathan. In their second year in the U.S., Jonathan’s
mother became pregnant with another son.
When Jonathan first came to the U.S., he knew very little English although he was
already literate in Chinese. I first met Jonathan in the spring of 2010 when he was in
fifth-grade and he agreed to participate in my practicum study on ELLs’ reading
motivation. When it was time for me to choose focal students, the ESL teacher
recommended Jonathan since she said he had made substantial progress with his English
language proficiency. At this time, Jonathan’s oral English speaking abilities were well
developed, but he spoke with a thick Chinese accent.
In the beginning of 2012, when I encountered Jonathan as a seventh-grader, he
had grown approximately half a foot since I had last seen him and he now towered over
42

me. Aside from his physical growth spurt, there was a noticeable change in his speech as
his thick Chinese accent was almost non-existent although there were traces here and
there.
Nabila. The next focal student is Nabila, an eighth-grader whose family was
originally from Afghanistan. Her family left Afghanistan because of the conflict in their
native country and moved to Pakistan, where Nabila and her youngest brother were born.
Although Nabila’s family lived in Pakistan, they lived in an Afghan community and,
thus, Nabila and her siblings were exposed to Afghan culture and norms. When Nabila
was eight years old, she and her family came to the U.S., except for her father, who
remained in Pakistan. Her mother was granted a refugee visa and was allowed to bring all
six of her children. Nabila mentioned the primary reason that her family relocated to the
U.S. was so she and her siblings could have a better education. The importance of a good
education was instilled in Nabila. She was very concerned with how well she did in
school, and she took full advantage of the help offered in her ESL classroom.
When I first met Nabila in the spring of 2010, she was in the sixth-grade. After
she participated in the survey portion of my earlier research study (Protacio, 2010), I
chose Nabila to serve as one of the focal students for the interview portion of that study
based on the ESL teacher’s recommendation. During the first interview, Nabila was
initially very timid, but she was still able to articulate her thoughts on what motivated her
to read in English. In the second interview, she opened up more and was very enthusiastic
about explaining the different factors which affected her reading motivation. In fact, out
of the six ELLs I interviewed for the practicum study, Nabila was one of the most
motivated to read.
43

When I started the dissertation research two years later, I saw that Nabila had
morphed into a young woman. She had grown approximately four or five inches. She also
continued to wear the traditional hijab (head scarf) that Muslim women wear, wearing a
different one everyday that complemented her outfit. In class, Nabila was often very quiet
in whole group discussions, but she was very outgoing and talkative in small group
settings.
Oliver. Oliver was a 13-year-old eighth-grader, who was originally from the
Democratic Republic of Congo. He came to the United States with his single mother and
older brother, and his father had no involvement in his life. Oliver was only five years old
when he came to the US, and he remembered little of his time in Congo. When I asked
about his experiences in his native country, Oliver simply remembered that he “jumped in
puddles a lot.” Oliver was still fluent in his native language, French, which was the
language spoken at home although he was not literate in French. Oliver was also fluent in
English, although he did have a tendency to mumble and often needed to be asked to
speak louder and more clearly.
In terms of classroom participation, Oliver was fairly quiet. He did not participate
in class discussions very often, and he offered answers only when the teacher called on
him. As I got to know Oliver throughout the data collection process, I found that his
passion was science, and anything related specifically to physics. Unfortunately,
however, his teachers did not know of this interest.
Farshad. The final focal student is Farshad, who was a 13-year-old seventhgrader originally from Afghanistan. When he was very young, his family moved to
Russia to escape the conflict in his country. His family, except for his father, moved to
44

the U.S. when he was eight or nine years old. Farshad went to school in Russia for first
and second grade, and he did not learn any English there. Thus, his initial exposure to the
English language was when he entered the third grade in a U.S. public school. Farshad
recalled that he did not have any problems learning English and learned how to read in
English fairly quickly.
Out of the four focal students, Farshad was the only one who was placed
exclusively in the ESL class. Even though Nabila and Oliver were in the sixth-period
ESL class, they attended it for academic vocabulary lessons and homework support. They
were in a separate grade-level mainstream English class. Farshad was adamant that he
should not be in ESL class and did not know why he was placed there. According to the
ESL teacher, even though Farshad was a fluent English speaker, he was placed in the
ESL class because he needed additional support on his academic English skills.
Teacher Participants
Mrs. Blake has been an ESL teacher for twelve years although she has been
teaching for over twenty years. Besides ESL, Mrs. Blake has also taught Spanish and
English for mainstream students. At the time of this study, Mrs. Blake served as the ESL
teacher for both the district’s middle school and high school. In the morning, she taught
ESL classes at the high school, and at noon she drove to FMS where she taught three
periods of ESL classes. Although she taught at both schools, Mrs. Blake acknowledged
that FMS was her “home base” and that this was the school with which she was more
involved.
In fact, Mrs. Blake spearheaded a school-wide vocabulary initiative during the
2011-2012 school year. The vocabulary initiative involved several components. Each
45

morning the school principal would announce the word of the day, which was typically
an academic vocabulary word. Classroom teachers were then supposed to use the word of
the day in their lessons to show how these academic vocabulary words could be used in
different content areas. Powerpoint slides were printed and posted in each classroom so
that students could conveniently refer to these words. Lastly, lunch signs were created
that used the word of the day in a sentence on a health or nutritional topic. Mrs. Blake
focused extensively on academic vocabulary with her ESL students, and thus, she was
asked by the principal to choose the focus words for the vocabulary initiative and create
the lunch signs.
Mrs. Blake was an avid reader, and this was apparent in her classroom. Even
though the ESL classroom was right beside the school library, Mrs. Blake had an
extensive classroom library. She had a book display rack especially made for her
classroom to accommodate her many books. Her classroom library included books of
various topics and fictional genres, although there were minimal informational texts.
Students were allowed to borrow books from her classroom library. Most students took
advantage of this on Fridays during Drop Everything and Read time if they did not bring
their own reading materials. Aside from leisure reading materials, Mrs. Blake also kept
copies of the content-area textbooks in her classroom so volunteer tutors could more
effectively and efficiently help the ESL students with their assignments and projects.
The decorations in Mrs. Blake’s classroom also projected a classroom
environment which celebrated diversity. Her classroom door had the word welcome and
hello printed in many languages. Pictures of students from her ESL classes for the past 12
years were posted near the classroom entrance. On one of the walls, she had displayed a
46

world map with pictures of her current ESL students beside it. There were strings
connecting each student’s picture to their native country on the map. Lastly, at the very
back of the classroom, Mrs. Blake displayed each student’s coat of arms as well as an
introduction to each student. Having all of these displayed created an inviting classroom
atmosphere. It also made it easier for the numerous pre-service teachers and community
volunteers to get to know some background information on the ESL students.
Mrs. Blake taught three periods at FMS. The first period that Mrs. Blake taught
was called REACH, which was a 30-minute period which was similar to a study hall.
During this time, Mrs. Blake typically had the eighth-grade ESL students in her
classroom working on their various assignments on Tuesdays through Thursdays. Every
Monday, REACH period was devoted to vocabulary while the school’s Drop Everything
and Read time was held every Friday.
The fifth period was when the seventh-grade ESL students came to get more
support for their academics. At the beginning of the semester, there were six students in
the class. All of these students were Muslim students, but they were from different native
countries (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Saudi Arabia). In mid-May, a Korean student
joined the seventh-grade class. There were no whole group interactions during fifthperiod. Mrs. Blake determined what the students needed to accomplish, and she asked the
pre-service teachers to help the more advanced students either individually or in pairs,
while she worked with the newcomers on their English speaking skills.
The sixth period was a combination of seventh-and eighth-graders. The students
who were in Mrs. Blake’s fifth-period stayed on for the sixth-period. Seven eighth-grade
students joined the ESL class for sixth-period. The majority of the ESL students were
47

Muslim. In the sixth-period, the female students generally interacted with one another
while the males talked to one another. There was very little gender interaction, which is
not permitted according to Muslim customs (Sarroub, 2005; Zine, 2001).
The first twenty minutes of sixth-period were always devoted to vocabulary
words. Each day, Mrs. Blake would teach students a vocabulary word, which was in
addition to the vocabulary word that was taught through the school wide vocabulary
initiative. She would discuss the meaning of the word and provide examples of how the
word is used. She would then present two sentence prompts that utilized the vocabulary
word and would call on students to complete these sentences. Finally, students would
work in pairs on two other sentence prompts while she and the pre-service teachers would
listen. Students then provided examples of their responses to the whole class. After the
vocabulary lesson, five of the eighth-grade ESL students, Nabila and Oliver among them,
were allowed to leave and proceed to the library. These five students were all enrolled in
a mainstream English class. Meanwhile, the other students, Farshad included, stayed in
Mrs. Blake’s ESL class for structured English lessons focused on reading and writing.
While I spent majority of my observation time in Mrs. Blake’s classroom since
three of the four focal students were there, I also observed in Ms. Costa’s seventh-grade
English class in order to collect data on Jonathan. The 2011-2012 school year was Ms.
Costa’s first with her own classroom. In fact, she had a part time contract and only
taught two classes of seventh-grade English. Ms. Costa graduated from the teacher
preparation program of a small liberal arts college where she majored in secondary
education with an English major and a psychology minor. Ms. Costa completed her
degree in 2010, but was unable to immediately find a teaching position. Thus, she
48

accepted a long-term substitute position in a suburban school district where she taught
AP Psychology at a high school. Ms. Costa accepted the part-time position at FMS to
increase her chances of being hired when a full-time position became available.
Ms. Costa’s classroom was a little sparse with decorations. On one side of the
wall, she had posted the Powerpoint slides with the words from the school-wide
vocabulary initiative. There was a section towards the front of the classroom where Ms.
Costa placed posters of athletic teams of the local university. Towards the back of the
room, Ms. Costa had some posters with quotes. She did not yet have a classroom library,
but she had started to collect books for her own library.
Ms. Costa’s teaching style mainly consisted of lectures and recitations. There was
very little discussion among the students. A typical lesson included Ms. Costa reading
aloud, calling on students to read aloud, and asking questions based on what was read.
She also typically had sheets that students completed while they were reading to help
them focus on the main ideas of the text. Each unit would typically conclude with one or
two videos being shown. For instance, the seventh-graders completed a unit on the
Titanic, and the culminating activity was viewing a documentary on this topic. As
another example, the class read the short story “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.”
The class spent three days reading the short story aloud. Afterwards, they watched two
versions of videos that were based on the short story. One video was from the 1960s and
one was from the 2000s. The students then had to write a “compare and contrast” essay
on the two videos. It must be noted, however, that many of Ms. Costa’s lessons were
patterned after those of her mentor. When she was able to create her own unit on
mythology, she was able to provide more opportunities for students to express their
49

creativity as she allowed her students to create a visual representation of their
mythological character for their class presentation for extra credit.
One of Ms. Costa’s strengths was building relationships with her students.
Students were allowed to sign up to have lunch with her in the classroom. She also
allowed independent work time, and during these times she was always available to
answer questions. During these classroom events, there was typically a line of students
who wanted to obtain her feedback, which indicated that students felt comfortable with
her. Nevertheless, Ms. Costa’s status as a new teacher was apparent in her reflections
about teaching. Ms. Costa acknowledged that when she was in front of the class teaching,
she was more preoccupied with what she was going to say rather than focusing on the
students.
In this section, I introduced and described the participants of this case study
research. In the following sections, I describe the multiple methods and various data
sources that were utilized for this dissertation.
Data Collection
I collected data from January 2012 to June 2012, which was the entire second
semester of the school year. I spent most of my time in two classrooms, Mrs. Blake’s
ESL classroom and Ms. Costa’s seventh grade English classroom. I spent the first three
months as a participant observer in Mrs. Blake’s ESL classroom. I used this time to
establish rapport with the students in the class and make initial observations about
students’ engagement with learning English and reading activities. It was also during this
time that I started to think about whom else I would ask to participate in the study.

50

At the beginning of April, I started to gather additional pieces of data. These
included interviews, classroom observations, student artifacts, informal reading
inventories, and reading activity inventories (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Dyson & Genishi,
2005; Merriam, 1988; Yin, 1989). Because reading engagement is multifaceted and
includes four different components, it was necessary for me to employ various data
collection techniques so there would be a diverse set of data sources. Each of these data
sources provides data for at least one of the reading engagement components. In the
following section, I describe the different data sources of this dissertation.
Observations. I observed the focal students two to four times a week in their
ESL/English class. In Ms. Costa’s class, I was primarily an observer. There were a few
instances when students had work sessions at the school library, and I was able to roam
and engage in conversations with the students. Otherwise, in observing Jonathan, I took
on the role of a full observer, writing descriptive field notes about classroom events
(Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). In these field notes, I focused specifically on Jonathan’s
participation in and reaction to classroom discussions and tasks.
In Mrs. Blake’s classroom, I was a participant observer. From early on, Mrs.
Blake encouraged my participation in small group interactions with the ELLs in her
classroom. I was able to provide additional support to students. In the initial months, I
was alternating the students with whom I was working in order to establish rapport with
them so that I could decide whom else to invite to participate. In the latter part of the data
collection period, I spent most of my time working with Farshad during fifth period and
with Nabila during sixth period. Oliver kindly declined any help that I offered to him

51

during sixth period, and there were no sessions in which I was able to help him with any
of his assignments or projects.
During the data collection period, I noted that I had very little evidence of
Oliver’s participation in Mrs. Blake’s classroom. I wanted to determine whether or not
this was Oliver’s standard level of classroom participation. Oliver was in Mrs. Blake’s
ESL class, but he was also enrolled in a regular English class. I asked permission from
Oliver’s English teacher, Mr. Kilian, if I could observe Oliver in his classroom, and Mr.
Kilian agreed. I was a full observer in Mr. Kilian’s classroom on two occasions.
While I also wrote field notes in Mrs. Blake’s classroom, these did not contain as
much detail as those written in Ms. Costa’s classroom. Yin (1989) noted the disadvantage
of being a participant-observer: “The participant-observer may not have sufficient time to
take notes or to raise questions about events from different perspectives, as a good
observer might” (p. 94). In all of the observations in Mrs. Blake’s and Mr. Kilian’s
classrooms, I focused primarily on focal students’ contributions during discussions
around texts, their non-verbal cues during classroom or small group discussions around
classroom texts, and their behavior during independent work time when they were
responding to or producing texts.
Interviews. Interviews allow researchers to explore topics in greater detail and
expound on themes emerging from ongoing data collection (Fontana & Frey, 2000;
Seidman, 2006; Spradley, 1979). I conducted four semi-structured interviews with each
of the focal students. I chose to conduct a semi-structured interview for two reasons.
First, compared to a structured interview, a semi-structured format allows for more
flexibility for the researcher to delve deeply into topics brought up the interviewees,
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which may not be included in the interview protocol (Fontana & Frey, 2000). Semistructured interviews also provided a greater opportunity to uncover factors which were
personally significant to the focal students regarding their reading engagement. On the
other hand, the presence of prepared questions ensured that topics discussed in these
interviews were likely to directly answer the identified research questions (see
Appendices A through C for initial interview protocols).
In order to prepare for each succeeding interview, I reviewed the prior interview. I
included follow-up questions that were meant to clarify ideas or probe for more
information based on the preceding interviews. In addition, I included questions from the
initial interviews in the succeeding interviews based on Spradley’s (1979) assertion that
interviewees need to have multiple opportunities to respond to the same question. His
rationale was that when asked the same question during different interviews, it is more
likely that interviewees will provide all possible information on a topic. Questions in the
succeeding interviews were also based on classroom observations. Doing so ensured that
the participants had opportunities to voice their own thinking or rationales rather than
relying merely on my interpretations of what I had observed in the classroom (Eder &
Fingerson, 2002). In addition, this also addressed the issue of the sparse field notes as a
participant observer in Mrs. Blake’s classroom since I was able to gather information
about classroom activities through interviews.
Interviews with the focal students provided data for all five research questions,
however many of the prepared questions were crafted to target the components of
motivation and social interactions. Other data sources, such as the Qualitative Reading

53

Inventory, the Reading Activity Inventory, and student samples provided detailed
information about the other reading engagement components.
Aside from obtaining information about focal students’ reading engagement, I
also wanted to obtain background information about each of the focal students. I had
different initial interview protocols for the focal students who were part of my practicum
research (Nabila and Jonathan) and those who were new focal students (Oliver and
Farshad). In interviews with Farshad and Oliver, I obtained information about family
background and initial experiences in the U.S. and in U.S. schools. For interviews with
focal students who had participated in my practicum research, I asked them about their
experiences in middle school. I also asked Nabila and Jonathan about the changes, if any,
in their reading motivation and their participation in social interactions around reading
since I had last interviewed them in 2010.
I also interviewed teacher participants. The original plan was to interview each
teacher four times during the study. My intent was to ask the teachers questions about
their perceptions of the focal students’ motivations, their observations of students during
social interactions, students’ use of strategic knowledge, and their observations of focal
students’ ability to construct meaning from texts. However, I was able to formally
interview Mrs. Blake only once. After the first interview, Mrs. Blake informed me she
did not think she could give me much information regarding students’ reading
engagement since her focus was more on language acquisition. Although we only had
one formal interview, Mrs. Blake and I regularly debriefed before and after my
observations. She was able to provide valuable background information about the focal
students and their families.
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Meanwhile, I conducted three formal interviews with Ms. Costa. Through these
interviews, I gathered background information on Ms. Costa’s teaching experience. Most
of the interviews were spent obtaining information about Ms. Costa’s observations of
Jonathan’s performance in her English class. We also spent time discussing Ms. Costa’s
rationale for certain instructional activities based on questions I noted in my field notes
about classroom observations.
Reading Activity Inventory. The focal students completed Reading Activity
Inventories (RAI) during the study (see Appendix D for a copy of the assessment). All of
the focal students completed three RAIs, except for Oliver, who only returned two. The
RAI is adapted from Wigfield and Guthrie’s (1997) study wherein they studied the
relationship of reading motivation to the amount and breadth of reading students
completed. In the RAI, students were asked whether or not they had read a book from a
particular genre in the past two weeks. If they responded affirmatively, they were asked
to supply the title of the text they read. Each student was then asked to indicate how often
he or she would read that kind of book with responses on a 1 to 4 scale indicating almost
never to almost every day.
Because the original RAI was administered to elementary students, I made some
modifications to the assessment to make it more suitable for middle school respondents.
First, I changed the practice question. The original question asked, “Do you have a name?
If yes, write your first name.” To make it more age-appropriate and interesting for middle
school students, I changed this to “Do you watch television? If yes, write the title of your
favorite television show.” I also made modifications to the genres of texts that were
included in the assessment to include genres that might interest middle school students.
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Specifically, I added questions about magazines since recent work has shown that this is
a genre that middle school students are motivated to read (Gabriel, Allington, & Billen,
2011). I added a question about reading electronic texts since the original RAI included
only questions on traditional texts. I also included a question asking students whether or
not they read any texts in their native languages.
The original RAI asked students to provide the book title, author, and topic of
each book. In the adaptation used for this study, I added sections wherein students were
to provide the main idea of the texts they had read and other comments about the texts.
By asking students to supply the main idea of the texts, I was able to obtain some
measure of students’ conceptual knowledge and strategic knowledge. In other words,
adding this piece allowed me to determine if the students were able to remember main
ideas of texts they read and if they were able to summarize texts they had read.
The RAI is an artifact that I used to supplement data obtained from interviews and
observations. The purpose for using the RAI was to have a measure of the kinds of genres
that the students were reading. However, it did not provide as much information as I had
hoped since the focal students did not spend much time completing the RAIs.
Student artifacts. As a way to get information about students’ ability to construct
meaning from texts, I obtained samples of papers the focal students had submitted for
their English or ESL class. Most of the samples that I obtained were from Nabila,
Jonathan, and Farshad. While I requested samples from Oliver, he did not provide any
writing samples. The writing samples provided by the three focal students supplemented
the information I gathered through interviews about what they had learned through
completing various writing assignments in their English/ESL class.
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I was also able to obtain the reading logs that Nabila, Farshad, and Oliver had
submitted to Mrs. Blake for Reading Month. Completing the reading logs was a
requirement in Mrs. Blake’s ESL class for the month of March. These readings logs
provided substantial information on a number of areas: (1) the frequency in which the
focal students read during reading month, (2) the types of texts students read, and (3)
students’ comprehension of what they read.
Qualitative Reading Inventory-5. In order to obtain information about students’
strategic knowledge and comprehension abilities, I administered the Qualitative Reading
Inventory-5 (QRI-5; Leslie & Caldwell, 2011) to the focal students. I realize that a
shortcoming of using an informal reading inventory such as the QRI-5 is that the
experience may not be authentic in terms of the kinds of texts that students are reading;
nevertheless, data obtained from this assessment presented a heuristic perspective on
what the students knew in terms of strategic knowledge. I selected the QRI-5 because an
earlier edition had been found to be the most reliable and valid among informal reading
inventories (Spector, 2005). The QRI-5 is a leveled instrument wherein a decoding
assessment in the form of graded word lists is first administered. Based on the results
from the word list, appropriate comprehension passages are administered at the students’
instructional levels, as determined by their decoding skills. In addition, there is a thinkaloud component to this assessment. Starting with passages at the sixth-grade level, there
are specific areas at which students have to stop reading and think aloud. In my previous
research (Protacio, 2010), focal students described their perceived competence in reading
in English, but I had no data on their actual reading abilities. By administering the QRI-5,
I was able to collect assessment data that enabled me to better describe the
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comprehension strategies that focal students were employing while they were reading in
English.
Based on the results of the word lists, I determined that Nabila and Jonathan
should read passages at the upper middle school level while Oliver and Farshad’s
instructional level in terms of word recognition was sixth grade; thus, Oliver and Farshad
read passages at the sixth grade level. Four QRI assessments were administered to each
focal student, with each of them reading two narrative passages and two expository
passages. The rationale for the different genres is that their comprehension levels might
vary between genres (Duke, Caughlan, Juzwik, & Martin, 2012; Duke & Roberts, 2010).
The students were given a choice of narrative and expository passages they could read to
ensure some levels of interest in the topics. I asked the students to read the passages
silently since my focus on this assessment was gathering information about students’
strategy use and comprehension and not their decoding or fluency abilities.
In case the focal students were not familiar with thinking-aloud, I first modeled
how to think aloud before administering the assessment to the students. The QRI-5
contained a sample passage and a script for it, so the modeling of the think-aloud was
uniform across all focal students. In addition to the think-aloud portion, the focal students
were asked to respond to comprehension questions after reading each passage. One of the
advantages of the QRI-5 is that it asks students a combination of questions which require
implicit or explicit answers. In other words, the QRI-5 comprehension questions go
beyond simply asking literal recall items. If students had incorrect responses after all the
comprehension questions had been asked, they were given the opportunity to look back at
the texts and attempt to correct any of the wrong answers they had initially provided.
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Data Analysis
Data analysis was concurrent with data collection. During the data collection
period, I reviewed the data I had already collected to help focus my attention on emerging
patterns that I was observing or that continued to surface in interviews. As previously
indicated, I reviewed interviews immediately, taking note of ideas that I needed to revisit
in succeeding interviews. I also reviewed field notes prior to each interview so that I
could identify classroom events that I wanted to discuss during each semi-structured
interview.
A combination of provisional coding and open coding was applied to the field
notes and interview and think-aloud transcripts. With provisional coding, qualitative
researchers establish a predetermined list of codes prior to fieldwork (Miles &
Huberman, 1994). Because of my previous research on ELLs’ reading motivation and my
examination of the available literature on reading engagement, I had developed a list of
provisional codes (cf. Table 3). However, the list of provisional codes was not exhaustive
enough to represent all the data collected. As a result, I also used initial coding to make
new codes for ideas that were observed in the field or raised in interviews that were not
included in the list of provisional codes. Examples of initial codes included compliance
and book characteristics for motivation, visualizing and evaluating for strategic
knowledge, and isolation and recommendations for social interactions. Since there were
no provisional codes for constructing meaning from texts, all codes related to this
component were done through initial coding. Examples of initial codes for this category
include difficulties in understanding, mythology, and learning about disabilities.

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Table 3
List of Provisional Codes
Reading Engagement
Component

First Level Codes

Motivation

Instrumental motivation
Integrative motivation
Perceived competence
Access to texts
Family influence

Strategic knowledge

Strategy use

Second Level Codes

Clarifying unknown vocabulary
Monitoring comprehension
Making inferences
Questioning
Summarizing

Transfer of strategic
knowledge
Translation from one
language to another
Explanation of importance
of strategy use
Conceptual knowledge
Social interaction

Group membership
Support for reading
Book discussion

The coding scheme used for the data analysis included several levels. The first
level of coding is based on the reading engagement component. The second level of
coding provides a more specific description of the observed behavior to be coded.
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Strategic knowledge was the only reading engagement component which had three levels
of coding. For the second level code of strategy use, I identified which strategy the reader
was using as the third level code. In the think-aloud transcripts, all of the first level codes
were strategic knowledge, the second level codes were strategy use, and the third level
codes indicated what strategy the focal student used while thinking aloud. The only
exceptions to this were Farshad and Oliver’s think-alouds, and I created the initial codes
of misunderstood meaning and distracted for portions of their think-aloud transcripts.
In order to keep track of the codes, I developed an Excel codebook. I listed the
codes for each interview and each think-aloud transcript and took note of the document
and page in which it was located. There were several advantages of creating a codebook.
First, it helped me look quantitatively at the prominent codes in the data corpus thereby
making it easier to see patterns and themes based on the frequency of codes. Second, it
allowed me to see and ponder if there were codes that needed to be merged, deleted,
added or refined. Last, I could sort the codebook in different ways; this allowed me to
examine different patterns within the various categories.
Throughout the data analysis process, I wrote analytic memos, which enabled me
to relate the data to theory throughout this process (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Strauss &
Corbin, 1990). Writing these analytical memos also allowed me to distance myself from
the data itself and instead reflect on the themes that I was noticing through the data
collection process. For example, I wrote memos around the influence of the Muslim
religion on Nabila’s reading engagement.
Finally, when I selected themes on which to focus for each focal student, I utilized
triangulation to ensure that these themes were supported by multiple sources of data.
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Stake (2008) described triangulation as “repetitious data gathering and critical review of
what is being said” (p. 34). According to Stake, each important finding should have at
least three confirmations or assurances that interpretations are supported by data
gathered. Hence, I used multiple data sources (e.g., interviews, field notes, student
artifacts) to support the findings of each case.
To sum, in this chapter, I provided a rationale for why a case study would be the
most appropriate research design for the research questions. Next, I was forthcoming
about my positionality as a researcher. Third, I introduced and described the participants
of the study. Fourth, I provided extensive details on how and what types of data were
collected for this dissertation and how they were gathered. Lastly, I explained the data
analysis process.
In the four chapters that follow, I focus on each focal student and describe his or
her reading engagement in-depth. I note that each student’s reading engagement is
influenced by different factors. In the following chapters, each focal student’s story of
reading engagement unfolds.

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CHAPTER 3
A Portrait of a Seemingly Engaged Reader: A Case Study of a
Seventh-Grade Chinese ELL
Under the reading engagement perspective, an engaged reader is an individual
who is motivated to read, uses comprehension strategies while reading, makes meaning
from reading, and participates in social interactions around reading (Guthrie & Wigfield,
2000). Theoretically, each of these components in the reading engagement perspective
interacts with and influences an individual’s reading achievement (Guthrie, Wigfield, &
You, 2012).
In this chapter, I discuss the experiences of Jonathan, a seventh-grade ELL
originally from China. At first glance, Jonathan seemingly meets all the requirements of
an engaged reader. However, a close examination of the data illuminates some
problematic areas with Jonathan’s reading engagement. Thus, I argue that even when all
of the reading engagement components are seemingly satisfied, there are still areas in
students’ reading behaviors on which improvements can be made. In what follows, I
examine Jonathan’s reading engagement with both academic texts and texts he reads for
pleasure. At the same time, I consider how Jonathan’s evolving sense of identity
influences his reading engagement.
Two specific factors are integral to Jonathan’s reading engagement. First, his
motivation to read academic texts is driven by a compliant mindset in order to obtain
high grades in school. Jonathan’s high grades helped him have a higher status among his
American friends as he helped them with their academics. On the other hand, this led to
the second problematic area of Jonathan’s reading engagement: his friends placed a lower
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value on academics, hence Jonathan did not participate in meaningful social interactions
around reading. Although there were many positive aspects about Jonathan’s engagement
as a reader, attention needs to be given to these two factors to ensure Jonathan’s
continuity as an engaged reader as he progresses through secondary school.
Because this study is framed by sociocultural theory, it is impossible to examine
Jonathan’s reading engagement without considering the continuing development of his
bilingual and bicultural identity as a middle school ELL. I use Kanno’s (2003) definition
of bilingual and bicultural identity, “where bilingual individuals position themselves
between two languages and two (or more) cultures, and how they incorporate these
languages and cultures into their sense of how they are” (p. 3). In particular, young
adolescents at the middle school level are consciously exploring their identity and
determining where and how they fit within diverse social groups (Walqui et al., 2010).
These ideas are certainly applicable to Jonathan’s case because he navigated how to
position himself as a Chinese student in an American public school, trying to fit in and
become more American, thereby disassociating himself from his Chinese identity. The
development of a bilingual and bicultural identity is particularly important in Jonathan’s
case because it impacted the quality of the social interactions in which he participated
with his peers. Specifics about his reading engagement, coupled with his bilingual and
bicultural identity struggle, are what I present in this chapter.
Getting to Know Jonathan
When I first met Jonathan two years ago, he was a fifth grader who was slowly
becoming a reader. When his family initially arrived from China to the United States, his
parents required him to read for at least 30 minutes every day. Initially, Jonathan resisted
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and said he “really hated reading” (Protacio, 2010). While Jonathan was completing his
required reading, he realized reading was actually enjoyable. As he continued to find
more books that met his interests, his reading motivation levels increased. Another
plausible explanation for Jonathan’s increased reading motivation was his instrumental
motivation. He noted reading was a way for him to continue to improve his English skills
and learn new vocabulary. In addition, he participated in book discussions, particularly
with his American peers (Protacio, 2010). As a fifth grader, Jonathan was motivated to
read texts that interested him and ones on which he could participate in social interactions
with his American peers.
An impetus for this dissertation study was to examine whether Jonathan was able
to sustain his high level of reading motivation as he transitioned into middle school.
Previous studies have documented a decline in students’ reading engagement when they
enter middle school (e.g., Kelly & Decker, 2009; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). In this
chapter, I discuss how Jonathan’s engagement as a seventh grader has not declined,
although his motivations to read and participation in social interactions in particular are
now different compared to when he was a fifth grader.
Adjusting to Middle School Life
Jonathan adjusted very well to middle school. He fit the mold of a “model
minority” in that he was an Asian student with a high academic performance (Sue &
Okazaki, 1990). Jonathan arrived to the United States in 2008, unable to speak English.
In four years, Jonathan was able to overcome linguistic barriers and succeed in the U.S.
public school context. In addition, Jonathan adjusted well socially. He was part of a solid
group of American friends. The one area in which Jonathan struggled was acculturation.
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He wanted to fully integrate himself into the American culture; he did not want to remain
as the perpetual foreigner (Zhou, 2009). Jonathan was very concerned about his peers’
perceptions of him, and he constantly strived to gain the acceptance of his American
peers.
At FMS, Jonathan was in all mainstream classes because he was exited from the
ESL program after the sixth grade. His English teacher, Ms. Costa, did not even know
that he was an ELL and assumed he had been born and raised in the U.S. This is
indicative of the drastic progress Jonathan made with his English speaking skills in four
years.
Jonathan enjoyed the middle school setting, particularly the increased level of
independence given to students. He appreciated being treated like a high school or
college student rather than being treated like a child. In terms of academics, Jonathan was
performing very well and was a straight-A student. Similar to Rubinstein-Avila’s
(2003/2004) and Sturtevant and Kim’s (2010) findings, Jonathan was motivated in
middle school because he was able to see the relevance of what he was learning to his
career goal of being an engineer:
Middle school compared to elementary is a lot more deeper, I guess. You study
things more deeper and it gives you more routes, I guess. It shows you all sides of
the road so I have more roads to choose.
As indicated in this quote, Jonathan understood and appreciated the depth with
which he was able to study concepts in middle school. In particular, he performed well in
his math class, which was highly relevant to his aspiration of becoming an engineer. His
other goal would be related to business management, such as managing an engineering
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firm. Jonathan also shared that his parents had similar career plans for him. For instance,
Jonathan’s mother signed him up for golf lessons. Jonathan explained that if his family
was to return to China and if he were to be a high-ranking Chinese business executive in
the future, he would need to know how to play golf as this was the sport that was played
by such business executives. This example illustrates that Jonathan’s parents were very
deliberate in ensuring that the activities in which Jonathan partook were preparing him
for his eventual career.
Aside from being committed to his academics, Jonathan was also extremely
involved with extracurricular activities. Despite being only a seventh grader, he was
chosen to be one of 10 members of the school’s Pioneer Leadership Club. He also played
clarinet in the school band. Because he towered over most of his peers with his 6’1”
frame, he also served as the center on the school’s basketball team.
Despite being well adjusted to the middle school setting, Jonathan admitted that it
was, at times, very stressful. Although students are given more independence on some
matters, when it came to their academics, teachers were stricter compared to elementary
school. Jonathan provided some insight into the increasing pressure that he felt as a
middle school student:
Selena: So what don’t you like about middle school?
Jonathan: The break times, I guess. Every time after class I’m so nervous about
getting to class, I don’t have much time to relax. I guess I’m so tensed up every
day that when I get home I feel so exhausted and tired that doing my homework is
a nightmare for me.
Selena: Tell me more about that.
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Jonathan: Well, I guess I’m exhausted every day ’cause I’m so scared that I’m
gonna get a tardy. I’m so scared I’m not gonna catch up in class. I’m so scared I
forgot a homework that when I get home I was like, “Oh, finally,” and I wanna go
to sleep. But then I got a bunch of things to do and I need to do the chores and do
all that. I can feel the pressure getting harder than elementary, I guess.
Even though there was pressure that perhaps was inherent to the school structure,
for Jonathan this pressure was magnified because he wanted to excel in school. Whereas
others might take on a happy-go-lucky stance when it came to their academic
performance, Jonathan wanted to do well and, consequently, he experienced a great deal
of stress. However, not all students might perceive middle school as being as intense as
Jonathan did. For example, Jonathan noted, “I don't get tardies but other people do; they
don't really seem to care. I care a lot about that.” Although Jonathan was able to keep up
with everything that he needed to do for his classes, it took a toll on him and he was very
stressed out. I shared with Jonathan in one of our interviews that I thought he was
focused and attentive based on my classroom observations of him. He replied, “I try to
make as much effort and focus as I can at [Ms. Costa] and what she’s reading ’cause I
don’t wanna fall behind. I guess I don’t wanna fail.” It is plausible Jonathan’s anxiety
came from both a fear of failure and a desire to succeed.
Despite his concern with academics, Jonathan still had time to socialize. As I
observed in his classroom, he would regularly socialize with four male students; three of
them were Caucasian and one was a biracial student. Jonathan admitted he did not have
many Chinese friends and his good friends were American. When I asked him why he
had only American friends, he provided the following response:
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Compare if it’s like 300 in the school, [then] there's gonna be like 260 people
that's American and 40 people that's from another country. And out of that 40
probably only 20, 18, [or] 17 is Chinese so I don't have much people to talk to. So
I kinda, even though I'm not forced, there's like an invisible force that pushes me
to the American side ’cause I have to.
Jonathan used the idea of proportions to explain why he had more American
friends compared to Chinese friends. The invisible force that he mentioned was the lower
number of minority students at FMS. Jonathan was exited out of the ESL program when
he entered middle school, and his classes were all mainstream ones. Because of this, he
did not have many opportunities to engage in interactions specifically with other ELLs. It
also did not seem as though Jonathan sought out any opportunities to interact with current
or former ELLs.
For the most part, Jonathan was quite happy about having a solid group of friends
in middle school. However, he admitted that he sometimes felt left out when conversing
with his American friends.
Sometimes I feel like I'm left out [in conversations] ’cause I'm Asian, which I
don't know if it's true. I just feel that way sometimes, but sometimes I don't. I
mean I feel special that I'm Asian, and I can be cool about my race, and I don't
really care if other people make jokes about it.
Although it did not seem that his friends were deliberately excluding him from the
conversation, some topics of discussion were ones with which Jonathan was unfamiliar.
When his friends discussed popular culture, Jonathan could not offer much to the
conversation. For example, he mentioned one instance when his friends were talking
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about a television show that had aired several years earlier, when Jonathan’s family was
still in China. As a result, Jonathan felt left out and could not participate in the
conversation because he had nothing to contribute on that topic.
During this interview, I shared with Jonathan that I understood how he was
feeling, but told him that in some ways, we had the best of both worlds because we were
exposed to two cultures. Jonathan agreed, but he added, “Sometimes I wish I was the
same.” Researchers such as Valenzuela (1999) note that school structures often provide
subtractive assimilationist policies that undermine immigrant students’ language and
culture. In Jonathan’s case, it seemed he was the one who wanted to assimilate in such a
way that undermined his background.
Despite the desire to “be more American,” Jonathan still expressed appreciation
for his native culture. He highlighted positive aspects of his native culture, such as the
importance of Chinese sayings. He said these nuggets of wisdom helped him make sense
of what was occurring in his life. Nevertheless, there seemed to be a clear divide for
Jonathan between his cultural identities. At home, he was Chinese. In school, he wanted
to just be like his American classmates.
In interviews and conversations with Jonathan, there did seem to be a struggle in
his pride about being Chinese and his desire to be more American. The more prevalent
statements he made, though, were about trying to be more American. For example, he
proudly mentioned, “I look more like I'm American ’cause I don't talk in my accent
anymore. I talk in English accent.” He also had a more positive attitude about speaking in
English compared to speaking in Chinese.

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I personally don't like Chinese ’cause it's hard. I'm the kind of guy that I don't
want hard stuff. I mean, no one wants to do something that's hard, and I'm staying
here for right now, so if I learn Chinese here and I'm gonna stay here there's no
point of learning it except for just learning it and losing it.
Jonathan’s statement indicates that he did not see the relevance of improving his
Chinese skills if his family remained in the United States. Instead, he focused on his
English skills. His view aligned with that of instrumental orientation (Dornyei, 2003a;
Gardner & Lambert, 1972) in that he wanted to learn and improve in the language that he
felt had the most utilitarian value. Because Jonathan wanted to do well in U.S. schools
and attend a good American university, his focus was improving his English skills.
Jonathan was also integratively motivated (Dornyei, 2003a; Gardner & Lambert, 1972)
because he affiliated himself with American peers and wanted “to be more American.”
In this section, I described Jonathan’s experiences as a seventh grader at FMS. He
was a high-achieving student who was in all mainstream classrooms after being exited
from the ESL program. He was also extremely involved with extracurricular activities.
However, middle school life was stressful for Jonathan because he wanted to maintain his
high academic standing. He also struggled to negotiate his bicultural and bilingual
identity.
Motivation
Researchers have provided a distinction between current reading motivation and
habitual reading motivation (Schiefele, Schaffner, Moller & Wigfield, 2012). The authors
explain that current reading motivation is an individual’s intention or desire to read a
specific text for a specific purpose or activity. Meanwhile, “an individual who repeatedly
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shows a form of current reading motivation can be ascribed a certain amount of habitual
reading motivation” (p. 429). In other words, those who have high levels of habitual
reading motivation denote a stable readiness to participate in or undertake reading
activities.
Jonathan was one of two focal students who had high levels of habitual reading
motivation, particularly with texts that he read for pleasure. Reading was an activity that
was constant in his life. However, although Jonathan’s reading motivation was fairly high
at the beginning of the study, he admitted that his motivation was declining, especially as
the end of the school year approached. Based on observations and interviews, three
factors seemed to be primary influences in Jonathan’s motivation to read: (1) intrinsic
motivation (willingness to engage in reading because it is satisfying and rewarding), (2)
series/genres (motivation to read books by the same author or in the same genre), and (3)
compliance (reading because it is required). Although the first and the third factor seem
to be contradictory, I explain next that Jonathan’s motivation to read depended on the text
he was reading and his purpose for reading (Rand Reading Study Group, 2002).
Intrinsic motivation. One of the most noticeable differences in Jonathan’s
reading motivation was his increased intrinsic motivation to read compared to two years
prior. He found reading for pleasure to be satisfying and rewarding. In elementary school,
Jonathan had been required by his parents to read at home. Now that he was in middle
school, Jonathan seemed to derive real pleasure from reading. In fact, he claimed that he
needed to read for at least 30 minutes before he went to bed in order to become more
relaxed. The middle school context was quite stressful for Jonathan, and reading at night
before he went to sleep was a way for him to calm down to recover from his school day.
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His mother still required him to read every day, but Jonathan actually enjoyed reading
now compared to earlier, when he was reading just to comply with his parents’ wishes.
Unfortunately, as the end of the school year drew near, other activities seemed to
take up Jonathan’s time and attention. In our last interview in June, he said when he got
home he would play computer games for about an hour before doing his homework as a
way to relieve his stress from the school day. After this, he sometimes read for about 30
minutes before dinner rather than reading before he went to sleep.
Nevertheless, for the most part, Jonathan was an intrinsically motivated reader.
He claimed he wanted what he was reading to “take time.” In the second interview, I
followed up on the idea that Jonathan liked to read books in a series, and I asked him
what other materials he liked to read. He shared that although he used to like comic
books, he did not read this genre anymore. I probed and asked him if he liked graphic
novels because those were becoming very popular among teenagers. He said he did not
because graphic novels are short, easy to read, and do not take time to read.
I wanna take time.... If you want me to read, I wanna read for a long period so I
can enjoy it. Graphic novels kind of ruins it ’cause most of the graphic novels
right now are from books, and they shorten it and then the writer, the drawer, is
depending on what the writer writes and what the drawer visualize(s) in his mind.
So I can’t visualize anymore ’cause he tells me what to visualize already.
The idea that Jonathan wanted to read for a long period is evidence of his intrinsic
motivation. It indicates that he found reading to be intrinsically satisfying, so much so
that he wanted to spend a substantial period reading. This statement also shows that
Jonathan was an active reader in that he wanted to be able to use strategies such as
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visualizing and did not like reading materials that did not afford him the opportunity to
do so. Jonathan described his new interest in the 39 Clues series:
I read the fifth book in one day, the whole book, ’cause I was so interested in it. I
just finished another book yesterday and I'm trying to find the seventh book, but
it's not in the library yet and I haven't checked out the public library yet ’cause
mostly they don't have any ’cause they have one book, like one book of each
copy.
In this interview excerpt, Jonathan provided evidence of his intrinsic motivation
to read. He shared that he was able to finish an entire book, which was 156 pages long, in
one day. He emphasized he was able to read the whole book in a short period because of
his high interest in the topic. Guthrie and Wigfield (1997) might relate this type of
reading experience to the motivational construct of involvement (or the idea that the
reader gets lost in the story). Schiefele and Schaffner (in press) might use their
motivational term of absorption (becoming deeply absorbed in a text) to describe
Jonathan’s reading experience. Jonathan’s desire to read more shows that topics of texts
and personal choice are significant in enhancing reading motivation (Flowerday, Schraw,
& Stevens, 2004; Guthrie & Klauda, 2012; Guthrie, van Meter, et al., 1996; HughesHassell & Rodge, 2007; Ivey & Broaddus, 2001; O’Brien & Dillon, 2008).
However, Jonathan was not afforded the opportunity to delve deep into a text in
his English class. His English class textbook was full of short stories. If he were to read a
short story on his own, Jonathan probably would have been able to finish reading it in
one class period. In contrast, when the class read a short story, they would do so orally,
alternating with Ms. Costa taking the lead on reading aloud and at times having student
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volunteers read aloud. It took three entire periods for the class to finish reading a short
story. There were times that Ms. Costa would stop and ask questions or provide
explanations for some of the ideas in the story. For proficient students like Jonathan, this
was likely a much slower pace of reading. In his book Readicide, Gallagher (2009)
claims that one of the ways in which teachers are contributing to the decline of students’
love of reading is the practice of taking apart texts in minute portions, such that students
are not able to get into the flow of reading. This is especially important to keep in mind
for a reader like Jonathan, who got involved with the texts. He needed to be able to
experience flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), or the idea of getting lost in a text. It is hard to
do this when there are stops and questions after every couple of paragraphs.
When I asked Jonathan how he used reading as a way to learn in his English class,
he provided the following statement:
When we read a story she [Ms. Costa] takes a break, explain why, and she use
some of her experience to explain... give us some fun facts that we want to learn,
and those are really helpful to help me understand why that happened.
Thus, it seems that for Jonathan’s perspective, the breaks in reading helped him
understand the story. He didn’t mind that reading was broken up into shorter segments.
As a former ELL, Jonathan probably appreciated the elaboration that Ms. Costa provided
because this helped facilitated his comprehension of the academic texts they read in
English class.
Series/Genre. As was alluded to in the previous section, Jonathan was very
motivated to read books by his favorite authors or that were part of a series. When he was
in the fifth grade, he loved to read Rick Riordan books, and as a middle schooler he still
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enjoyed reading Riordan’s books. He continued to read the two new trilogies (the Heroes
of Olympus series and Red Pyramid series) that Riordan released since the highly popular
Percy Jackson series, which was Jonathan’s favorite series in the fifth grade. Jonathan
also enjoyed the Alex Rider series, by Anthony Horowitz, which represented his favorite
genre of action and adventure books. Jonathan stated the importance of genre and series
to his reading engagement:
What I specifically love is more like action, but then I wanna have a series after it.
So I don’t wanna read a single book and just leave me hanging. I don’t like stuff
which leave me hanging and I wanna have a nice end or I can read on and on and
on until I kind of know everything about it and then I stop.
This statement reemphasizes the importance of time for Jonathan’s motivation to
read. Similar to his statement about not wanting to read graphic novels because they are
easy and fast to read, the idea of having to read books in a series shows Jonathan’s desire
to really invest his time, thinking, and emotions in reading. Reading all of the books in a
series requires dedication and investment on the reader’s part (Guthrie, 2011). When
Jonathan exhausted all the books in a series, he would look for other series that he could
then read. For example, toward the end of the school year, Jonathan shared his interest in
the 39 Clues series. As previously mentioned, he would actively seek out copies of the
books in the series and devour each one. He also monitored when his favorite authors
were scheduled to release their new books, and he made sure he was one of the first to
borrow these books from the school library or public library.
Compliance. Jonathan was the focal student who had the most neutral attitude
about academic reading. Rather than being intrinsically motivated to read required
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sections of his textbooks, he seemed to be motivated to read out of compliance. In other
words, he was reading his textbooks because of an “external goal or requirement”
(Wigfield, 1997, p. 23). He read the textbook requirements because he knew doing so
would be necessary to reap the rewards of high grades. In this section, I provide several
examples wherein Jonathan repeatedly mentioned he needed to read textbooks so that he
would earn a better grade in his classes.
Although he did not necessarily enjoy reading textbooks in his content-area
classes, Jonathan did know that in order for him to do well academically, he would need
to read the assigned portions of the textbook. As he explained, “Those books I don’t have
specific interest in it. I’m just reading it for [completion] of schoolwork and just reading
for a grade. I don’t love it, neither do I hate it. I’m just reading it.” This statement
highlights his neutral attitude about reading for school. He realized it was something he
needed to do if he wanted to do well in school.
Despite his desire to do well in school, Jonathan did not have a positive attitude
toward textbooks. He said, “You look at the size and the pages, it just gets you scared and
when I get scared it gets me bored ’cause it’s just words, words, words. Mostly it’s true
facts, and true facts sometimes get really boring.” Even though he found textbook reading
boring, his motivation to read these texts stemmed from the importance he placed in
attaining high grades. Jonathan’s case confirms Guthrie, Wigfield, and Klauda’s (2012)
assertion that even high-achieving students find textbooks dry and boring.
Jonathan also mentioned the idea that textbooks are “scary,” and indeed the
thickness, volume, and content of textbooks in content-area classes is intimidating to
many secondary students (Guthrie et al., 2012). The ubiquitous use of textbooks at the
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middle school level could be a major factor in contributing to the decline in students’
reading motivation (Guthrie & Davis, 2003). Even though Jonathan did not enjoy reading
textbooks for his classes, he still did so but only because he might receive a bad grade if
he did not complete the reading assignment.
Selena: So when you have a reading in school you always do it?
Jonathan: Yeah, ’cause I wanna get a good grade, but for real, if I don’t like it, it’s
really hard to do it. I mean, it’s like focusing your mind in liking the book but you
know you don’t like it.
Jonathan was able to muster enough motivation to get through assigned reading,
but he needed to exert considerable effort in order to accomplish this. He tried to focus on
the textbook because he wanted to excel and not fall behind in his classes even though the
topics and/or texts were not interesting for him.
Even a student like Jonathan, who performed well academically, struggled at
times with understanding the content in textbooks. For instance, he admitted that in
science class, he mostly learned the information from his teacher and not from the
textbook. As he explained, “It’s pretty hard to read a whole textbook with, like, specific
details and actually understand them ’cause most of the textbooks for science are really
complicated, to me at least.” Despite the difficulty of the language in textbooks, Jonathan
said that for the most part he read the assigned sections so that he could learn the content.
Textbooks are the most dominantly used reading materials in middle school, and
these texts require students to use higher order comprehension skills and reasoning
(Guthrie et al., 2012; Guthrie & Klauda, 2012). In order to motivate adolescents to read
more informational texts, one of the practices that Guthrie and Klauda (2012) suggest is
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to provide supplementary texts or materials, especially in cases when the textbook is too
challenging for students. Even though Jonathan was exited out of the ESL program, he
was still continually developing his English proficiency. He would have benefitted from
having supplementary materials to read that would help bridge his comprehension of
difficult portions of the textbook. Another result of using supplementary materials would
likely be higher interest levels from students because these materials break up the
monotony of using only the textbook (Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Guthrie & Klauda,
2012).
As indicated by the quote at the beginning of this dissertation, Jonathan
articulated that he realized a good reader reads for the purpose of learning, even if the
reading might not necessarily always be pleasurable. Although it is positive that Jonathan
completed the assigned reading for his classes and he understood that reading is a way to
learn, it is problematic that he was doing so out of compliance. As mentioned earlier in
the chapter, Jonathan could be intrinsically motivated to read when given interesting
materials. However, the bulk of the academic reading he had to do was from textbooks,
which Jonathan found intimidating, even though he was a proficient reader based on both
Ms. Costa’s observations and the QRI assessment discussed later in the chapter. Jonathan
was still an engaged reader as a seventh grader, but how long could he sustain being
motivated out of compliance?
A noteworthy point to consider is that when Jonathan was younger, he also read
because of compliance. As mentioned earlier, he hated to read when he first arrived in the
United States. He did not even like to read for pleasure. However, he was required by his
parents to read, and thus he read 30 to 45 minutes a day. In this case, reading out of
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compliance resulted in Jonathan finding books that he liked, and he ultimately became
intrinsically motivated to read. Although complying with his parents’ requirement
resulted in him becoming an intrinsically motivated reader in terms of reading for
pleasure, we have yet to see whether his compliance for academic reading will also result
in the same positive outcome.
In this section, I illustrated the multidimensionality of Jonathan’s motivation to
read. His motivation varied depending on the purpose and types of texts he was reading.
Although he was intrinsically motivated to read texts for pleasure, Jonathan provided a
neutral attitude in reading academic texts and completed his school reading tasks out of a
sense of compliance, a disposition that may or may not be tenable for him as he advances,
academically, through high school and beyond.
Strategic Knowledge
In my previous study, I reported that Jonathan had high levels of perceived
competence about reading based on his own self-evaluation (Protacio, 2010). In this
dissertation study, I administered the QRI-5 to obtain information about his
comprehension abilities and strategic knowledge. This assessment provided a more
complete picture of his engagement with texts. In this section, I describe Jonathan’s
strategic knowledge based on the think-aloud portion of the QRI assessments.
According to Ms. Costa, she spent a substantial amount of time at the beginning
of the school year teaching her students six active reading strategies, among them
visualizing and making connections. In one of the interviews, Ms. Costa emphasized that
throughout the earlier part of the year, she made sure to consistently incorporate reading
strategies in her English lessons. She also used the gradual release of responsibility model
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(Duke et al., 2011; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983) to model to her students how these
strategies should be used. Thus, her students should have become familiar with using
reading strategies. Indeed, Jonathan seemed to have a good grasp of the different reading
comprehension strategies, and he clearly used many strategies on the QRI comprehension
assessments.
Based on the results of the QRI word recognition lists, Jonathan was reading
independently at the upper middle school level. He consistently did well on the
comprehension sections of the passages that were administered at this level. When asked
the comprehension questions without the opportunity to look back at the text, Jonathan
would score at the instructional level in terms of comprehension, which indicated he
could read these texts with some support. For the three passages in which he was able to
look back, his comprehension improved to the independent level.
While I had Jonathan silently read the passages, he was asked to think aloud and
describe his thoughts as he was reading. His think-aloud statements were brief. He rarely
said more than two sentences during each think-aloud instance. However, he used a wide
range of comprehension strategies. There were 41 separate instances of comprehension
strategy use throughout the four comprehension passages (see Table 4). Specifically, he
made inferences, made connections, and made emotional connections to the text.
Although he did not use these as frequently, it is also important to note Jonathan’s use of
higher order comprehension skills such as synthesizing and evaluating.

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Table 4
Frequency and Examples of Jonathan’s Comprehension Strategy Use
Comprehension Strategy

Number Percentage

Example From Think-Aloud

Making inferences

11

29

These people spread their culture
here and I guess that's why the
United States is so cultural and
diversified ’cause of these
immigrants spreading their own
culture around.

Making emotional
connections

8

20

I feel really sad about it, about that
part ’cause people were chased out
for their belief and that's not nice
for someone no matter what and
second of you have to give them
some freedom to do whatever they
want.

Making connections

7

17

Looks like lots of people like me,
trying to be American and the
hardest part was learning, writing,
[and] reading English.

Paraphrasing

6

15

He's reading a huge long dictionary
and started copying each word.

Monitoring

2

5

I don't really understand this part
but I think she's trying to find an
opportunity to escape.

Questioning

2

5

I was just thinking about why a
million immigrants came here and
who are they and why they come
between the period 1866 and 1915
and not earlier or later.

Clarifying

2

5

I reread it again. I guess now I
kinda get it.

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Table 4 (cont’d)
Evaluating

1

2

This is, I guess this is kinda like the
paragraph before. To me, it should
be together.

Summarizing

1

2

And even though she got her wealth
she did not turn into the white
people back then. She actually gave
her wealth out helped other people
and she supported a lot of people.

Synthesizing

1

2

I guess before this paragraph, it's all
about the bad things and on this
side it gives all the things that's
needed for these poor people. If you
want money there's money. If you
want freedom, there's freedom. And
they give everything that on the
push side they don't have and that's
why people come, I guess.

In this section, I provide extended examples of Jonathan’s think-alouds and
responses to the comprehension questions in order to present a more vivid description of
his strategy use. For one of the narrative passages, Jonathan read about Biddy Mason, a
former slave who was able to secure her freedom by petitioning a Los Angeles court. She
went on to have a career as a nurse, and she devoted her life to helping others. One of the
comprehension questions for this passage was “Why do you think the author chose to
write a biography of Biddy Mason?” Jonathan provided the following response:
’Cause she is a courageous woman. She gave up safety for freedom, and she
risked some dangers to tell the sheriff that “I want to be free.” And she's lucky she
didn't get hurt and she actually took the chance and she wanted to be free. She
didn't give up.
There are several positive aspects of Jonathan’s response. First, he was able to
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draw conclusions from the passage. The author did not use the term courageous in the
text. Jonathan concluded this based on what he read about her. Second, he provided
specific details from the text to support his claim that she was courageous. Finally, he
was able to provide his own evaluation of her situation by saying, “She’s lucky she didn’t
get hurt.” This statement shows Jonathan was aware of how special Biddy’s situation was
during this time, and he made inferences about her plight throughout the passage.
Another strategy that Jonathan used was monitoring. After reading a paragraph in
the Biddy Mason passage, he said, “I don't really understand this part, but I think she's
trying to find an opportunity to escape.” In this instance, Jonathan realized he did not
understand what he was reading. He later said he used the fix-up strategy of rereading the
paragraph to improve his comprehension.
Two of the passages that Jonathan decided to read for the QRI assessments were
centered on immigration. After reading a paragraph about the assimilation process that
many immigrants went through, Jonathan commented in his think-aloud, “Looks like lots
of people like me, trying to be American and the hardest part was learning, writing, [and]
reading English.” On a basic level, his statement indicates that he was making a text-toself connection, relating the experiences of those he was reading about to his own
immigration experience. But his statement was also telling in that he said he was “trying
to be American.” This is a theme that was consistent across his think-aloud statements for
these two immigration passages and through interviews.
As another example, assimilation was a topic that was discussed in the second
immigration passage. After reading about assimilation, Jonathan commented, “That's
what I'm doing right now, I guess. I'm trying to be American style ’cause, yeah, to
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change, to be in the American style ’cause you don't wanna be the oddball I guess.” As he
read this passage, Jonathan was making an explicit connection between the assimilation
of the immigrants in the passage to his own process of assimilating to the American
culture and trying to become more American. These examples also provide specific
evidence for the assertion made in this chapter’s introduction that Jonathan was trying to
negotiate his bicultural identity.
Connections could also be made with transactional theory (Rosenblatt, 1994).
Rosenblatt notes, “The meaning does not reside within the text or within the reader.
Rather it is constructed through the interaction between the reader and text” (p. 1369).
Jonathan brought his own experiences, apprehensions, and feelings to this text. Even
though it was written as an informational text, it evoked emotions in him because the
issues being described, such as the assimilation process, were issues that he grappled
with.
Overall, Jonathan was more engaged in reading the two informational passages
about immigration compared to the narrative passages about Malcolm X and Biddy
Mason. Unsurprisingly, the immigration passages were more interesting to him because
of his own experiences immigrating to and assimilating in America. Jonathan’s
comprehension of the immigration passages, in particular, was so rich because he
approached these texts from the perspective of deep personal experiences that he likely
utilized to aid his understanding.
More important, results of Jonathan’s performance on the QRI comprehension
assessments confirm that ELLs who are good readers use multiple comprehension
strategies (Jimenez, 1997; Jimenez et al., 1995). Not only did he consistently use
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comprehension strategies, but he also used a range of strategies, which is a mark of a
strategic reader (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Duke et al., 2011). In the following section, I
discuss the kinds of knowledge that Jonathan gained through reading, especially when he
was particularly engaged with a task, text, or topic.
Constructing Meaning From Texts
The reading engagement perspective emphasized that engaged readers use reading
as a venue for learning (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). Reading should be knowledge
driven, and engaged readers are those who want to gain information through reading.
Jonathan was the focal student who was most intent on acquiring knowledge through
reading. Overall, he realized that reading is used for learning. He recognized that reading
is fun and enjoyable and consistently engaged in leisure reading, but he also understood
that it is through reading that he can continue to learn.
I just wanna read as much as I can and learn as much as I can ’cause I have lots to
learn. I guess to me, I don’t have a specific area [that I want to read]. I feel that
I’m just proceeding [in] every area one step at a time ’cause the book, I guess I
read all kinds of books. I don’t think I’m missing anything, neither do I have
anything [I’m] strong at.
Jonathan was able to effectively and confidently express his conceptual
knowledge. Toward the end of the school year, Ms. Costa decided to develop a unit on
mythology. For the introduction of this unit, she provided a visual representation of the
various mythological characters. Throughout the unit, students were exposed to multiple
Greek myths. Given Jonathan’s interest in the Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus
series, he was excited. He not only showed higher levels of motivation for the readings in
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his English class during the mythology unit, but he was able to fully express his
understanding of the different myths that they were reading in class. For example, during
one of my classroom observations, Ms. Costa handed out two myths about Pandora and
Prometheus that the students read silently in class. During our interview the next day, I
asked Jonathan to tell me about what he learned from the myths he had just read.
Prometheus, that's how a man came to be. ’Cause Prometheus created man.
Epimetheus created animals. So that's the story in how Prometheus stole fire from
the God and gave it to humans. He was punished and he was hanged on the top of
some mountain and a vulture will scoop his liver every day and the liver will
grow back. That's why human liver grows back and that's how a liver will regrow
came and so the vulture would scoop his liver every day ’cause it will grow back.
And then the next story is about Pandora's box. It's about they created the first
woman and that was a gift Zeus gave to Epimetheus to punish the humans. But he
gave him a gift as a good gift. He gave Pandora two things: curiosity and a box
that's sealed and he told her to never open it. She wants to open it so badly. One
day she opened it when she was married to Epimetheus and everything came
out—it’s disease, envy, jealousy, revenge. The only thing left inside was hope.
’Cause hope is the one [thing] that's inside every human, and all the other things
that got out it's around the world. And so that's why now people, no matter what
happens, if you have hope that'll be it. ’Cause hope is the only thing that she can
control and that's what we can control. ’Cause you can't control diseases or
revenge—like you can't control the thought of revenge. And that's sorta how it
came to be.
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In the preceding example, Jonathan was able to provide many details about what
he read and was able to clearly describe the myths. This extensive response was typical
for Jonathan when I asked him questions about what he had learned during the mythology
unit. This was a stark contrast to his usually curt responses during the think-aloud portion
of the QRI assessment. Also, he had typically provided short responses when I had
previously asked him about projects and readings in other content areas. In his extended
responses to questions about his readings for the mythology unit, both his motivation and
comprehension were evident.
The final project for the mythology unit was for students to pick a mythological
figure, write a paper, and prepare a presentation to share with the entire class. Other
students in the class were eager to write about mythological figures who were more well
known, such as Zeus or Aphrodite, but Jonathan chose to write about the Fates. To gather
information on the Fates, he consulted approximately 12 websites on Greek mythology.
After poring over these websites, Jonathan said that, compared to the other gods in Greek
mythology, the Fates were “outstanding.”
’Cause they're, like, they're the Fates. They control the people. They affect
mortals' life more than gods' life and they're not in any, I guess.... All the
mythology mostly are with love, fighting. They're not in any of those. They're just
little side characters that controls every human being [and] even some of the gods.
I mean even though they’re not in lots of mythology, they're actually the power
one ’cause they actually controls everything. They just don't say it ’cause, they
don't say it in mythology ’cause they don't involve in any love or they don't
involve any fighting ’cause they don't fight and neither do they love.
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This explanation illustrated that Jonathan was able to summarize and synthesize
the information he had acquired through his Internet research about the Fates. In addition,
he was able to provide a solid rationale for his initial statement of why the Fates were
“outstanding.” As he explained, rather than dealing with a ubiquitous topic such as love,
the Fates deal more with the idea of power in that they decide when mortals’ lives end.
When students are able to explore multiple texts and have to integrate information
from multiple sources, they are more likely to develop higher order reasoning and
comprehension skills (Guthrie & Klauda, 2012). By reading across texts, students
commonly notice inconsistencies with information that they have read (Guthrie &
Klauda, 2012). This is something that occurred with Jonathan during the mythology unit.
He said that in order to gather information for his project, he looked at 12 websites and
found contrasting information. Jonathan explained, “This is a bad part about Greek
Mythology is [that] it's uncertain. Some say they [the Fates] control mortals. Some say
they control mortals and Gods, so I really don't know.” The following is his elaboration
of the process that he undertook to acquire information about the Fates.
I searched it on Google, “the Fates.” I looked through about 12 different sites. It
says that the Greek mythology is 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago. At that time,
all these myths are passed down from generation to generation to generation, so it
could change. That's why there's so much version of the story and I don't know
who it is. So some say they’re the daughters of Zeus and Themes. Some say
they’re the daughter of Nyx. Some say they're just created out of nowhere. Some
say they are born out of the underworld. Lots of people say different things. And I
found 12, 13, 14 stories and I have to try pick which is most commonly said.
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’Cause some of the websites are reports that they research over from the site
other. So it's kinda like I'm reading someone else's paper, but they research in the
same website I'm researching and I know. So I'm just trying to pick the common
ones.
A few things are worth noting from this interview excerpt. It is evident that
Jonathan used higher order comprehension skills when he was researching information.
On the most basic level, he was able to understand the content of the websites that he was
exploring for information and easily recall all of the information that he read. More
importantly, he was able to evaluate the content and sift through the information. For
example, he recognized that a few websites reported exactly the same information, and
thus he looked for corroborating information to determine which information he should
trust as the most commonly reported version of each story. He was also able to
distinguish between primary and secondary sources. Given his understanding of the
content, Jonathan recognized that some of the websites he had read were simply based on
other websites he had already visited. His elaboration through his research process
indicated that Jonathan was able to use reading, and in this case reading digital texts, as a
way to acquire information. He did so as an active reader by using higher order
comprehension strategies such as synthesizing and evaluating.
As part of the mythology project, the students were also asked to prepare a brief
presentation to explain to their classmates what they learned about the mythological
character on whom they focused. When it was his time to present, Jonathan confidently
went to the front of the class and started presenting in a loud voice. He also brought
props, such as scissors and string, to illustrate who the Fates were. Jonathan was the first
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presenter who was able to get his classmates to laugh through his presentation. He told
me that in order to prepare for the presentation, he looked over all the articles he had read
and picked out the key points and worked from there to try to inject some humor into his
presentation. Jonathan wanted to make his presentation humorous to ease his nerves.
Below is Jonathan’s reflection of his presentation.
I guess I explained my idea well. What's sloppy is I think I talked too much that
I'm confusing everyone, and I just left out some parts. I mean, mostly I think
everyone got the idea what I'm trying to say.
Jonathan was able to effectively provide a self-reflection of his presentation,
although he could have been more specific about the content. His presentation was
definitely entertaining for his classmates, and Ms. Costa said that his enthusiasm was
apparent. However, she noted, “I think he was very focused on how he was saying
something instead of what he was saying.” She said he could have been more focused on
the content of his presentation; instead, he seemed to be concentrating on his classmates’
perceptions of his presentation style. Nevertheless, in the last two interviews, Jonathan
spent a substantial amount of time sharing what he had learned from the mythological
unit. Although he had some background on mythology because of his obsession with the
Percy Jackson series, there were still several myths with which he was unfamiliar.
Selena: So what's something new that you learned aside from who Cronus is or
Epimetheus is? What are some things that you found interesting so far about this
unit?
Jonathan: All the myths, I guess. They're really interesting, like how human come
to be. And we just read this about Percius and how he came to be, and killed his
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father and all that. It's interesting ’cause that's kinda like how we came to be. It
explains lots of the things, and I guess it's cool ’cause you feel like you know how
everything is now. You know why there's human, you know why there's animal,
and why humans are smarter than animals. Though those are all myths, they're
still pretty cool.
Jonathan’s enthusiasm and interest in the mythology unit were evident. He had
many more responses to and explanations of the myths that showed his detailed
understanding of the ideas that were being presented in English class during this unit. As
he mentioned in the previous example, although he realized that what they were learning
were all simply myths, it was still interesting for him to learn these and understand the
origin of things.
In this section, I discussed Jonathan’s ability to acquire information through
reading, although this varied depending on his interest level. When he was interested in
the topic, he was able to provide extended responses that indicated a thorough
understanding of the texts that he was reading in and for class.
Social Interactions
In this section, I discuss the ways in which Jonathan engaged in social interactions
around texts. Social interactions typically indicate collaboration, but this was not the case
with Jonathan. He had two types of social interactions in the English classroom: (1)
“helping” others and (2) seeking support from his teacher. Although Jonathan mentioned
that he sometimes engaged in casual conversations with classmates about books, the idea
of book discussions or being part of a reading community did not seem to be a prominent
theme. Jonathan mentioned that he and his close friends rarely talked about books.
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Providing “help” for peers. Jonathan seemed to be the one that his peers went to
for help, particularly in his math and English classes. His science teacher even recognized
him for helping his peers by nominating Jonathan as one of the Students of the Month
earlier in the school year. Ideally, providing help would indicate that Jonathan was
teaching his classmates how to better understand the content through modeling or
coaching, but I did not observe this happening in the classroom. In these interactions
when Jonathan was helping others, he often was providing the answer rather than
coaching his peers to get the correct answer. Part of the problem might have been the
types of tasks in which the students were engaging.
The types of tasks typically given in his English class were closed tasks, “those in
which either the product (e.g., there is one correct answer), the process (e.g., sound out
the word), or both were specified” (Turner & Paris, 1995, p. 664). An example of a
closed task is a worksheet because the answers are already predetermined. Thus, closed
tasks do not really afford collaboration to occur.
In the following vignette, I describe Jonathan’s interaction with a fellow student
during pair work in Ms. Costa’s English class. Ms. Costa told the class that after working
independently for 15 minutes, they could work with a partner to answer the questions on
the worksheet she handed out. Charlie, a Caucasian student, asked Jonathan to be his
partner. Jonathan agreed and came over to sit by Charlie. Fortunately, I had been sitting
behind Charlie at the time, so I was able to overhear their conversation.
Jonathan asks Charlie what number he is now on, and Charlie says he has been
skipping through the items and answering the ones he knows. Jonathan says that
he is on number 9. The two are sharing a book and both of them are looking at the
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text and finding the answer. Charlie tries to answer one of the questions and
Jonathan corrects him and says, “It was a nightmare actually. That’s what it says
in the book.” They go back to work. Charlie was whisper reading the text as he
tries to figure out the answer to one of the questions. Charlie says to Jonathan,
“OK, I’m on number 6. We’re not even working together. You’re ahead.”
Jonathan replies, “I’m trying to slow down so you can catch up.” For the next
couple of minutes, Charlie would say something and then Jonathan would clarify.
(Field notes, April, 2012).
Several observations and inferences can be made based on this vignette. First,
although Charlie and Jonathan were supposed to be working together, they were not
necessarily doing so. Instead, they seemed to be playing varying roles. Jonathan assumed
the role of helper or the more knowledgeable other (Vygotsky, 1978), whereas Charlie
was the one being supported. Seemingly, Jonathan decided these roles; Charlie wanted to
be on equal footing and work together. Charlie even wanted Jonathan to stop working for
a while so he could catch up. Instead, Jonathan kept on working and their discussions
were not really about co-constructing knowledge. In this instance, they were not working
together. Rather, Jonathan seemed to be supporting and correcting Charlie and providing
the answer.
In another class session later in the semester, students were supposed to be
independently filling out a worksheet identifying the different gods in Greek mythology.
Wesley, one of Jonathan’s close friends, kept whispering in a loud voice asking Jonathan
for help. There were some other boys in the class who also were asking Jonathan

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questions as they were filling out the worksheet. Jonathan would give them a short
response and then get back to work and resume writing his responses.
When I asked Jonathan about these instances of his classmates asking him for
help, he replied, “I'm always [the] helper guy, I guess. That's how most people know
me.” Jonathan recalled that it started off with him shouting out correct answers in math
class. People then knew that he was someone who did well in math, and they started
asking him for help. This then spread to people asking him for support in other subjects,
too. In the instance above, Jonathan explained that Wesley and other students were
asking about the mythological figures that were being asked for in the worksheet. In all of
my observations, I noticed that it was always his peers asking Jonathan for support and
never the other way around. It could be inferred that one of Jonathan’s motives for
participating in social interactions was so he could serve the role of the more
knowledgeable other.
More importantly, Jonathan rarely received help from this peers. He recounted an
experience in his English class, when he and a partner were supposed to review one
another’s paper:
I had a not very good working partner for my research paper when revising. He
revised two word(s). I revised his whole paper. That didn't really help me, so I
had to find Ms. Costa for help. Ms. Costa, she gave a bunch of... she graded my
paper really good and she made a lot of revision. It took me an hour to change all
of them.
In this explanation, Jonathan recognized that group members are not always on
equal footing and not everyone exerts the same amount of effort. Rather then prodding
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his partner for more feedback, Jonathan instead resorted to asking his teacher for her
comments and revisions.
Jonathan seemed to relish his role of being the more knowledgeable student when
working with others. When I asked him whether he minded helping others, he replied, “I
feel really proud ’cause I'm from another country and people are asking me for help,
especially in English. It's sweet.” Jonathan felt pleased that despite not growing up in the
United States he was able to perform well academically and help others. This offered him
a position of higher status. His role as the more knowledgeable student boosted his selfconfidence and provided him with a space where he felt wanted and accepted by his
peers, especially those who benefitted from the academic support.
A noteworthy point to consider is that several of Jonathan’s friends were not as
dedicated to their academics as he was. This is something that Ms. Costa brought up in
one of our interviews. She said she found it troubling that Jonathan was hanging out with
students who did not seem to care about their academics or those who would act up in
class. One day, the class was watching an animated film based on The Odyssey. Ms.
Costa gave the students an opportunity to change seats and sit with their friends. Jonathan
and his friends, Wesley, Justin, and Ron, quickly scrambled to get the seats at the back of
the classroom. Throughout the 45 minutes in which the class was watching the movie,
Justin and Wesley whispered loudly to one another. Meanwhile, Jonathan was focused on
the video, stopping only to take notes on the sheet that Ms. Costa had provided. When I
brought this up with Ms. Costa in an interview, she said Jonathan was adept at tuning out
his friends during class time, especially when they were off task. However, she expressed

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concern and said she hoped Jonathan could sustain this focus so he would not pick up bad
habits from his friends in the future.
More importantly, the findings point to a lack of meaningful interactions, which is
problematic considering that social motivation had been prominent in Jonathan’s reading
motivation when he was a fifth grader. In my previous research, I found that he regularly
engaged in book discussions with his American classmates. This was due in part to
integrative motivation. When Jonathan tried to share something he enjoyed and found
humorous with his Chinese friends, they snubbed his enthusiasm about the book. They
also accused him of becoming “too American” because he primarily read American
books. These instances caused Jonathan to seek out American classmates with whom he
could participate in book discussions (Protacio, 2010). However, now that Jonathan had a
group of American friends, they were not having discussions around books. It brings up
the question of how long integrative motivation would be relevant for ELLs. Perhaps
integrative motivation could initially motivate ELLs to read in English, but once they
have been in the United States for a substantial period, then other factors need to be
present in order for their reading motivation to be sustained. Also, as Gee (1996) points
out, individuals are shaped by their inclusion in social groups. In Jonathan’s social circle,
reading was not an important part of their Discourse. Therefore, interacting around texts
was not something that Jonathan and his friends regularly did. Perhaps integrative
motivation would still play a role in Jonathan’s reading motivation and engagement if his
friends were also engaged readers. Unfortunately, his close friends were not readers.
Support for reading. Jonathan frequently sought support from Ms. Costa for
writing his papers and completing his projects. Ms. Costa cultivated a classroom
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environment wherein students felt comfortable approaching her to ask questions or solicit
feedback on their work. There were several work sessions during which I observed a
queue of students, Jonathan among them, waiting for their turn to interact with Ms. Costa.
There were three sessions wherein Ms. Costa reserved the computers in the library
so that students could conduct their research for the mythology project. During the first
day, I observed Jonathan sitting with his friends from class. Some of them were just
chatting while sitting in front of the computer, but Jonathan was actively looking things
up on the computer and poring through various websites to obtain information about the
Fates. I would then see him go up to Ms. Costa to ask a question. Later in the week, when
his friends were then just starting to gather information, Jonathan had already finished his
paper. He went to Ms. Costa and asked her for her formative feedback on the paper. He
then handed me another copy of the paper and asked me if I would not mind also
providing comments on it. By the next day, he had considered our feedback and revised
his paper. While his classmates were still working on the first drafts of their paper,
Jonathan had completed his revisions and was then focusing on the artistic representation
of the project. These examples illustrate that Jonathan was a highly focused and
organized learner. He did not want to rush his school projects, so he planned his tasks
efficiently to ensure that he would have opportunities to seek teacher feedback.
Also, as mentioned earlier in this section, when Jonathan was unable to get
support from peer revisions, he would approach his teacher for comments. Approaching
Ms. Costa was something he consistently did throughout the school year. Jonathan said
he initially tried to figure things out on his own, but he always wanted to make sure he
clearly comprehended the questions or tasks ahead of him.
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Well, I try to figure out. If I don't figure out or I'm not sure, especially something
I'm not sure of, I'm not gonna take the risk. I don't gamble a lot on teacher's
reaction ’cause if I gamble, mostly I'm wrong. So I go up and ask.
Because Jonathan had high expectations of himself as a student, he did not want
to risk getting a bad grade. Thus, he approached Ms. Costa so that the expectations were
clearly defined. Ms. Costa confirmed that Jonathan was a student who consistently asked
questions and requested feedback. More important, he put forth the effort to make
revisions to his projects based on her feedback. For instance, students read the short story
“Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” After reading it together as a class, they spent two
class periods watching two videos depicting this story. Students were then asked to write
a compare-and-contrast essay about the two videos. Ms. Costa scaffolded their learning
about how to write this type of essay by providing templates, which helped students
organize their ideas. Jonathan finished the draft of this essay a couple of days before the
deadline and asked Ms. Costa to read through it and provide comments. She described the
interaction that occurred when she was providing feedback on this paper:
He was verbalizing it when we were talking through it. He could tell me the
differences and he could tell me how to word it, but it wasn’t written like that on
his draft. [Also] he would make a claim, which is great, but he didn’t really have a
lot of examples. He was very big on run-on sentences. And he understands what
they are. I think it’s just a habit of doing them. His ideas were there. So we were
just working together on, he said something, like a sentence, and I said,
“Beautiful. Write that down. That’s exactly it.”
In these interactions, Ms. Costa would ask Jonathan questions based on his draft,
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and he was able to verbally articulate his ideas. Based on this, She provided suggestions
on how to improve his paper, such as providing more examples, including more transition
words, and fixing run-on sentences. According to Ms. Costa, Jonathan took detailed notes
on the feedback she provided. The next day, he was able to submit his paper based on her
feedback on his draft.
In this example, Ms. Costa was modeling to Jonathan what a positive social
interaction around support should like look, in which there is coaching and feedback
rather than explicit answers being given outright. Despite Jonathan’s constant interactions
with Ms. Costa in which he was given support, he was not able to translate the coaching
stance that she modeled for him in the social interactions wherein he was helping his
peers.
In this section, I described how Jonathan participated in social interactions around
reading. In peer interactions, he took on the role of the helper, providing support to his
peers to perhaps make up for his perceived feeling of “being different.” Jonathan did not
get support for reading from his peers, and instead he decided to approach his teacher for
support.
Jonathan: A Seemingly Engaged Reader
By all accounts, Jonathan was a very engaged reader. He was motivated to read,
used numerous strategies when reading, and comprehended what he read. However, he
did not engage in the types of social interactions expected of an engaged reader because
he did not regularly participate in discussions of texts.
When he was able to read for pleasure, Jonathan invested time and effort in
reading entire series of books, showing his dedication and motivation to read. However,
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despite being a good comprehender, Jonathan did not derive the same kind of pleasure
from academic reading for his classes. He was forthcoming about doing his reading for
his classes out of a sense of compliance rather than actual interest in the texts. Certainly,
in Jonathan’s case, being compliant was related to the extrinsic motivator of grades. This
begs the question: How can educators better engage students with academic reading?
For the most part, Jonathan exhibited the behaviors of an engaged reader
identified by Taboada and McElvany (2009) in that he had topic preferences, genre
interests, reading habits, and enthusiasm. Indeed, compared to the three other focal
students, Jonathan was the one who had the least negative attitude toward academic
reading. However, it is concerning that he was not particularly engaged with academic
reading. This finding is similar to that of Guthrie et al. (2012), who found that even highachieving students thought academic reading was a “waste of time” because these texts
were dull and unrelated to their lives. Given the adoption of the Common Core State
Standards, students will have to be more exposed to more academic reading, such as
informational texts, in order to meet these higher standards. The CCSS highlights even
more the importance of finding ways to better engage learners with academic reading.
Jonathan had high levels of intrinsic motivation to read leisure texts such as the
books in the 39 Clues series. These were books he could not get enough of, enjoying
them so much he would finish reading an entire book in just one day. How can that kind
of intrinsic motivation be cultivated for academic reading? One of the hurdles is the
presence of the textbook, which often is not written in an engaging manner because its
main purpose is to provide information. Thus, in middle school classrooms, teachers have
to consider not only the texts that are bring read but also how they are being read.
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One of the most engaging tasks for Jonathan in his English class was the
mythology project, which had several positive aspects. First, the mythology project was
what Turner (1995) would identify as an open task. Ms. Costa allowed students to choose
not only the topic of their paper and presentation but also what texts they would consult.
Students were able to use multiple texts to find out as much as they could about their
topic. Students needed to evaluate the information they found and synthesize ideas across
these multiple texts. Through the research process, students learned about their topic by
comprehending the texts they were reading. In general, students are more motivated to
complete open tasks because they have more autonomy compared to closed tasks for
which there is only one correct answer or one correct way of completing the task (Turner
& Paris, 1995). This certainly rang true in Jonathan’s case. He was very engaged with the
mythology project because it allowed him to explore a topic that was interesting to him.
The task also presented a moderate challenge for Jonathan. Specifically, he had to look at
several sources of information, comprehend the texts, evaluate the information, and
synthesize what he learned in order to write a paper and give a presentation.
In sum, for the most part, Jonathan was an engaged reader. However, there are
two areas in which his engagement could be improved. First, pedagogical strategies need
to be found to encourage him to become more intrinsically motivated to read academic
texts. Second, there needs to be more opportunities for Jonathan to participate in
meaningful interactions around texts such that he can be part of a community of readers.
These two areas will help sustain his reading engagement as he progresses through the
secondary school system.

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CHAPTER 4
“I Really Hate This Kind of Reading”:
A Case of an Eighth-Grade ELL’s Situational Reading Engagement
During REACH period, I helped Nabila on her social studies homework. It was
the kind of assignment that we had worked on in previous days. She had a
worksheet with vocabulary words on it, and she had to write the definition of the
terms or provide details about the events listed by finding the information from
her social studies textbook. She was working fairly independently during this
time, but she stopped and asked me a question about a certain term. I said, “Well,
why don’t we look at what it says.” As we were looking at the text and both
reading silently, Nabila suddenly said, “I really hate this kind of reading!” She
then proceeded to read some of the words in a sarcastic tone. (Field notes,
February 2012)
In the above vignette, Nabila, an eighth grader from Afghanistan, presented a
negative reaction to reading academic texts. This was a strong contradiction to her
positive attitude about reading when she was in the sixth-grade (Protacio, 2012). Guthrie
and Wigfield (2000) describe reading motivation as situational and argue that a student is
not simply motivated or unmotivated to read. Rather, the situations in which students
become motivated or unmotivated readers should be examined.
In this chapter, I describe how Nabila’s reading engagement levels fluctuated
based on situational factors. In particular, Nabila’s reading engagement levels differed
based on the types of texts she was reading and her purpose for reading. When she read
books for pleasure, Nabila was motivated to read, used multiple higher-order
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comprehension strategies more frequently, and engaged in positive social interactions. In
contrast, when reading purely academic texts, Nabila was unmotivated, used higher-order
comprehension strategies less frequently, and engaged in social interactions for support
rather than discussion.
In addition to situational factors, socio-cultural factors such as her identity as a
young Muslim girl also influenced different aspects of her reading engagement. Zine
(2001) points out that Muslim girls in public schools have to negotiate their identity
within “three often conflicting cultural frameworks: the dominant culture, their ethnic
culture, and Islam” (p. 404). These intersecting frameworks melded to form Nabila’s
identity as a reader. In Nabila’s case, her identity as a Muslim girl influenced who she
engaged with in terms of her social interactions around reading, and it also affected the
types of texts which she chose to read.
Getting to Know Nabila
Nabila and her family were originally from Afghanistan, but Nabila spent many
years of her childhood in a Pakistan village with fellow Afghans. Nabila’s family was
granted refugee visas, and they moved to the U.S. when Nabila was in the third grade.
Her parents decided that Nabila’s mother would take the family to the U.S. so that Nabila
and her five siblings could have a better education, while Nabila’s father remained in
Pakistan. Nabila realized the sacrifice that her parents had made; thus, she strived to do
well academically to fulfill her parents’ wish of their children to have a good education.
When Nabila arrived in the United States, she did not know how to speak any English.
During the early days in the U.S., Nabila’s older sisters often read English books to her,
which influenced Nabila’s motivation to learn how to read in English. As Nabila learned
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how to read and speak in English, she became a highly motivated reader. In my previous
research on ELL reading motivation, I found that Nabila, as a sixth-grader, read primarily
for two reasons. First, she read for social reasons so that she could engage in book
discussions with her teachers, friends, and siblings. Second, she read for instrumental
reasons so that she could learn from reading. Nabila said through reading she could “shop
for her mind” (Protacio, 2012), which indicated that she chose her reading materials
based on what she wanted to learn. In elementary school, Nabila had very positive
relationships with her teachers. She attributed her motivation to her teachers’
recommendations of interesting books. Nabila’s reading engagement changed once she
entered middle school.
Adjusting to Middle School Life
Being an eighth-grader, Nabila had adjusted to the middle school experience in
terms of academics. While she enjoyed her Spanish and art classes, Nabila mentioned
that she did not enjoy her content-area classes such as science, math, and social studies.
When I probed for the reason, rather than commenting on the subject matter in these
content-area classes, Nabila explained that she did not feel as though her teachers were
very supportive. I did not observe in any of these classes, so I do not have observational
data to support or refute Nabila’s claims. Nevertheless, this indicates that in Nabila’s
perception there was less teacher support at the middle school level. Despite this, Nabila
was very diligent with her academics. In my observations, when she was able to use free
time to work on homework and projects, she made good use of her time. She would also
take the initiative and ask for help when she did not understand something that she was

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reading. Nabila also noted that middle school had become easier because she was more
fluent in English.
Throughout the study, Nabila seemed very invested in her social relationships.
When I asked Nabila to reflect at the end of the school year about her middle school
experience, her primary focus was on her social standing. She recalled that students
whom she thought were her friends in the seventh-grade ignored her and treated her as if
she was a “loser” or outsider. Nabila implied that her adherence to religious norms may
have affected other students’ perceptions of her. As she reflected, “Now that I think about
it, I lost a lot of friends, but they weren’t true friends, so it doesn’t really matter.” While
Nabila tried to put forth a dismissive façade around her social standing, I could sense that
she wanted to be more accepted by her mainstream peers. Nevertheless, Nabila did not
conform to the pressure to become more Westernized, and instead stayed grounded in her
Muslim identity.
For the most part, Nabila seemed to be very comfortable in her own skin and
embraced and accepted that she was not part of the mainstream group. Perhaps Nabila
felt, like participants in Zine’s (2001) study, that “It was easier to just be with [her] own
kind” (p. 412). Her close friends were fellow Muslim girls who were all in the ESL class.
While they came from different countries, their adherence to their Muslim faith and
desire to do well academically were common denominators within their social circle.
Nabila was extremely committed to adhering to expectations of her Muslim faith.
Nabila not only took the customs of her religion very seriously, but she also expected this
of her Muslim peers, particularly of other female Muslim students. In fact, there were
instances where she seemed to even monitor whether other female Muslim students
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abided by their religious customs. On one occasion Nabila noted that a fellow Muslim
female wore shorts to school, which under her beliefs was inappropriate attire. In this
case, Nabila seemed to take on the role of an enforcer, ensuring that the Muslim students
abided by Muslim customs.
There were moments, however, when Nabila’s attitude about her social status
seemed to fluctuate. During these times, she was concerned with other students’
perceptions of her and her religious and cultural background. One afternoon, I was in the
library with Nabila and Sanaa and homework help time was almost over. Mrs. Blake
came over and Sanaa told Mrs. Blake that her hair was becoming a bit unmanageable.
Mrs. Blake turned to me and asked, “Have you seen her (Sanaa’s) hair? It’s gorgeous.”
One thing that Mrs. Blake, the ESL teacher, was really consistent about doing with her
ELLs was making their culture valued. She always complimented the female Muslim
students in her class about their hijabs, taking note of the designs. She would say things
like, “Is that a new hijab? It’s beautiful!” or “I love the way your hijab matches your
outfit today.” When I told her that I had not, Mrs. Blake asked both Nabila and Sanaa if
they would show me their hair. The girls agreed. We went to Mrs. Blake’s classroom, and
once away from the door, the girls removed their hijabs. I noticed that both Nabila and
Sanaa looked very different when their hair was down compared to when they had their
hijabs on. Mrs. Blake and I complimented both girls on their hair. Nabila then
commented, “I wish they [other students] could see me like this.” While I did not address
it with Nabila at the time, her statement struck a chord with me. The presence of the hijab
automatically marked Nabila and her friends as different from the mainstream (Portes &
Rumbaut, 2001).
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During the following interview, I delved more into this issue with Nabila.
Selena: I really appreciate you and Sanaa for showing me your hair without your
hijab. One thing I found interesting was when you were like “All the kids in
school just see me with a hijab. I wish they can see me like this.”
Nabila: Yeah.
Selena: So what made you say that?
Nabila: Because most people think that just because we wear the hijab and long
clothes and stuff means that we're not pretty or nice or something. They just judge
you and if they see that I can look like American too.
Nabila’s explanation indicated that she felt that other students made assumptions
about her, both in terms of her physical attributes and her personality, simply because she
adhered to the traditional Muslim religious custom in terms of her wardrobe. She wanted
students to be able to know her and neither judge nor exclude her because of her hijab.
Nevertheless, Nabila appreciated diversity and realized that everyone could not be
the same. In the example below, while Nabila was supposed to be responding to a
question in a comprehension assessment about immigration, she instead shared her
insights about assimilating into the American culture.
Because like it's so funny how if you go to your country, you're so stuck with the
way of living there. And when you come here all of a sudden you just look at
other people and be like, “I should look like them because maybe they think I'm
different and they're too scared to be different cause many people don't like
different people.” So they'll just be like “I'll just be the same.” Well, if you're the
same then, what's the point of the world?
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Through this interaction, I learned that Nabila realized that diversity was a
positive thing because as she noted, “If everyone is [sic] the same, then everything would
be boring.” Nabila may have also said this because she understood that her mainstream
peers might have perceived her as being very different from them. Thus she hoped that
they, too, would value diversity rather than embracing conformity. But it also highlighted
there were times where Nabila contemplated changing things about her primary
Discourse as a Muslim female in order to conform to her secondary Discourse of the
school setting. Nabila seemed to be wavering about her identity as she continuously tried
to reconcile the customs of her Muslim faith with how she wanted to be perceived by her
mainstream peers.
In the larger sociocultural context of Nabila’s school setting, she was struggling to
make sense of her social relationships while simultaneously trying to adhere to the
customs and norms of her Muslim religion. Nabila’s identity struggle impacted the social
interactions around reading in which she participated. As a sixth-grader, Nabila had
mentioned that she could start a conversation with anyone about reading. In contrast, as
an eighth-grader, Nabila had only a limited circle of people with whom she shared her
passion about reading.
Similar to her stance as a sixth-grader, as an eighth-grader Nabila continued to
enjoy reading leisure texts. On the other hand, she had extremely negative attitudes about
academic reading. Her low levels of academic motivation did not negatively affect her
ability to use comprehension strategies or make meanings from texts, as she was able to
do both with ease. In terms of her social interactions, Nabila engaged in book discussions
with her Muslim friends around texts she read for pleasure, but only consulted adults
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when she needed support for her academic reading.
Contradicting Motivations
Throughout the time I spent observing and interacting with Nabila in the eighthgrade, it was very evident that she had very strong, contradictory feelings about reading
for school versus reading for pleasure. While the statements initially shared in the
vignette at the beginning of this chapter may provide the impression that Nabila was
unmotivated and disengaged, this was not the case.
Nabila’s motivation was highly dependent on the situation and context. For
instance, Nabila was highly unmotivated to read the textbooks assigned in her contentarea classes.
Well…I don’t know. It’s just, it [the textbook] doesn’t make it sound exciting or
fun or something. You know? It doesn’t have anything. I don’t know, it’s just a
list of things. It doesn’t really make your mind feel into it. If a book starts with
something good that you wanna keep on reading. They need to start, I don’t
know, they can’t make social studies or science fun, I know that for sure.
Yet Nabila was also the focal student who was most intrinsically motivated to
read books especially when given the opportunity to pursue her own reading interests in
her spare time. For example, during Reading Month, Nabila was one of the top three
students in her ESL class who spent the most time reading based on the reading logs that
students submitted. Nabila’s reading log entries indicated that she found much pleasure in
the hours she spent reading (see Figure 1). While the Reading Month initiative can be
considered a form of extrinsic motivation because there was external recognition and
pressure to read, Nabila went above and beyond the expectations for Reading Month. In
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some ways, Reading Month helped prompt Nabila to engage in even more pleasure
reading because it gave her an additional reason to read for pleasure, and it also offered
the promise of recognition. I would argue that the amount of time Nabila spent reading,
coupled with her extensive summaries and reactions on her reading log, is indicative of
her intrinsic motivation to read.

Figure 1a. A sample entry in Nabila’s reading log
Summary:
This is the story of a boy named Dominic and he is an orphan, but he doesn’t want
anyone to find out. One day, his class goes on a field trip to Ellis Island and falls asleep
in a closet. When he wakes up nobody is there and soon he finds himself in Italy in 1908.
Personal Reaction:
This story has an unusual twist to it. And makes you surprised a lot. I think that Dominic
shouldn’t be shy or afraid to tell people that he is an orphan because it’s not something to
be ashamed of.
Figure 1b. Key to Figure 1a.

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In the semester that I spent observing in Nabila’s ESL class, more often than not
along with her binder and textbooks she would be carrying a book or magazine she was
currently reading. Sometimes, when she got to the ESL class early, she would rush to the
school library (which was next door to the ESL classroom) to exchange magazines.
Nabila took full advantage of her school’s extensive library. Having access to texts
certainly facilitated Nabila’s reading motivation by providing her with a wide range of
books and other materials from which to choose. Three other factors also seemed to
positively motivate Nabila to read: social motivation because of her peers, interest in
certain topics and genres, and book characteristics.
Social motivation. Out of all the focal students, Nabila was most motivated
because of social influences. As an incentive, after each interview and QRI assessment,
focal students were given a book. Nabila repeatedly mentioned that she was motivated to
read books that were recommended by her friends. When she looked through the book
options, she would make comments about those books that had been recommended by
her friends. In one instance, she was very excited when she was able to get the book Miss
Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children because it was a book highly recommended by
one of her friends. Nabila mentioned that she would, in turn, also recommend books that
she liked to her friends. Providing book recommendations to one another was a way in
which Nabila and her friends became excited and motivated to read specific books.
Nabila was also the only one among the focal students who also sought adult
recommendations. She frequently asked the school librarian, Mrs. Jenkins, for book
recommendations. In the seventh grade, Nabila had read some multicultural books which
she thoroughly enjoyed, and she wanted to find similar books. Nabila said that Mrs.
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Jenkins had been helpful in helping her find interesting multicultural books. Nabila then
later encouraged her friend, Aina, to also ask Mrs. Jenkins for book recommendations.
In contrast, Nabila did not mention getting book recommendations from teachers,
except from Mrs. Blake. In fact, she indicated that she found it annoying when a teacher
would keep on reminding students to read a certain book. She said this tactic did not help
in getting her motivated to read. This was the opposite of Nabila’s stance from when she
had been in the sixth grade. At that time, Nabila seemed to have a high regard for her
teacher’s recommendation: “Once you start reading a book that you like that the teacher
has picked for you, it captivates you and takes your attention and you just can’t stop. You
just want to keep on reading” (Protacio, 2010, p. 23). It might be that when she was
younger, Nabila needed assistance in finding books because she was still figuring out
what interested her. In addition, Nabila seemed to have a good relationship with many of
her elementary school teachers. Now that Nabila was in middle school, however, it was
troubling to note that aside from Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Jenkins, she did not have any close
relationships with her middle school teachers. It may be that Nabila did not acknowledge
other teachers’ book recommendations because she did not have a good rapport with
most of them, nor did she engage in any conversations around pleasure books with them.
It should be noted that Nabila did not hesitate to recommend books to Mrs. Blake.
In the reading log which she submitted to Mrs. Blake in March, Nabila wrote a note at the
bottom of the page, “I highly recommend you to read the Hunger Games trilogy Mrs.
Blake – Nabila. <3 <3 <3 <3 this books!!!” (The <3 in this case represents hearts; in other
words, Nabila said that she loved these books). In another instance, Nabila wrote a short

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note to Mrs. Blake about the book Home of the Brave, “If you liked Inside Out and Back
Again, read this.” (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2a. Nabila’s reading log entry with recommendations for Mrs. Blake
Summary:
This is a story of a young African boy named Kek. Kek’s dad and brother were both
killed at a war in Africa, and his only hope now is his mother [who is in] the U.S. is
searching every active camp to find her. He experiences different types of weathers. His
mom finally comes home, and Kek makes a friend named Hannah.
Personal reaction:
This book was funny as well as true because mostly this is what you feel like when you
first come from a different country. Kek is a brave character.
Figure 2b. Key to Figure 2a.
As another example, in one of the RAIs that Nabila completed for this study, she
wrote about reading the book Bitter Melon. In the comments section, Nabila wrote, “I
really liked this book! (P.S. You should read it!).” In this case, Nabila even took the
initiative to recommend a book to me. Nabila did not only rely on book

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recommendations, but she also willingly recommended books to others, at least to those
whom she recognized as fellow readers.
Interest. Aside from book recommendations, Nabila was often motivated to read
in order to fulfill her interests, such as reading multicultural books.
Well, [I like reading] books that take place, like the setting is in a different
country and they have a different religion and a different lifestyle, cause you just
kinda see. And that's when you compare your lifestyle with theirs. You just go
“Oh, we never do that” or “Oh yeah, we used to do that in our country but we
don't do that in the US or something.” This one book, Parvana’s Journey, her
sister got married when she was like 15 and then I was like “Oh yeah, in the past
this happened in my country but they don't do this anymore.”
This interest in multicultural literature is likely connected to Nabila’s stance
towards diversity, which was mentioned above. By reading multicultural literature,
Nabila was able to personally affirm her social standing as a minority by reading about
characters who were also in diverse situations and contexts.
Nabila also tended to borrow books that dealt with adolescent issues, particularly
teenage relationships. She often commented that she liked a specific male character in the
book and would talk about him with a dreamy expression in her eyes and then giggle
about her statements. These literacy events show that Nabila was transacting or
interacting with the texts. For example, when reading Matched and its sequel Crossed,
Nabila was very animated in talking about the relationships that the main character,
Cassia, had with the two male characters in the story.
Selena: So if you were Cassia, who would you choose, Kai or Xander?
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Nabila: Xander.
Selena: Why?
Nabila: Because why waste your time finding Kai? Plus like you would've known
Xander like forever so...
Selena: So they have that foundation. Okay, is there anything that you're learning
as you're reading Crossed?
Nabila: No. Well, I'm learning about the society and how they lie to them and they
make them go to this place to farm and stuff and then they just die there.
Selena: How could you make comparisons to what's going on now? Are there
any? Or does it help you think about any issues that we have in society?
Nabila: No, I don't know. I just think about the love triangle
Selena: So that's what you enjoy about it? The love aspect?
Nabila: Yeah.
These kinds of stories made Nabila giddy as she thought about the love stories of
the characters. When discussing a young adult novel in our interviews, she always
brought up the relationship aspect of the book that she was currently reading, and she did
so in an animated manner.
Another interest that influenced Nabila’s reading habits was pop culture.
Specifically, Nabila liked to read magazines that dealt with the latest news in pop culture.
For example, in the RAI, the only genre which Nabila consistently read were pop culture
magazines, such as People or Seventeen. In the RAI, Nabila indicated that she read about
articles that focused on celebrities that she liked or about current events.

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Book characteristics. Nabila also explicitly talked about book characteristics as
something she considered when determining whether or not she wanted to read a certain
book. Specifically, Nabila said that she could tell immediately if she was going to like a
book or not just based on the introduction.
The introduction really matters to it. ‘Cause when you read the introduction, when
you get a book, even after you read the summary, sometimes people just wanna
read the first page and see if it keeps going, if you wanna continue reading.
‘Cause some books when you just read the summary and you wanna read it and
you check it out and when you go home, the first page is so boring you wanna die.
While Nabila’s last statement is hyperbolic, it does illustrate how passionate she
felt about a book’s introduction. In another interview she brought up the idea again and
said, “If the first page doesn't make you wanna turn the page, then why read it?” She later
acquiesced and said that some books did get better but adamantly stated that authors
should focus more on the beginning of books as this would determine whether or not
readers would continue reading. These statements by Nabila showed that she understood
the importance of the “hook.”
In connection to this, Nabila also identified the author’s word choice as another
book characteristic that affected her motivation to read. Nabila shared her thoughts about
the book Of Mice and Men, which she decided to read because her older sisters had
talked to her about this book when she was younger. “
I hate it when books use really big words like Of Mice and Men. When I opened
it, when I read the first page, I was about to like burst out and scream. It was so
boring. I hate it when they use big words. They need to use simple words.”
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For Nabila, the number of complex vocabulary words in a book was indicative of
the interest that she was likely to have in the text generally. If a book had a lot of difficult
words, Nabila was less apt to appreciate it. One explanation might be that these complex
vocabulary words hindered Nabila’s fluency and comprehension of the text. Like most
ELLs, when Nabila encountered unfamiliar and complex vocabulary, she was less able to
make sense of the text and appreciate its content. She needed to expend more cognitive
energy when reading texts with difficult vocabulary. However, this moderate challenge is
beneficial for ELLs as explained by Krashen’s (1988) comprehensible input theory. He
explained second language learners should be given input that is one step beyond their
current stage of linguistic competence. This would help their continuous development
and success in the second language. In other words, students should be provided reading
materials which present a moderate challenge to ELLs.
If Krashen’s theory is considered, Nabila should not have dismissed books simply
because of difficult vocabulary, as this moderate challenge would have allowed her to
continue to develop her English vocabulary. Furthermore, the Common Core state
standards emphasize text complexity. Shanahan, Fisher, and Frey (2012) make the
analogy that complex texts in reading instruction are what weights and resistance are in
an exercise program in that, in both these cases, individuals are building muscle and
stamina.
Overall, Nabila was motivated to read when she had the autonomy to choose what
to read, which were typically books that were recommended by friends or which were on
an interesting topic for her such as multicultural literature, pop culture, or teenage love
stories. In contrast, Nabila was highly unmotivated to read textbooks because she found
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them boring and uninteresting. In addition, Nabila avoided books that had challenging
vocabulary.
Strategic Knowledge
Based on multiple data sources, such as interviews, QRI assessments, reading
logs, and RAIs, Nabila used numerous comprehension strategies when she read academic
texts and leisure texts, although the specific strategies used varied greatly depending on
her purpose for reading.
In an interview, I asked Nabila what made someone a good reader. Nabila defined
a good reader as someone who utilizes and makes good use of comprehension strategies.
Selena: What makes someone a good reader?
Nabila: If you understand what’s going on and you don’t just skip through the
reading. Like some people they have school projects and they just like to read the
summary and that’s it. You wouldn’t know the important details and stuff, and if
you get lost, you go back and review it again.
Selena: Is there anything else that a good reader does, besides the things you
mentioned?
Nabila: Well every reader has their own strategies, not the same so maybe they do
something different but I don’t know what it is ‘cause I just use my own
strategies.
Selena: Can you tell me more about the strategies that you use then?
Nabila: Well if I read it out loud, I don’t understand it so I read it to myself... And
if I have some questions in my head, if I read one part about someone, for
example, someone named Charlotte and then I got to the next chapter and they’re
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talking about something I don’t know then I have to go back and know what
they’re talking about if it’s a book I really like. If it’s a school book, I just skip it.
This interview excerpt demonstrates the foundation of the strategic knowledge
that Nabila understood and used while reading. Based on her comments, Nabila
understood that successful readers utilized comprehension strategies and had many of
them in their repertoire. For instance, Nabila indicated that she monitored her
understanding and used fix-it strategies such as re-reading. However, she admitted that
she did so only when she was interested in what she was reading. This means that even if
Nabila realized that she did not understand a certain text, if it was a text that she was
uninterested in reading (such as a textbook), she would not use fix-it strategies to
improve her comprehension. Taboada and McElvany (2009) argued that engaged reading
involves both strategic reading and reading that is prompted by intrinsic motivation. “The
engaged reader will learn to be selective about the use of different reading strategies, and
these will be a toolbox to draw from in order to comprehend diverse texts” (p. 186).
When reading academic texts, Nabila had a repertoire of strategies to choose from, but
she chose not to use them because she lacked the intrinsic motivation to read those texts.
In contrast, when reading self-selected texts, Nabila used a number of comprehension
strategies, which will be examined in the sections that follow.
Strategic knowledge during academic reading. During the think-aloud portion
of the QRI assessments, Nabila was able to exhibit seventy-eight instances of strategy
use. The high frequency of strategy use was partly due to Nabila’s extensive responses
during the think-aloud portions compared to the curt responses of the other focal students.
In terms of the range of comprehension strategies, Nabila exhibited the use of ten
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comprehension strategies. Paraphrasing was the comprehension strategy she used the
most, followed by making connections and making inferences (cf. Table 5).
The QRI assessments not only provided rich information about Nabila’s reading
strategy use, but it also provided another glimpse of her attitude toward any kind of
academic reading. While Nabila was very enthusiastic about interviews and sharing her
thoughts about reading, she expressed resistance to the comprehension assessments. After
completing the first QRI assessment, Nabila asked, “How many more of these do we
have to do?” When I replied that we would do three more, she said, “I don’t like these. I
like doing the interviews better. Those are fun.”
Despite her negative attitude towards the comprehension assessments, Nabila
performed quite well on the QRI assessments. Results of the QRI word recognition lists
indicated that Nabila should be administered passages at the upper middle school level,
which is at grade level. For both narrative and expository texts, Nabila was able to
initially understand texts at an instructional level. When given an opportunity to look
back at the text, Nabila’s comprehension improved to an independent level for both
genres, indicating that these were texts that Nabila could successfully comprehend
independently.
According to the QRI results, Nabila was able to comprehend texts and answer
structured comprehension questions. Meanwhile, her think-alouds provided evidence of
her understanding as she was reading the passages. In her think-aloud about a passage on
immigration, Nabila provided the following paraphrase about the paragraph she had just
read, “It's talking about how cities were crammed too because it was filled with people
because most people, the place where they came first, that's where they stayed in the
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cities, so like it was really crowded.” As another example, Nabila was able to summarize
a section of a passage about Malcolm X, saying, “It was just talking about how he felt
happy that he learned these words and he continued learning words ‘cause each time he
wrote like a section of the dictionary, he would learn about more people and places and
history.”

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Table 5
Frequency and examples of Nabila’s comprehension strategy use in QRI assessments
Comprehension
Strategy

Number Percentage

Example from Think-Aloud

Paraphrasing

25

32

He's talking about Armenians and how
they were persecuted by people and how
they moved to America because of that
reason.

Making inferences

11

14

I think he was glad that he went to jail so,
not glad but you know what I mean, like
kind of you feel sad at first but later on
you learn something from that mistake so
like he went to jail and then he learned all
these words and then he said that from
then on he started reading more like books
and stuff cause he was so in love with it
and he said that it brought him in a new
world and stuff so I think that he was kind
of happy afterwards so he get to read
books and study more.

Making connections

11

14

It talks about, this is kinda funny but this
happened in m y country too. They
thought that trees had like dollars on it and
stuff…I don't know where people got that
from but it's funny when I came here I was
looking for it it's kinda funny it was so
embarrassing.

Questioning

9

12

I just found out that he went to prison and
I was like “Well how could he go to
prison if he's a famous person?” but I don't
know.

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Table 5 (cont’d)
Summarizing

7

9

He's talking about the push factors and
he's talking about some examples like this
Jewish people and how there was I don't
know who coming, the government was
coming or like killing them or something
in their village and then they have to run
away and come to America so basically
because of war some more reasons like
they come back and come here and in the
beginning he's talking about how when
they came here they weren't that rich so
they were like farmers or something.

Clarifying

7

9

But I think it's talking about when he first
went to a prison that didn't have any
learning facilities or something and then
he went to a different one so that he could
learn I think.

Monitoring

4

5

There's some things I don't know in this
paragraph like what some things mean like
who Bimby is and what emulate means.

Interpreting graphs

2

3

It's the graph of where US immigrants
came from. Nortern and Western Europe
[has the largest percentage of immigrants].

Emotional connections

1

1

(Laughing) That last part is so true.

Predicting

1

1

Maybe after this reading he's gonna talk
more about how these struggles affect his
life.

These examples illustrate that Nabila was able to identify the key points in what
she read and talk about them in her own words. Through the think-aloud portions, Nabila
also showed her use of comprehension strategies such as questioning, clarifying, and

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monitoring, although she did not exhibit the use of these strategies as often as she
paraphrased, made connections, and made inferences.
As an example of Nabila’s use of comprehension strategies such as monitoring
and clarifying, one of the passages that Nabila read was entitled, “Malcolm X.” When I
asked her the concept questions listed on the QRI, which were meant to ascertain how
much background knowledge students had on the topic, and asked her who Malcolm X
was, she said she did not know. The passage was mainly about Malcolm X’s trials and
how he trained himself to become literate while in prison. During the think-aloud portion,
Nabila showed that she understood the text and the events that were discussed. At the end
of the passage, Nabila commented, “But that doesn’t really tell me who he was.” This
statement showed that Nabila was thinking beyond what she was reading. She realized
from the concept questions I asked at the beginning of the assessment that she did not
know any specific information about Malcolm X. At the end of the assessment, she was
curious to learn more about him beyond what the passage provided. Nabila recognized
that there was a hole in her background knowledge prior to reading the passage. Even
though she understood the information that she read through the assessment, the text did
not provide her with a complete understanding about Malcolm X. Nabila acknowledged
that she still had limited knowledge of Malcolm X despite reading a passage about him,
and as evidence of her intrinsic motivation (e.g. curiosity), she continued to ask
questions.
The “Malcolm X” passage also prompted her to monitor her understanding. In the
example below, Nabila was able to articulate aspects of the reading which did not make
complete sense to her.
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There's some things I don't know in this paragraph like what some things mean
like who Bimby is and what emulate means. But I think it's talking about when he
first went to a prison that didn't have any learning facilities or something and then
he went to a different one so that he could learn, I think.
As evidenced by her think-aloud statements, Nabila was able to point out the
sources of her confusion. She was then able to make use of other comprehension
strategies, in this case making inferences and clarifying, to make sense of the aspects of
the text that were causing her confusion.
In another instance, when we were working on a text about immigration, one of
the comprehension questions was, “What is assimilation?” Nabila responded, “I think it
means similarity, but I’m not sure.” She then looked back at the text and found the
section where assimilation was defined and discussed. “Assimilation is the process of
becoming part of another culture,” Nabila read. “So adapting to a different culture, a
different place,” she concluded. This instance showed Nabila’s use of several
comprehension strategies. First, she indicated that she was unsure of the word’s
definition, which showed that she monitored her understanding. Second, she was able to
locate the information in the text, which illustrated that she was able to use fix-it
strategies when she encountered words or information that she did not initially
understand. Finally, her last statement demonstrated that she was able to clarify unknown
vocabulary in texts.
Out of the four focal students, Nabila was the one who expounded the most
during her think-aloud. Below is an example of Nabila’s think-aloud statements after
reading a part of the QRI narrative passage, “Biddy Mason.”
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Three years passed since they stayed at California and Mr. Smith, which I'm
guessing is their owner, I think, wanted to go somewhere else. ‘Cause he wanted
to travel a lot so they were going to Texas and then they were all ready to go. And
then Biddy Mason was like “I have to take advantage of this opportunity so I can
escape.” She was making like an escape plan and she found one. I guess she found
someone who can help her and she sent a word to the Sheriff of Los Angeles, the
person who could help her.
This is a typical example of the amount of detail that Nabila included in a thinkaloud, a stark contrast to the other focal students who rarely elaborated and only provided
short statements. At the beginning of the think-aloud, Nabila made an inference about
one of the characters that had just been introduced in the story. She likely used context
clues to determine that Mr. Smith was the slave owner of Biddy Mason. She then talked
about the events in sequential order and also provided her own inferences about these
events. Based on just a small portion of text, Nabila was able to demonstrate use of
multiple strategies such as paraphrasing and making inferences and provide many details
about what she had just read.
Because my study focused on engagement, I wanted to make sure that students
were allowed to choose the passages that they would be reading for the comprehension
assessments. For the expository passages, Nabila chose to read about immigration
between the late 1900s and early twentieth century. Because of her own personal
experience as a refugee to the U.S., she expressed more interest with these passages than
with the narrative ones. During the second passage on immigration, Nabila started
giggling while reading.
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Selena: Why are you laughing?
Nabila: Because the last part is so true.
Selena: What about it is true?
Nabila: They played American games and dressed in American style clothes.
Yeah, it's talking about how parents [are] older than [their] kids. Their brain can,
like, adjust to the new language but, like, children learned it quicker in school and
then they taught their parents. My mom still doesn't know how to speak [English].
It’s been like 5 or 6 years. I don't know why she just quit. I’m like, “Mom, you
need to learn English.”
Nabila not only made a connection between what she was reading and her
personal life, but she also made an emotional connection. Nabila related to the text so
much that it made her laugh because she was thinking about the similarities between the
immigrant parents in the passage and her own mother’s experiences. Although this text
was written in a more academic voice, Nabila was able to easily understand it and make
connections because the topic was familiar to her. This is in line with Goldenberg and
Coleman’s (2010) recommendation that ELLs be given texts on familiar topics in order to
boost their reading comprehension.
However, the use of these immigration passages also illustrated how Nabila
sometimes over-relied on her background knowledge rather than thinking about the
information that the text explicitly provided. One of the comprehension questions in the
second passage about immigration was, “What was one way in which the immigrants
found jobs?” The text explicitly mentioned that the immigrants during that time were able
to find jobs through friends, relatives, labor contractors or employment agencies. Nabila
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provided a different response to this question.
“Well, they couldn't just find jobs really fast because they didn't know English or
anything so they got help from their, I don't know what to call it, their helper
people? When you come here you're assigned like a case-worker or something,
right?”
Her answer to the question indicated that she was using her own experiences of
coming to the U.S. to understand the passage, but in this particular instance, the question
called for an explicit answer from the text. Rather than providing a response to the
question based on what she had read, Nabila instead relied on her own experiences to
answer the question.
Strategic knowledge during pleasure reading. While the information from the
QRI assessments provided data on the comprehension strategies that Nabila used for
more formal, textbook type reading, Nabila was also able to illustrate the strategies that
she used in texts she read for her own interest. The primary comprehension strategy that
she used when reading for pleasure was making connections. In the interview excerpt
below, without much prodding, Nabila provided an example of how she made
connections between the text that she was currently reading and a book that she had read
in the past.
Selena: So what have you learned recently from reading something?
Nabila: Last year I read (Lois Lowry’s) The Giver and then now when I read
(Ally Condie’s) Matched, sometimes when I read books if they are alike, like, the
same stories cause I never knew that. I just found that some people, some authors,
may think alike in their minds. But they wouldn’t know that, so they write the
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books. So The Giver and Matched, they are really similar. I thought it [Matched]
was the second book of The Giver.
Selena: Tell me what the similarities are that you noticed.
Nabila: Well, they lived in the same kind of atmosphere. The same kind of place
where the government rules. They get tablets and they have their own curfew for
the whole city and stuff like that. So people really don’t have their own rights.
The government tells them what to do and they can take whatever they want away
from them and basically they don’t have control over themselves.
In this instance, Nabila was able to make a connection between a book she was
reading for pleasure, Matched, and a book she had been required to read for school in
seventh grade, The Giver. Unlike most of the texts that she was assigned to read in
school, The Giver seemed to be a book that Nabila had been highly engaged in reading.
This exchange also indicated a good understanding on Nabila’s part of the different
aspects of the books’ settings. While the characters in each book are different, Nabila
recognized the similar characteristics of the dystopian societies depicted in the two
novels. She was clearly able to see connections between these two texts, which is an
indicator of a good comprehender (Duke & Pearson, 2002; Duke et al., 2011).
Aside from making connections between texts, Nabila was also able to make
connections between what she read and what occurred in the world around her. In the
excerpt below, as she described why she liked to read multicultural books, Nabila
demonstrated an example of a text-to-world connection that she made.
Well, in Shiva’s Fire, [it] took place in India and then there was like camel
fighting or something. Well, that never happens in America, obviously. There was
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also a really, really bad storm and a lot of people died, but then in America they
like warn you or something. But in India and stuff, they don't have warnings or
anything. The storm just comes. You should know or like hide or something
‘cause then if you don't you just die.
Nabila contrasted the setting of the book, India, to what she knew about how the
United States prepares for disasters. She was able to draw comparisons between the
events in the fictional book and what would happen in real life. These and other
examples illustrated that Nabila was an active reader, constantly making connections
between what she was currently reading and her own experiences, other texts, and her
knowledge of the world.
Without being prompted, Nabila also evaluated texts that she read for pleasure.
For example, in her reading log, Nabila provided a reaction to The Hunger Games. “This
book was my favorite book I’ve ever read in my whole entire life. Definite page-turner,
love it! The characters are interesting. I think Peeta and Katniss will fall in love for real
even though they were faking it before.” Nabila evaluated the author’s writing style and
character development. She supplied a rationale for why this was her favorite book. In
addition, she predicted what would happen in the next book in the trilogy. More
importantly, her enthusiasm about this book was apparent.
Nabila was also able to evaluate books according to different factors. Among the
aspects she evaluated were text features, writing style, and characters’ actions and
personalities. This can be seen in some of the statements that she wrote in her reading log
about different books she read during March’s reading month:
1. “I think that Ha and her family were sooo lucky to survive the ship and come to

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America. Ha is an amazing character.” (Inside Out and Back Again).
2. “I think that Anne is a fun, outgoing, kind, matured girl, and I felt bad for their

family and hoped that they should of not been caught. I also feel bad for the
millions of Jews that were killed for nothing.” (Diary of Anne Frank).
3. “This book was funny, as well as true because mostly this is what you feel like

when you first come from a different country. Kek is a brave character.” (Home of
the Brave).
Aside from being evaluative, Nabila’s comments on these books also illustrated
the strong emotional connections that Nabila made with the characters she read about.
Nabila commented on the protagonists’ personalities and made inferences about their
character. These were examples of moments when Nabila was transacting with the texts
she was reading (Rosenblatt, 1994). As Rosenblatt (1969) explained, when transacting
with the text, the reader is paying attention to the “images, feelings, attitudes,
associations that the words evoke in him [or her]” (p. 34). Based on the examples
provided above, it is apparent that Nabila consistently did this, at least with texts that she
read for pleasure.
Nabila was also able to provide evaluations about a character’s actions. When she
read the book Bitter Melon, Nabila gave the following reaction in the RAI, “Frances
needs to stand on her own feet because her mother always tells her what to do.” Nabila’s
statement implied that she disapproved of the character’s lack of ability to take more
control of her life. Evaluating characters’ actions and personalities was something that
Nabila frequently did while reading. As another example, when we were discussing Miss
Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, while Nabila enjoyed the scary plot and
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pictures, she “didn’t like that he was dating the same girl as his grandfather ‘cause that
was just weird.”
These examples demonstrate that when reading academic types of texts, Nabila
resorted to using strategies such as paraphrasing and summarizing although in some cases
she was able to utilize higher-order comprehension strategies such as clarifying and
monitoring. Meanwhile, when reading texts of her own choosing, Nabila used a wider
range of strategies and utilized higher-order strategies such as evaluating and making
connections between texts.
Constructing Meaning from Texts
Because of her low motivation to read academic texts, especially in her contentarea classes, in order to obtain information about what she learned through academic
reading Nabila had to be prodded in interviews. Despite interview probes, Nabila mostly
did not discuss what she learned from reading in her content-area classes, nor so when it
came to her reading logs and RAIs. When I asked her what she learned from reading, she
tended to provide information about books she was reading for pleasure, such as the
example provided earlier in the chapter about Matched and The Giver, and how she did
not know that two different authors could write stories that were so similar. Nabila rarely
provided information on what she learned through reading in her content-area classes.
Towards the end of the school year, however, she did elaborate on ideas she had been
learning in her English class.
In the last month of the school year, the eighth-grade English and social studies
teachers designed a cross-disciplinary unit wherein the students had to research a specific
topic that happened either in the Gilded Age or the Progressive Era. Nabila chose the
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invention of the teddy bear as the topic she would focus on for her paper. When I asked
her about the project, Nabila initially replied that she thought the project was fun despite
the hard work. She had learned some new things such as the teddy bear being named after
former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Nabila’s elaborated:
These Jewish people in their little shop because it was, you know, how President
Roosevelt went on this trip and he decided not to kill the bear then it went in the
news and then they saw it and they were like “hmmm maybe we should make a
toy out of that” and they made a toy and it got public.
Nabila was able to summarize the key ideas from the events that influenced how
the teddy bear got its name. However, Nabila was not able to provide more details in our
interview aside from that. Nevertheless, Nabila was able to reflect on her work and
identify areas of improvement for her project.
Now that I think about it, when they talked about it, something about the
Progressive Era like child labor. I should have added child labor to the list that I
did, but I didn't. I just said when working conditions are bad, but I didn't add child
labor. I should have. Cause we watched videos on social studies about child labor.
Yeah, that was in Progressive Era.
As demonstrated, Nabila was a reflective learner who was aware of what she
could have done to make her work better. In addition, she realized that because this was a
cross-disciplinary project, she should have provided a stronger connection to the
historical aspect of the paper. She also showed that she clearly understood some of the
key ideas that were discussed in her social studies class. Even though she initially was not

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able to include these thoughts in her paper, Nabila was able to reflect on her work and
think of improvements that could be made to her project.
In another interview, Nabila discussed her experience in preparing a project for
her English class. Students were assigned a seemingly straightforward word, and they had
to consult different resources and write about the different meanings and connotations of
that word. Nabila was assigned to write about the word “peace.” Nabila explained how
she extended her understanding of the word.
We have to do news articles and stuff, not the things we usually read. I don’t read
articles or the dictionary for fun. Most people do that, I don’t know. But when you
read for fun, it’s like one book, but then that [project] we have to look through a
lot of stuff like I mentioned. So it wasn’t that much fun.
Nabila’s utilized several references such as the dictionary, the Qu’ran, poetry, and
novels. She then included in her paper what she learned about the word peace as she read
the Qu’ran.
The religious text showed me the interpretations of the word peace in the Islamic
religion. The verse that I chose for the word “peace” comes from the Surah alBaqara, in chapter 2, verse 224. It came from the Islamic religion and I chose it
because I wanted to see how it was interpreted differently than the other sources
that I had picked earlier. The Surah stated: (3) And not make Allah’s (name) an
excuse in your oaths against your doing good and acting piously, and not making
Peace among mankind. And Allah is All-hearer, All-knower (i.e. do not swear
much and if you have sworn against doing something good then give an expiation
for the oath and do good) (“Al-Baqara, Chapter 2, verse 224”).
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In this source, I found out that Peace has a different meaning in the
Islamic religion. The meaning states that you shouldn’t use God’s name as
an excuse for doing bad deeds. People should be good to fellow humans
and not swear. They should make peace with everyone, since God hears
and knows everything. If someone makes an oath and breaks it, then
he/she should start doing good deeds. The religious text showed me the
interpretation of peace from a religious point of view.
Nabila demonstrated the ability to provide explicit statements about peace in the
Qu’ran, but then she was also able to also provide her own interpretation. Nabila could
have chosen not to include information from a religious text for this project, but because
her religion is an important part of her discourse, she purposely did so.
In the paper that Nabila submitted to her teacher, she indicated that aside from
learning multiple meanings of the word peace, she also gained additional information
related to her development as a writer.
This project was a fun way to know what a word means and to also learn about
yourself as a learner. I think that after everything I have done to get to this point,
this project actually helped me understand the word peace in my own way.
Overall, I think that I learned that other peoples’ mind work differently towards
the definitions and meanings of the word itself. Also, I learned many different
writing techniques than I had already known before. These include learning extra
transitional words. In conclusion, this project was a very good way for me to learn
about myself as a writer and how I have improved over the last few years. Also, I
learned about my word and its different meanings.
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While she found reading multiple sources tedious, Nabila said that at the end it
was a good experience and helped her to understand the multiple definitions of peace. In
an interview, she elaborated, “I already knew what peace meant, but I didn’t know that it
has many synonyms for it. I thought it just means quiet but it [also] means not war and
stuff like that.”
Therefore, while Nabila did the required readings in order to fulfill her academic
obligations, she did not typically enjoy reading when it was required for class. Despite
the fact that Nabila would read only to satisfy academic requirements, it was apparent
that she was still able to learn from this type of reading. However, she often provided
only the main ideas when asked about the academic texts which she read, compared to
the very detailed information she tended to share from texts which she read for pleasure.
Nabila’s case showed that motivation played a role in her willingness to acquire
information from academic reading. As indicated in the QRI assessments, Nabila was
able to comprehend academic texts. However, she did not value academic reading as she
found it boring. While she was always eager to discuss what she understood and
appreciated from texts she decided to read for pleasure, she did not express the same level
of enthusiasm for sharing what she learned through academic reading.
Social Interactions
When I interviewed Nabila in the sixth grade for my practicum study, I
discovered that Nabila was very motivated to read for pleasure for social reasons. She
frequently engaged in book discussions with another friend who was also an ELL, and
she also participated in social interactions around books with family members. She also

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seemed to value her teachers’ opinions about books as she relied on teacher
recommendations to find books to read.
As an eighth grader, Nabila’s purpose for participating in social interactions
around reading shifted. Out of all the focal students, Nabila was the one who engaged in
the most social interactions around reading both with her peers and adults in her
classroom. However, as demonstrated through several examples below, Nabila was very
deliberate about the social interactions she engaged in depending on the situation and her
purpose for participating in these interactions. Primarily, she held book discussions with
her Muslim friend, Aina, but she only asked for support for reading from interactions
with adults.
Nabila’s participation in social interactions were results of her own volition. In
Mrs. Blake’s class, there were a few opportunities for social interactions, but these
interactions were centered on academic vocabulary words and not on specific texts that
students were reading. Instead, Nabila was the one who sought to participate in
interactions with others around texts.
Engaging in book discussions. Nabila and Aina regularly engaged in
conversations around reading. As mentioned earlier, they recommend books to one
another, and they also discussed these books. In an interview, I asked Nabila about the
importance of having someone to discuss a book with.
Nabila: I just feel really excited. Like your heart is like ‘Oh my gosh, I need to tell
her about this.’ Plus it makes each other read more but it’s just like really fun.
Selena: You said it makes you read more. Why does it make you read more?

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Nabila: Well, we have someone to talk to about it so it just make you read more
books by yourself then, like, [I can] tell the other person about it.
Having someone to discuss books with prompted Nabila to read more since she
was eager to talk about what they liked or did not like about a particular book. She also
said that having discussions allowed her to learn more about the topic of the book. In
addition, Nabila mentioned that she and Aina also talked about the books that they liked
which had been turned into movies, such as The Hunger Games and Twilight.
Nabila indicated that she was able to discuss her feelings and ideas about the
books she was reading through social interactions with Aina. However, when asked if
there was a disadvantage in engaging in social interactions, Nabila said that Aina
sometimes revealed the ending of books to her before she herself had a chance to read
them. Through social media sites such as Facebook, Nabila had also provided some of
these spoilers about books she was reading. But Nabila explained why she posted the
spoiler about what she was reading. “That’s the problem. That’s what happens. Your
heart is like, you have to tell this to someone and she [Aina] wasn’t there so I could call
her so I just wrote it [on Facebook].” This example shows that Nabila was so immersed
and attached to what she read that she needed to express this to others. In this instance,
Facebook allowed her the platform to interact with others about books.
It must also be noted that Nabila’s opportunities to engage in social interactions
were limited because of her outsider status. When she was younger, Nabila interacted
with more peers about what she was reading. However, as a middle schooler, Nabila
interacted mostly with other Muslim students. Thus, she could not initiate conversations
around reading as often as she had before because she did no longer had many friends.
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Students with whom she used to engage in conversations around books ignored her now
that they were in the eighth grade, and Nabila’s social circle was limited to the Muslim
girls in the ESL class.
Social interactions for support. Nabila only liked to engage in book discussions
with her Muslim friends around books that she read for pleasure. For academic reading,
Nabila preferred to interact with either her teachers or the pre-service teachers who had
field placements in her ESL classroom. When Nabila did not understand something she
read in her textbook, she reread the text, asked the teacher, or asked the tutors during
sixth period and homework help. FMS provided after-school homework help for students
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. There was a supervising teacher who took
care of things such as students’ signing in and handing out late bus passes. In addition,
there were tutors who were typically the pre-service teachers from the local university.
Nabila and her friends consistently stayed after school to receive additional support,
preferring to do their homework at school where they could ask for help if needed.
Nabila shared that she had had varying experiences working with the college
students who came to Mrs. Blake’s class. She said, “Some of them help me understand
the words and some paragraphs [that] don't make sense, so they try to explain it in an
easier way and draw pictures. That really helps me a lot.” Nabila’s social interactions in
these instances provided her with the necessary support to help scaffold her
understanding of the textbooks that she was often assigned to read for her different
classes.
On the other hand, she noted that some of the college students did not exert much
effort in helping the ELLs with their homework or academic activities. She said that some
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of the students just seemed to be there to fulfill the field requirements of their course, but
they were not interested in actually helping the students. Nevertheless, Nabila preferred
to ask for help from the pre-service students rather than ask her friends for help.
The primary reason Nabila cited in not asking for support from her peers was that
she did not want to seem inferior to her peers.
Nabila: I don't like it when a student helps me understand.
Selena: Why not?
Nabila: ‘Cause then I feel dumb because it's not a teacher who's helping me
understand. It's a student and I should know the same as the student.
While social motivation seemed to be a primary source of Nabila’s motivation for
reading for pleasure, she did not see the advantages of using her social network for
providing support with her academic reading. Nabila regarded her friends as peers she
could have book discussions with, but she viewed those who were older as the ones she
should go to when she needed academic support. Nabila did not want to put herself in
social situations where she was the less knowledgeable student.
Aside from the homework help from the pre-service teachers, Nabila also took
advantage of opportunities to ask her content-area teachers for clarification and additional
information. There were several instances where Nabila would leave homework help
because her math teacher had announced earlier in the day that he would be available for
office hours after school. Nabila would go to his classroom to ask for clarification since
math was a subject in which she particularly struggled.
Despite these efforts that Nabila was exerting towards her academics and afterschool interactions with teachers, she was disappointed that she was not getting
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recognition from her content-area teachers. Nabila talked about how she and her friend
Aina were often overlooked for awards such as the student of the month. She was even
surprised that teachers still often nominated students who misbehave in class. When I
explained to her that perhaps this was a way for the teachers to try to motivate their peers
who were not academically engaged, Nabila argued, “What about us? We need some
motivation too.” She elaborated, “You know some bad kids, teachers act really nice, like
‘It’s okay. Come here. Sit down’ and [they] give them more attention. But us, if we’re
good, they don’t even care. They didn’t even nominate me.” Even though Mrs. Blake
nominated her for “Student of the Month,” Nabila wanted to be recognized by one of her
content-area teachers. She said she just wanted moral support from her content area
teachers. “But they’re not willing to give it to us because they think that we know
everything, which unfortunately we don’t.” Nabila’s statement indicated that she and her
ELL friends were overlooked in the classroom because they were not acting up, and they
seemed to be doing well in class. But what their content-area teachers might not have
known was the amount of effort that Nabila and her friends exerted in order to complete
the class requirements. Nabila and her friends were the students who consistently stayed
after school to complete their projects or ask for support during homework help, and they
wanted recognition from teachers besides Mrs. Blake.
Absence of family interactions around books. What was perhaps the most
striking change in terms of Nabila’s social interactions compared to two years ago was
the absence of interactions around books with her family members. When she was in
elementary school, Nabila credited her older sisters with much of her motivation to read,
because they shared with her what they themselves were reading (Protacio, 2010). She
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also said that she and her brother would stage skits for their family based on texts that she
and her brother had both read.
In contrast, once she was in middle school, Nabila did not participate in any
discussions about reading with her family members. Out of all her family members,
Nabila was the only one who was still an avid reader:
Selena: Can you think of anything else that affects your motivation to read
something?
Nabila: What affects it really is the people around you, if they read or not. In my
family, no one reads.
Selena: I thought you said your sister reads?
Nabila: Yeah, my sister reads, but she quit now. I don’t know why. She likes to
watch movies and hang out now.... Well the only person in my family that
actually reads and kind of motivates me, we share the same thoughts, like Aina
and me, my little brother, he used to do that. But now he’s playing lacrosse, so
he’s like outside 24/7.
Nabila pointed out that she was unsure why her sister, who used to be an avid
reader, suddenly had no time for reading. In addition, Nabila seemed to have a
downgraded view of her sisters’ reading habits. When she was in the sixth grade, Nabila
described her sisters’ read-alouds to her as “magical” (Protacio, 2010). Nabila recalled
that when she could not yet read in English, her sisters would tell her about the stories
they had been reading, and this positive social interaction seemed to have influenced her
reading motivation when she was younger. She wanted to be able to read in English since
her sisters were avid readers.
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As an eighth-grader, however, Nabila seemed to be critical of her sisters’ reading
choices. For instance, Nabila mentioned that when she and her sisters visited the mobile
library, they tended to choose books based on the cover, which Nabila said was not how
books should be chosen. As previously mentioned, Nabila had negative thoughts on Of
Mice and Men. She had initially decided to read it because it was a book her sisters told
her about when she was younger. She was excited to read it because her sisters were able
to make the story seem interesting for Nabila. When Nabila had the chance to read it
herself, she thought the book’s introduction was boring and decided to stop reading the
book. She did not understand what her sisters had seen in the book.
While Nabila seemed to have a good relationship with her sisters, one of the
tensions that had arisen in the past two years concerned her sisters’ decision to not follow
certain aspects of their Muslim religion. In our last interview, Nabila mentioned that her
three older sisters had all decided not to wear their hijab when they entered high school.
Their mother told them to wear it, but her sisters chose not to. Nabila said, “[They
stopped wearing the hijab] in high school ‘cause that's when most people look at
themselves and want to look better or something. I guess it's their own choice if they
don't wanna wear it.” Nabila also said that her sisters were questioning her decision to
continue to wear her hijab throughout high school.
Well, my sister's like “Are you sure you wanna wear it? ‘Cause like maybe if you
go to high school then you'll change your mind and it'll be too late and maybe if
you want to you can start now and wear a little bit?” And I was like “No, because
once you wear something you get used to it. Then if you take it off, it kinda feels
weird plus like people would talk about you like ‘Oh, why'd she wear it if she's
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gonna take it off?’”
Thus, Nabila was also being pressured at home to conform to more American
ways. Her sisters were encouraging her to not adhere as much to Muslim expectations
and customs. However, Nabila and her friends were very traditionally devout Muslim
females. Sarroub (2005) described the experiences of adolescent Yemeni-American girls
in a U.S. public school who struggled to negotiate between the expectations of them as
Muslim women and their own aspirations and goals as individuals:
At school, where the intersection of multiple cultures and literacies is most
evident, Yemeni American girls learned to adapt various texts to different
situations. The most direct way they did this was by organizing some behaviors
and speech events into three categories that stem from the Qur’an and religious
teachings. The three categories were haram, meaning forbidden; halal, meaning
lawful; and mahkru, meaning not written as forbidden in the Qu’ran but
condemned by the Prophet Muhammad. All things haram are written in the
Qu’ran. Drinking alcohol, for example, is haram. Things halal are good deeds,
which include learning and being learned. Things makhru include wearing
makeup before marriage or listening to music. The makhru category is
controversial and is therefore the marked category. (Sarroub, 2005, p. 64)
By using the categories that Sarroub provided, it became clearer that Nabila was
striving to do things that were halal and avoid those that were haram. Her older sisters
did not seem to be as concerned as much as Nabila was whether their actions were halal.
Even though Nabila maintained a close relationship with her sisters, these differing views
pertaining to religion might have played a role in her negative stance towards her sisters’
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reading habits.
Nabila engaged in numerous social interactions around reading, and each of these
interactions involved different groups of people. Nabila relied on her friends as an outlet
for pleasure reading, but she did not see them as a resource for support for academic
reading. Rather, she relied on teachers and pre-service teachers for academic support.
Nabila also did not engage in any interactions around reading with her family members,
which is a reversal from two years ago when her sisters were her reading role models.
Nabila as a Semi-Engaged Reader
Based on the data presented, Nabila served as an interesting case for reading
engagement with her being an engaged reader of texts she read for pleasure and being a
disengaged reader of academic texts, which provides evidence to the idea that reading
engagement is situational. In addition, Nabila’s identity as a young female Muslim also
impacted some areas of her reading engagement.
Applying the expectancy-value framework, Nabila had high levels of perceived
competence for both academic and pleasure reading. She knew she was a good reader,
and she understood that good readers used comprehension strategies, which she was able
to do with ease. It was with the value aspect that there was an apparent disconnect
between academic reading and pleasure reading. Based on the data presented in this
chapter, Nabila was an engaged reader when she was able to read a book that was
interesting for her, which had also likely been recommended by a peer. She valued the
social interactions in which she was able to participate when reading for pleasure. She
also valued the connections that she was able to make with those texts. However, there
was another side to Nabila as a reader. She was unmotivated when she was obligated to
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read academic texts for class. She did not have the motivation to read textbooks, and she
did not seem to find value in this kind of reading. Although Nabila was certainly a
capable reader of academic texts, she did not find satisfaction in doing so. There were
some instances wherein she provided an inkling of interest when reading academic texts,
especially when she was able to seek her own sources for projects, and when she was
able to learn some new information. For the most part, though, Nabila was not engaged
when reading academic texts. However, she completed the reading out of a sense of
compliance, especially given her parents’ expectations that she would achieve high
grades.
Nabila’s varying stances between pleasure reading and academic reading
highlight the idea that engaged reading is in a constant state of flux, with motivation
being the reading engagement component which dictates the level of engagement a
student has with the text. In Nabila’s case, regardless of whether or not she was reading
academic or leisure texts, she was able to use comprehension strategies. However, her
motivation to read certain texts influenced the amount of knowledge she gained or
connections she made across texts. It also affected who she chose to interact with around
these texts. Rather than seeing her peers as a source for support, Nabila chose to avoid
her peers when discussing academic texts to lessen the risk of being perceived as inferior.
Instead, she participated in social interactions with adults around these readings, some of
whom also had little interest in the academic texts.
Nabila’s identity as a young female Muslim also impacted her reading
engagement, primarily her motivation and social interactions. In wanting to read
multicultural books, she desired to read about protagonists who, like her, were living their
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lives in diverse contexts and settings. Most importantly, the conflicting outlooks that
Nabila and her sisters had about their Muslim faith caused a rift in her perception of them
as her reading role models. Instead, Nabila chose to engage primarily in social
interactions around reading with her social circle of fellow Muslim girls since she was
being excluded from other groups of peers.
Nabila’s case shows that reading engagement is situational. There are contexts in
which Nabila was an engaged reader, and those were when she was able to choose what
she could read. When there was no reader autonomy, such as instances in school when
she was required to read the textbooks, Nabila complied but in a disengaged manner. This
case prompts the question of “How can teachers transfer the engagement Nabila exhibited
with leisure texts to academic reading in the classroom?” In addition, Nabila’s case
illustrates that when considering the socio-cultural background of ELLs, students’
religious backgrounds must also be included as this might impact aspects of their reading
engagement.

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CHAPTER 5
“Reading is Just a Waste of Time”:
Investigating the Disengagement of a Seventh-Grade ELL
Struggling readers in middle school are likely disengaged readers who not only
have low levels of reading achievement, but they also have low levels of reading
motivation (Guthrie & Davis, 2003). According to Guthrie and Wigfield (1997), students’
levels of reading motivation are related to the amount of reading they tend to do. In this
sense, struggling readers are less likely to actually read. This is problematic since the
more they are disengaged in reading, the more difficult it becomes for these struggling
readers to improve their reading skills (Allington, 1977; Cunningham, 2005). What
struggling readers need in order to become better readers is actual time spent reading
(Allington & Gabriel, 2012). However, with low motivation, this is unlikely to happen.
Studies on disengaged readers, such as Hall (2005), have found that struggling
readers’ decisions to actually read are influenced by many factors, such as their
perceptions of themselves as readers or the perceived difficulty of a task. When students
encounter a reading task that they deem difficult, they will likely not do it. In this chapter,
I describe the reading disengagement of Farshad, a 13-year-old boy from Afghanistan
whose perceptions of himself as a reader are an inaccurate portrayal of his actual reading
abilities. Farshad was a seventh-grader who struggled with comprehension, had low
levels of reading motivation, and did not consider himself a reader. In a nutshell, Farshad
did not enjoy academic reading nor did he like to read books for pleasure. Throughout
this chapter, I examine the reasons for Farshad’s overall low reading engagement levels.
In particular, I highlight two factors: one is Farshad’s lack of strategic knowledge as a
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plausible explanation for his comprehension difficulties, and hence, decreased reading
engagement. The other is Farshad’s identity as a reader; specifically, Farshad was
concerned about others’ perceptions of him as an ELL. Because of this concern, Farshad
utilized strategies which made him seem more competent in English than his actual
abilities. His experiences mirror that of other English learners who have devised ways in
which they seem to be more proficient in English as a form of self-preservation (Monzo
& Rueda, 2009).
Getting to Know Farshad
When Farshad was six months old, his family left Afghanistan and moved to
Russia, which is where they lived for six years. As a young child, Farshad was not able to
attend pre-school or kindergarten in Russia because he was his mother’s constant
companion as she ventured in the unfamiliar streets of Russia. He did have formal
schooling experiences as he attended first and second grade in Russia, and thus he
learned to speak and read Russian.
When Farshad was seven years old, he immigrated to the U.S. with his mother,
brother, sister, and paternal grandmother while his father remained in Russia. Adjusting
to the U.S. was initially difficult for Farshad because he missed his extended family in
Russia. He has remained connected to his family members in Russia. In fact, in the six
years that he has been in the U.S., Farshad has been able to visit Russia three times.
During the data collection period, Farshad told me that we would need to finish all the
interviews and assessments early because he was leaving school in mid-May to
accompany his grandmother on a trip to visit relatives in Iran and Russia.

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Farshad did not know how to speak English when he arrived in the U.S. Yet, he
recalled learning how to speak and read English easily in his third-grade ESL class.
Despite saying that he had easily learned how to read in English, Farshad did not see
himself as a reader. While he was in elementary school, Farshad would sometimes read
when he “had nothing else to do” but now that he was in middle school, he never read.
Adjusting to Middle School Life
I got to Mrs. Blake’s classroom at 12:30 p.m., and no one was in the room yet.
Shortly after I arrived, Mrs. Blake came in with Farshad. She explained that
Farshad was serving an in-school suspension today and tomorrow because he got
into a fistfight with another student. (Field notes, February, 2012)
I was surprised when Mrs. Blake shared that Farshad was suspended for fighting.
At first glance, he did not seem like the type of student who would engage in fistfights
primarily because he was shorter and more slender compared to other seventh-grade
boys. He also did not seem to have a temper. This event piqued my interest about
Farshad.
Overall, Farshad came across as a carefree student who was not very stressed
about school. Farshad was confident and nonchalant about his academic performance in
middle school. He revealed that academics, including homework, were easier in middle
school. Farshad’s perception that his elementary school experience was more difficult
likely stemmed from the fact that during this time, Farshad was still learning the English
language. As a result, it was harder for him to understand not only the content they were
studying but also the tasks that were being assigned. Farshad was now fluent in English,

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and thus, it was easier for him to understand what was being taught in his middle school
classes.
Despite Farshad’s fluent English speaking skills, he was exclusively in Mrs.
Blake’s ESL class even though he has been in the U.S. for six years. Farshad insisted he
should not have been in ESL, and he proudly informed me that in the eighth-grade he
would be in a mainstream English classroom. Indeed, compared to the other students who
were in the ESL class, Farshad’s English speaking abilities were superior. The other
seventh-grade students in Mrs. Blake’s fifth-period had been in the U.S. for less than two
years. Some of them had been in the country for less than a year and were still learning
conversational English. Mrs. Blake explained that Farshad was still in the ESL class
because he needed additional support in academic writing skills.
Beyond the academic scope of the ESL classroom, Farshad was embarrassed by
some of the activities they completed in the ESL class. Below is a field note excerpt from
a classroom observation, which occurred right before Easter.
When I got to Mrs. Blake’s classroom today, I found out that she had a special
activity planned wherein the students would be painting spring eggs. During fifthperiod, Sabeen, Amira, and Farshad all helped in getting everything ready such as
arranging the tables around the classroom, putting newspapers on the table, and
distributing the dyes to each table. When the eighth-graders arrived for sixthperiod, the boys joined Farshad at one table and Aina, Nabila, and Sanaa joined
the girls at another table. I sat with the boys. As everyone was starting to color the
eggs, Farshad got up and closed the classroom door. Emir saw me looking at

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Farshad as he was closing the door, and without me asking, Emir told me, “He
doesn’t want other students to see us doing this. It’s a bit babyish.”
Some of the students, such as Sabeen and Amira, who were fairly new to the U.S.,
were very excited to color spring eggs since they had never experienced it before.
However, Farshad thought these activities were embarrassing. He did not like being part
of the “special” classroom that did such “babyish” activities. After he closed the door
though, Farshad and his male classmates seemed more carefree and actually enjoyed the
activity. By having closed the classroom door, Farshad’s concern about other students
seeing him doing such childish activities dissipated, and he was able to fully participate
in this special classroom activity.
I also observed Farshad behaving uneasily about his ELL status during a fire drill.
Mrs. Blake’s seventh-grade ESL class was very small, with only five students while the
other classes had approximately 20 to 25 students. Thus, the small class size
automatically differentiated Mrs. Blake’s class from the mainstream classes as each class
lined up outside the building. During the entire fire drill, Farshad had an uneasy
expression on his face, and he had his arms crossed. Two girls from another class asked
Farshad what class he was in. Farshad just shrugged, did not answer their question, and
stared straight ahead to avoid further questions.
When I asked him about these instances, Farshad admitted that he felt
embarrassed that he was in ESL class. Even though his friends do not say anything about
it, Farshad felt that being in ESL class made him different than his friends. He said
quietly, “I feel like that I’m not like them. Like I’m not in the good English class.” In our
following interview, I delved a little bit deeper into the issue.
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Selena: So I wanted to talk a little bit more about what we discussed last time that
you felt uncomfortable about being in ESL. Can you tell me a little bit more about
that?
Farshad: Yeah, ‘cause, like my friends, when they see me, they’re like “What’s
that special class you go to?” And I’m like, “Uh.”
Selena: Do you tell them?
Farshad: I just ignore them and change the subject.
Farshad does not want his friends to think of him as being different from them
although some of his friends know that he is in ESL. In Farshad’s view, inclusion in the
ESL classroom denoted a low level of English abilities. Farshad tried to hide his status as
an ELL from as many of his peers as possible because he did not want other students to
think he had inferior English skills. He avoided letting his peers know about his inclusion
in the ESL class, and he was looking forward to the eighth-grade since he would be in the
regular English class.
In this section, I provided information on Farshad’s experiences at the middle
school level. I also discussed Farshad’s uneasiness about his identity as an ESL student.
He did not want to be marked as being different from his peers, and thus he assumed airs
that provided a facade of being a carefree, nonchalant student. In what follows, I provide
an in-depth discussion of each of the reading engagement components in order to create a
clear picture of Farshad’s disengagement.
Motivation
In general, Farshad was unmotivated to read although he was unable to articulate
the reasons behind his low motivation. He simply stated, “I don’t really like reading
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books and stuff.” In another interview, he said, “I haven’t read any books in months. I
don’t have enough time.” His low level of motivation was very apparent when Mrs.
Blake introduced Reading Month.
At the start of fifth period, Mrs. Blake explained to students that it was now
Reading Month, and students would be required to read thirty minutes every day.
An additional requirement in Mrs. Blake’s class is that students would keep a
reading log where they would document what they read, how long they read, and
their reactions to what they read. Mrs. Blake then mentioned to the students that
she knows that Pi day was coming up. She shared with the students that last year
Sanaa won the Pi contest because she had memorized over 400 digits of Pi. Mrs.
Blake said that while she was very proud that Sanaa won the contest, she couldn’t
help thinking that perhaps Sanaa’s time would have been better spent reading.
Mrs. Blake said she didn’t see the value of memorizing all those digits. Farshad
piped in and said, “Well, what’s the value of reading? I haven’t even ever finished
a book.” Mrs. Blake replied, “There’s a lot of value in reading. Do you have five
hours so I can tell you the value of reading?” I spoke up and asked, “Well, have
you ever laughed because of a book, cried because of a book.” Farshad shook his
head. Mrs. Blake continued, “There’s a lot of things that you get to experience
through reading that otherwise you would not have been able to experience.”
(Field notes, March, 2012).
It was after this classroom event that I decided to make Farshad one of my focal
students. I wanted to find out why Farshad was so unmotivated, and why he was so

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willing to be vocal about it. However, when I tried to probe on the reasons why he was
unmotivated to read, he was unable to elaborate and identify specific reasons.
Selena: You said before that you don’t really like to read. Can you tell me a little
bit more why? I really want to understand why.
Farshad: I just don’t like reading. Sometimes I feel like it, in school not at home.
Selena: So on Fridays during Drop Everything and Read, you’re open to reading?
Farshad: Yeah.
Selena: But if you were going to choose between playing sports and reading, you
would never choose reading?
Farshad: No.
Selena: So why not?
Farshad: I don’t know. I just don’t want to.
As indicated in the preceding example, Farshad did not see the value of reading.
Farshad’s motivation is indicative of the importance of the expectancy-value framework.
Based on my observations and interviews, Farshad has a high sense of self-efficacy and a
low sense of value, and this influenced his motivation to read in English. Farshad
admitted to reading books for two reasons. First, he had some interest in particular
genres. Second, he read to comply and obtain good grades and avoid punishment.
Expectancy and value. As mentioned earlier, Farshad said he found middle
school to be easier than elementary school in terms of academics. Farshad claimed, “I can
understand everything.” When I asked him why he thought middle school was easier, he
replied, “Cause the homework, the subjects and stuff are a lot easier.” Below is an
interview excerpt which illustrates Farshad’s high level of self-efficacy.
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Selena: What are some things that you typically have a hard time understanding
or comprehending? Like what kind of reading or what kind of books?
Farshad: I don’t have a hard time with books.
Selena: Even the textbooks?
Farshad: Yeah.
Selena: What do you find easy with reading? What are some books that are easy
for you to read?
Farshad: I can read any book.
Based on this interview data, Farshad believed that he was a good reader and he
could read any book. Farshad’s high self-efficacy with reading, however, is not indicative
of his actual reading abilities. Farshad’s comprehension level, as indicated by QRI
assessments, was below grade level. Also, Farshad’s confidence may be a defense
mechanism to counter the fact that he is not in the “good” English class. He puts forth a
very confident stance towards his academic performance to hide his insecurities about his
reading skills.
There were moments where Farshad showed a more vulnerable side. These
typically happened when I would be asking him things that he learned, and when I probed
so that he would elaborate, he would sigh and say, “I don’t know” in a tone that indicated
some frustration. I would argue that Farshad’s high self-efficacy might be part of a facade
that he created to make up for his ELL status. Since he knew he was not in the “good”
English class, he wanted to project an image that he was a strong reader who really did
not belong in the ESL class. He presented himself as a good reader to compensate for the

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fact that he was in the ESL classroom with other students who were just beginning to
learn English.
In contrast to his high levels of self-efficacy, Farshad placed a low level on the
value of reading, which was apparent throughout the duration of the study. Even up to the
final interview, Farshad expressed that he did not appreciate the value of reading. He
shared that when he was younger, he did read a little bit.
Selena: So why were you motivated back then?
Farshad: ‘Cause I was, like, a kid.
Selena: So now that you’re older, why isn’t reading appealing?
Farshad: ‘Cause I think reading is just a waste of time, and like, I don’t know. I
mean...[long pause]
Selena: Why do you think reading is a waste of time?
Farshad: ‘Cause you can do other stuff instead of reading.
It is troubling that Farshad thought that reading is “a waste of time.” He did not
see how reading or any of the components of reading, such as vocabulary, would be
beneficial for him. One aspect to consider is that no one in Farshad’s family is a reader.
He has never had any reading role models at home, and reading does not play any role in
his home environment. The absence of reading at home is a plausible factor in why
Farshad does not assign much value to reading.
Farshad did not assign much value to school endeavors which would help him
attain better literacy skills either. In an earlier chapter, I described Mrs. Blake’s
vocabulary initiative. In my classroom observations, Mrs. Blake really emphasized the
vocabulary words being used in the school-wide initiative, and she provided multiple
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opportunities for her ELLs to learn the words and practice using them. When I asked
Farshad if he liked learning the words, he replied, “I don’t really care.” I told him that he
would sound really smart if he used the vocabulary words that they were learning such as
infer, imply, or subsequent. Upon hearing this, Farshad shared, “Yesterday, I did my math
homework and I wrote, like, a sentence. Like, I didn’t say combination, I said
components, and the teacher was like, ‘Oh.’” He also recalled that he used other words
from the vocabulary initiative such as analyzed in his science class. From this example,
Farshad was able to learn words through the vocabulary initiative, yet he still did not
value the experience.
Farshad also did not think that school was important to his career goal. He said he
wanted to move to California to become an actor. When he shared that with me, I told
him he would need to read a lot as an actor. I pointed out he would need to read and
memorize scripts and comprehend the script well enough so he would know how to say
his lines. Prior to this, Farshad could not see the connection between being actor and
reading.
Genres. While Farshad was not an avid reader, there were moments he shared the
little reading he did. For example, he liked to read magazines. He also mentioned that
once in a while he would read a newspaper in order to prepare for his turn to report on
current events in his social studies class. In addition, when I asked Farshad after the QRI
assessments if he preferred to read the narrative texts or the informational texts, he said
he enjoyed reading the latter. But, as I point out later on, while he may have enjoyed
reading the informational passages a bit more, this did not translate into higher
comprehension levels for these passages.
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Towards the end of the semester, students in Mrs. Blake’s class were required to
complete an oral book report which they presented to the class. Farshad did his book
report on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and when I asked him why he chose
this book, he said, “Because I kinda like adventure books.” Indeed, in his completed
RAIs, adventure and suspense books were the only genre where he ever listed any actual
reading materials. In one RAI, he listed that he read Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson: The
Lightning Thief and in another RAI, he indicated that he read three to four pages of The
Shadow Project during Drop Everything and Read (DEAR) time. In his reading log for
Reading Month, Farshad also listed adventure books. These few examples were the only
ones in which Farshad even showed the slightest interest in any reading materials.
Compliance. Towards the latter part of the semester, Farshad exhibited somewhat
higher levels of motivation to read (or skim) sections of his textbooks that were assigned
in his classes. He said, “I mean, I do my work all the time ‘cause if I don’t, I would get an
E or something.” Farshad shared that earlier in the school year, he received Es in his
math, ESL, and science classes because he did not turn in projects and homework
assignments. He explained, “Sometimes I didn’t feel like doing my homework, and then I
told the teacher I did my homework and I forgot it.” But his teachers would not allow him
to submit his homework the next day; consequently, he received Es on these assignments.
When I asked him to reflect on these experiences, Farshad replied, “I wasn’t focusing and
I never did the work. But when I looked at my grades, I figured that I should start
changing that and it changed. Now I have As and Bs.”
The potential for punishment also made a difference in Farshad’s outlook. When I
asked him about the turn-around in his attitude about his academics, Farshad said, “I
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knew it was bad for me, and I knew my mom would be mad at me and I knew I couldn’t
go outside and play.” Farshad’s social life was very important for him, and so knowing
that he would be unable to go out with his friends was a motivator for him to do better in
his academics.
Farshad was also noticeably more active in the ESL class towards the latter part of
the semester. During earlier observations, Farshad never raised his hand to volunteer to
share his responses for the vocabulary activities. He often wore a bored expression on his
face. Later in the semester, there was a complete turn-around in his classroom demeanor.
He was eager to respond to questions, even looking disappointed when Mrs. Blake called
on others and not him.
One interesting finding related to Farshad’s motivation was that despite his low
reading motivation, he ranked fourth in his ESL class in the number of minutes read
during Reading Month. The reading log was a component of the ESL grade in the month
of March, and so Farshad completed it because he knew it would affect his ESL grade.
Based on his reading log, Farshad read a total of 1,465 minutes from March 7 through
March 29. He reported that he read an average of 70 minutes a day. Throughout this time,
Farshad said he read three books: Breaking Stalin’s Nose, The Tale of Desperaux, and
Percy Jackson: The Lightening Thief. In the reading log, Farshad was able to provide a
short summary of what he read each day. Mrs. Blake admitted she was a little hesitant
about Farshad’s reading log. She questioned whether or not he actually read for the
period that he reported. For instance, Farshad’s summaries for the days he supposedly
read The Tale of Despereaux do not reflect the actual plot of this book. However, since

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the reading logs were verified and signed by Farshad’s mother, Mrs. Blake gave him
credit for the time that he indicated on the reading logs.
In sum, Farshad exhibited little motivation to read in English. Even though he had
a high level of self-efficacy as a reader, Farshad did not enjoy reading, nor did he find it
pleasurable. However, because of external factors such as grades and the possibility of
punishment, Farshad became more serious about his studies towards the latter part of the
school year, showing that with his focus and determination, Farshad could become a
more successful student.
Strategic Knowledge
Results of the QRI word list assessment indicated that Farshad’s instructional
level of decoding was at the sixth-grade level. For the two expository texts, Farshad
chose passages entitled “Building Pyramids” and “Lifeline of the Nile.” When Farshad
initially answered the comprehension passages, he scored at the frustration level in terms
of his comprehension, which indicated these texts were too difficult for him. When he
had the opportunity to look back at the text, his comprehension for both expository
passages improved to an instructional level. When reading QRI expository passages in
particular, Farshad had the most difficulty with answering implicit questions.
Farshad did relatively better in comprehending narrative passages. He chose to
read the passages “Abraham Lincoln” and “Pele.” Farshad’s comprehension of the
Abraham Lincoln passage was at instructional level, even without look backs. In the
passage about Pele, Farshad initially scored at a frustration level, but when he was able to
look back at the text, his comprehension improved to an instructional level. In the end,
Farshad did score at instructional level for all four passages, which indicated these
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passages are ones he could read with some support. It must be emphasized though that he
was reading sixth-grade passages at an instructional level and this was in the second
semester of Farshad’s seventh grade year. Thus, his comprehension of texts was below
grade level expectations according to the results of the QRI assessment. These results are
in contrast to Farshad’s self-assessment that reading in English is easy for him.
It is not just Farshad’s comprehension levels that are troubling. He also exhibited
a lack of strategic knowledge. Out of the four QRI think-alouds, I was able to document
22 instances of strategy use. Out of the 22 instances, 21 of them consisted of Farshad
paraphrasing what he was reading. The only other strategy he used was one instance of
clarifying. In addition, there were 14 instances wherein Farshad was not even able to
paraphrase what he was reading. In these cases, he would glance quickly at the passage
and read verbatim what was in the text. It seemed he had the most difficulty out of all the
focal students in completing a think-aloud even though I modeled how to conduct a
think-aloud the same way for all focal students.
Farshad was the focal student who was not able to exhibit a range in
comprehension strategy use. We know from previous research that good comprehenders
actively use comprehension strategies when reading (Dole et al., 1991; Duke et al., 2011;
Duke & Pearson, 2002; Palinscar & Brown, 1984; Pearson & Dole, 1987; Shanahan et
al., 2010). Almasi and Fullerton (2012) suggest that strategic knowledge is one of the
main characteristics that differentiate expert readers from novice readers. Expert readers
“know a variety of strategies that they can use to enhance comprehension and memory of
texts” while novice readers “are not aware of alternate strategies for enhancing
comprehension and memory of text” (Almasi & Fullerton, 2012, p. 10). From this
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characterization, Farshad was a novice reader since he was not able to use a range of
comprehension strategies. In fact, he was able to use only paraphrasing, and there were
even moments that he tried to paraphrase, but then would not know what to say and so he
would glance at the passage and read directly from the text.
Farshad also did not exhibit and integrate much background knowledge with the
QRI assessments. I spent a great deal of time working with Sabeen and Amira during
fifth-period in the early part of the semester. We typically worked on their social studies
homework. Because of this, I knew the topics were discussed in Farshad’s social studies
class, among them Ancient Egypt. Thus, I expected Farshad would possess background
knowledge for the passage, “Building Pyramids.” However, when I asked the concept
questions from the QRI, which are meant to ascertain the familiarity the reader has with
topic of the passage, Farshad was unable to provide answers. For instance, when asked,
“What is a pharaoh?” Farshad’s replied, “I forgot all this.” The next question was, “What
is a mummy?” Farshad answered, “They mummy the body.” These examples showed that
despite Ancient Egypt civilization being discussed in Farshad’s social studies class, he
was unable to recall and retain information from this unit, which implied that he did not
really learn or internalize the information.
Farshad did relatively better on the passage about Abraham Lincoln. Even without
look-backs, this passage was at his instructional level. A plausible explanation for his
performance on this passage was that his social studies class had just finished discussing
the Civil War. This raises the issue of passage dependency. McKenna and Stahl (2009)
explained that one of the struggles in assessing reading comprehension is that the
assessor never truly knows how much the student comprehended from reading the text
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and how much of their correct responses were because of prior knowledge. McKenna and
Stahl, therefore, recommended that when developing comprehension assessments, it is
important to include questions that would really assess students’ understanding of the
specific passage. Farshad’s correct responses, thus, could have been due to his prior
knowledge based on what was discussed in his social studies class. For example, some of
the questions in the “Abraham Lincoln” comprehension assessment such as “What did
the Emancipation Proclamation do?” and “What did the southern states threaten to do if
Abraham Lincoln was elected president?” were ones which Farshad could have answered
even without reading the passage since these ideas were recently discussed in his social
studies class.
One comprehension strategy that Farshad would benefit greatly from doing is
clarifying unknown vocabulary. Vocabulary seemed to be a weak area for Farshad. When
Farshad was serving his in-school suspension, Mrs. Blake had Farshad use the time to
review the vocabulary words on StudyStack.com, which she used as a form of virtual
flash cards. According to Mrs. Blake, Farshad needed to retake the ESL vocabulary
assessment because of his extremely low score of 44 out of 100.
There were several instances in the QRI assessments when Farshad’s lack of
vocabulary knowledge was apparent. For instance, when asked the question “Why were
pharaohs buried with their possessions?” Farshad said he did not know what possessions
meant. In the same passage, Farshad was unable to answer the question about asking why
pharaohs’ bodies should be preserved because he did not know what preserved meant.
These examples bring further evidence to vocabulary’s key role to comprehension of
ELLs (Calderon, 2007). In the instances of the QRI assessments, Farshad was able to ask
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for clarification from me about these vocabulary words, but that will not be the case
during formal assessments when he is unable to ask for assistance with unfamiliar
vocabulary. Thus, with certain comprehension assessments for ELLs, how do we know
that it is comprehension that is being assessed and not vocabulary knowledge? This data
also raises the importance of placing value on the vocabulary initiative since it could help
Farshad acquire more essential vocabulary words.
Farshad was also unable to express his strategic knowledge in interviews. When I
asked him what some of the strategies were that he used when reading, he initially said,
“What is it [strategies]?” When I explained what strategies were and provided examples,
I then asked him again what he did when he was reading.
Selena: Are any of these strategies things that you think you do or use when
you’re reading?
Farshad: I don’t know.
Selena: Like, tell me what goes on in your head when you’re reading. What are
some things that you do?
Farshad: I read it and read it again.
Selena: So what do you do when you don’t understand something you’re reading?
Farshad: Read it again and see if the answer or something is there.
Farshad over-relied on rereading as a strategy. While rereading is certainly
beneficial, he needed to have a repertoire of comprehension strategies to use in order to
increase his ability to make meaning from texts. Farshad’s entries in the reading log
provide further evidence of the lack of comprehension strategy use. There was a section
in the reading log wherein students needed to provide a summary of what they read.
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Upon closer inspection of what Farshad wrote in his reading log, it seemed he would just
copy a sentence or two from the book he was reading instead of writing a summary of
what he read. For instance, in his summary for Breaking Stalin’s Nose, Farshad wrote,
“When it was dinner time, the kitchen was crowded because forty-eight hard-working
Soviet citizens share the kitchen and a single small toilet in the communal apartment that
the Russians called komunalka” (see Figure 3). For this reading log entry, Farshad
indicated he read this book for 70 minutes, but his summary does not include the amount
of detail that is expected from having read a text for an extended period. It seemed he just
copied this sentence from the book.
On the other hand, there were examples of comprehension strategy use in
Farshad’s reading log (see Figure 4). For instance, on March 23, Farshad read Percy
Jackson: The Lightening Thief and he wrote the following summary: “It was Percy’s first
time going to camp half-blood school. Percy had displexia [dysplasia], he could read
words different.” In his personal reaction, Farshad asked the following question, “How
can you have displexia [dysplasia]?” This was one of the very few instances wherein
Farshad used the comprehension strategy of questioning. Farshad would also make
predictions in his reading log entries.

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Figure 3a. Farshad’s reading log entry.
Summary:
When it was dinner time, the kitchen was crowded because forty-eight hard working,
honest Soviet citizens share the kitchen and a single small toilet in the communal
apartment that the Russians called Komulalka.
Personal reaction:
I think that is nasty to share a small toilet with lots of Soviets…Ewww.
Figure 3b. Key to Figure 3a.
In one example, Farshad mentioned in his summary that Percy and his mom were
living in someone else’s house. He predicted, “I think Percy and his mom are going to
move because they don’t feel comfortable.” Lastly, there were moments when Farshad
evaluated character’s actions. In a reaction to a section in the Percy Jackson book,
Farshad wrote, “I think Percy should stop thinking that his dad hates him.” Thus, there
were instances wherein Farshad exhibited some use of comprehension strategies, but
overall, the reading log entries do not show Farshad using higher-order comprehension
strategies such as making inferences or synthesizing information.

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Figure 4a. Farshad’s reading entry which shows an example of evaluation.
Summary:
Percy’s dad left him because he was chosen to be god of the Olympus and he didn’t have
any choice.
Personal reaction:
I think Percy should stop thinking that his dad hates him.
Figure 4b. Key to Figure 4a.
Overall, data presented in this section confirm McKenna and Stahl’s (2009) claim
that struggling readers often do not know how to utilize different strategies to achieve
different purposes for reading. They are more focused on decoding the text rather than
comprehending it. Thus, this section illustrates that Farshad would theoretically benefit
from more explicit comprehension strategy instruction. As he proceeds to eighth-grade
and high school, he will encounter much more complex texts. If he is unable to use a
wide array of comprehension strategies, it is likely that he will fall further behind his
peers academically.

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Constructing Meaning from Texts
In this section I discuss how Farshad constructed meaning, or not, while reading
texts. As mentioned earlier, results of the QRI assessments indicated that Farshad’s
comprehension of texts was at the sixth-grade level.
In all of our interviews, I would consistently ask Farshad what he learned from
reading in his classes. In one interview, Farshad replied, “Like I didn’t learn anything.
Just, for science, we watched a movie and we took notes. For social studies, on Thursday,
we just took care of the packet. Religion and stuff and the holidays.” The packets that
Farshad mentioned ranged from 8 to 12 pages of worksheets for each unit that students
would complete. Tasks for each packet ranged from identifying vocabulary found in the
textbooks, describing events from each unit, and responding to questions based on the
textbook. There were some pages where comparative charts were filled out to show the
similarities and differences between ideas or events. It was unclear whether time was
spent in the social studies class to answer these packets, but for the entire semester that I
was observing, a substantial amount of time was spent during the seventh-grade ESL
class in supporting the ESL students in completing these packets.
When I probed to determine some facts he might have gained from his social
studies packet, he said that he “learned” some of the holidays associated with some of the
religions that were discussed, but he was unable to provide any details. The only holiday
that he was able to cite specifically was Yom Kippur, but he did not remember any
details. Thus, what does learning mean for Farshad when he said he “learned” things but
was unable to share what he learned? This might be related to the packets and that the
perception for him is that as long as he completes them, he has “learned” that material
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since the packets seem to be given value in the class because of the amount of time and
attention given to them in his classes.
These packets are not only used in his social studies classroom. He also has to
complete similar ones for his science class. Below is an interview excerpt where Farshad
discussed some ideas from his science packet.
Selena: What’s your topic now in science?
Farshad: Plants, and we’re doing a packet right now. About plants like if there
was no plants what [long pause]...
Selena: What would happen? Like to the environment? Well, what would happen?
Farshad: No one would be alive.
Selena: Why not?
Farshad: ‘Cause we live with plants, right? If there was no plants or anything like
grass or trees, we wouldn’t be alive. There would be no oxygen, right? Is that
right?
Even though Farshad was able to explain the idea correctly, he was uncertain
about his understanding. He needed to have affirmation from someone else to let him
know that what he was saying was right. On a general level, Farshad was very confident.
As expressed earlier, Farshad would consistently say that middle school was “easy” and
learning English was “easy.” But when pushed for details and information about what he
was learning in his content-area classes, more often than not, Farshad would say that he
did not learn anything or that he did not remember.
Farshad was fairly more articulate about what he learned in his ESL class. One of
the units that Mrs. Blake taught was on invisible disabilities. Throughout this unit, Mrs.
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Blake used different ways to engage the students. Aside from the typical reading and
writing activities associated with the English class, Mrs. Blake also invited guest
speakers. The class also watched the movie, Door to Door, wherein the main character
had cerebral palsy.
As I arrived in the classroom one day in March, the students excitedly told me a
guest speaker was coming during sixth- period. The guest speaker, Steve Johnson
(pseudonym) was a former professor who was blind. During the presentation, Mr.
Johnson shared with the students how he became blind and the adjustments that he had to
make. The class had come up with questions ahead of time, and the students interacted
with Mr. Johnson and asked him some of the questions they had come up with. In this
unit, the students also read about dwarfism. In connection to this, Mrs. Blake invited a
community member who had dwarfism to also be a guest speaker in the ESL class to
speak about her experiences.
These experiences resonated with Farshad. In his paper for this unit, Farshad said
that he wrote about the guest speakers. When I asked what he wrote about them, Farshad
replied, “Like how you should act in front of them, like in a good way. Make them feel
like they can do anything like us. That you should use the right way to talk to them.”
Prior to this unit, Farshad did not have much knowledge on individuals with disabilities,
but afterwards, he gained a better appreciation of their experiences. However, Farshad
did not really talk about what he learned from the readings. The students read about
numerous disabilities, yet Farshad only mentioned the guest speakers when relating what
he learned and did not discuss what he had learned from reading about these disabilities.

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Another project in the ESL class was giving an oral book report. Farshad was the
first student to give his book report because he had his done in advance. Farshad’s book
report was on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. He was very prepared and
confident in giving his oral book report. Farshad utilized a template that Mrs. Blake had
provided and filled it all out so that he was reading the script he had prepared (see Figure
7).

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Figure 5a. Farshad’s completed book report template.

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Questions:
1. Have you ever read a book about a magical place?
2. Have you ever read the book and then watched the movie?
3. Do you like adventure and mystery books?
The title of my book is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The author of this book is C.S. Lewis
Now I will tell you about the plot…
Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor’s mysterious old
house. When she went to tell her brothers and sisters about the secret of the wardrobe, no
one believed her. Later, Edmund and Peter and Susan discovered the magic. Then they
met Aslan the Lion and believed Lucy. All o them went to Narnia and their adventure
began. In Narnia they met animals and knights.
My favorite character is Peter because he becomes a knight and fights the enemies. I
think he is very brave.
I recommend you read this book because it’s an adventure book and it takes you to [an]
unknown place.
Figure 5b. Key to Figure 5a.
One part of the book report entailed him reading a favorite section of the book,
and Farshad read it fluently, even using different character voices. This is an example of
a task that Farshad completed successfully because it was well scaffolded. The template
gave Farshad a structure to follow and some ideas on how he could engage the audience.
The discussion above provided descriptions of instructional activities in Farshad’s
content-area classes and illustrated that Farshad was able to demonstrate minimal ability
to construct meaning from texts. I illustrated how the use of worksheet packets did not
facilitate Farshad’s understanding of concepts in his math and science classes. In

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addition, I showed that even though Farshad exhibited more interest in his ESL class, his
products do not show multiple opportunities in which he constructed meaning from texts.
In the succeeding section, I describe Farshad’s participation in social interactions in the
ESL classroom environment.
Social Interactions
During my early classroom observations, I did not notice Farshad as much
compared to the other ESL students. I mostly interacted with the female Muslim students,
who were eager for attention. In contrast, many of the Muslim boys did not readily make
connections with the volunteers in the ESL classroom. Often when I would go to the left
side of the room where they were clustered and asked if any of them needed help, they
would immediately say they did not. Farshad, in particular, was fairly quiet and never
requested help on any of his assignments during the early part of the semester. It was
only when he became a focal student that he wanted to work individually with me on his
assignments during the fifth-period.
In terms of social interactions in the ESL classroom, there was a definite divide
between the male and female Muslim students. This is understandable given that in the
Muslim religion, there is little gender interaction even in school settings (Sarroub, 2005;
Zine 2001). During sixth-period when all the ESL students were present, the males sat
next to one another and the female students sat close to each other. When the students
had to work in pairs for the vocabulary activities, females worked with females and males
worked with males. It must be highlighted that out of the fourteen ELLs in Mrs. Blake’s
class, eleven of them were Muslim, although they came from different countries. The
ESL students were the ones who upheld the Muslim practice of social distance between
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males and females (Zine, 2001) in their classroom. Even though Farshad was not as
overtly concerned with religious issues compared to the other Muslim students, the ESL
classroom context ensured that Farshad enacted some of the religious customs with
regard to social interactions.
In terms of his social circle, Farshad had many friends, composed of both boys
and girls, and a mix of former ELLs and American students. During the weekends, he and
his friends hung out, and they typically went to the mall and shopped or watched a movie.
Farshad stated he and his friends never talked about books.
In the classroom, the primary reason that Farshad engaged in social interactions
around texts was to get answers for his reading assignments. During the start of the
semester, I observed that Farshad rarely participated in social interactions. While the preservice students and I would help the other seventh-grade ELLs, Farshad would refuse
help. He claimed he was already done with his homework. In the example below, I
describe an instance wherein Farshad did not want to participate in any social interaction,
and instead he and his friend found a way to obtain the answers.
Mrs. Blake wanted to work with Adam, an ELL from Sierra Leone, on his
decoding skills. Adam, a seventh-grader, read at approximately a second-grade
level. Adam protested and said he needed to work on his social studies packet. To
appease him, Mrs. Blake asked Sabeen and Amira if they wouldn’t mind sharing
their work later with Adam. They agreed. While Sabeen and Amira were working
on a part of their packet, Farshad was not doing anything. He was just sitting in
his chair, looking around the room. Later that afternoon, Mrs. Blake made a copy
of the packet and gave it to Adam so he could review it for class. Mrs. Jenkins,
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the librarian, informed Mrs. Blake that Adam asked her to make a copy of the
packet and gave it to Farshad. When Mrs. Blake found out, she reprimanded both
Adam and Farshad. (Field notes, February, 2012)
This was one instance wherein Farshad was caught cheating. Instead of
participating in a social interaction with Sabeen and Amira where they could all work
together, along with the pre-service teachers, to complete the packet, Farshad resorted to
cheating. Later in the semester, however, Farshad joined Sabeen and Amira in working
on the social studies packet. Often though, he would sit there and not read the textbook.
He waited for someone else to find the information and then look at the text and write
down the answers. Farshad did not actively participate to complete the tasks or even look
at the textbooks to find the answers. Because Mrs. Blake was typically working with
other students at this time, Farshad was able to get away with this type of behavior.
However, when Mrs. Blake roamed the room, Farshad made himself appear as though he
was actively looking through the textbook for the answers to the questions in the packet.
Farshad admitted he enjoyed working in groups. He explained, “Cause sometimes
they know the answer, and I just write what they say.” He added that another aspect of
working in groups that he enjoyed was the opportunity to “socialize a lot with friends and
see them again and just talk and sometimes not do work.” Farshad said he acted this way
in social interactions in his other classes, particularly science. He did not typically act this
way in the ESL class. However, when the seventh-grade ELLs were allowed to use the
time in the ESL classroom to get support for their content-area classes, Farshad often
wanted the pre-service teachers to locate the answers in the textbooks for him so he could
copy the answer into the packet. During this time, Mrs. Blake was typically preoccupied
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working with Tarek or Nadya on their conversational English skills, so she did not
consistently monitor these social interactions.
During the sixth-period ESL class, Mrs. Blake provided structured opportunities
for the students to engage in social interactions. When they discussed the daily
vocabulary words, students worked with a partner and completed sentence prompts.
Meanwhile, during the invisible disabilities unit, the students had to write a paper, and
participate in a peer review process. The students were placed in groups of three. Farshad
was in a group with Amira, a seventh-grade girl from Iraq and Nischal, an eighth-grade
boy from Nepal. Farshad had noted the positive aspects of the peer review process.
I think it was good ‘cause you read about others, other people’s readings and like
you, kinda saw what they did and, like, fix their mistakes so they know what kind
of mistakes they did. Like, I mean, it was okay. It was something good to see.
Farshad was able to identify mistakes in Amira’s paper, but he was not able to
provide suggestions on how to revise the paper. Meanwhile, Nischal noted on Farshad’s
paper that he needed to use more transitions and include more supporting details.
Despite some of these positive interactions, Farshad’s perception of group work
was still primarily a way for him to avoid working and instead obtain answers from either
his classmates or volunteers in the ESL classroom. Farshad has gotten accustomed to
using group work as a crutch for him to complete his assignments. Although Farshad has
a relatively high level of self-efficacy, his actions in group settings illustrate that he relied
on his peers or tutors to get his work done. For Farshad, social interactions were about
completing the work and not an opportunity to learn from others.

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Farshad: A Disengaged Reader
Based on the data provided in this chapter, Farshad can be classified as a longterm English learner for several reasons (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002; Menken
& Kleyn, 2009). First, Farshad has been in the U.S. for six years, yet he was still placed
exclusively in an ESL class. Second, Farshad had below grade level comprehension
abilities based on both QRI assessments and formative assessments such as classroom
observations. Next, Farshad has similar English-speaking abilities to native English
speakers, but his academic literacy skills in English are sub-par (Menken & Kleyn, 2009).
Finally, Farshad has a false perception of his academic capabilities (Freeman et al.,
2002). As Freeman and Freeman explained, these English learners may be given passing
marks because they simply turned in their work, yet when students take exams or
standardized tests, their scores are low. In Farshad’s case, his high grades may be
attributed to his completion of the worksheet packets that are ubiquitous in his contentarea classes rather than as an indicator of his thorough understanding of the ideas, events,
and topics being covered in these classes.
Given Farshad’s status as a long-term English learner, it is unsurprising that he
had relatively low levels of engagement. Specifically, the discussion on Farshad’s lack of
strategic knowledge provides a plausible explanation why he might not be engaged as a
reader. Duke and Pearson (2002) stated, “Comprehension is a consuming, continuous,
and complex activity, but one that, for good readers, is both satisfying and productive” (p.
206). Given Farshad’s rare use of comprehension strategies and his below-grade level
comprehension abilities, it is likely that he did not experience satisfaction from reading.
Thus, he chooses not to read. As a result, his comprehension skills do not improve. It is a
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vicious cycle. This cycle will continue unless a few areas are immediately addressed: (1)
increasing Farshad’s perception of the value of reading; (2) improving Farshad’s overall
strategic knowledge and increasing his use of comprehension strategies; (3) providing
more interesting and substantive literacy tasks across all content-area classes; and (4)
changing Farshad’s perception of the purpose of social interactions.
Guthrie et al. (2012c) point out that motivation becomes even more crucial to
adolescent development because it is likely to affect students’ cognitive proficiencies.
When motivations are negative (avoidance or disaffection), behaviors become
aversive, leading to a gradual decline in cognitive proficiency. It is evident that
cognitive expertise cannot be attained without sustained behaviors, and the
absence of reading behaviors is a precursor to cognitive decline. (p. 605)
This statement from Guthrie and his colleagues highlight the importance of
increasing Farshad’s motivation, especially at this pivotal point in his schooling career. If
he is unmotivated now, what will prevent him from becoming completely disengaged
with his studies as he progresses through school? More importantly, how much further
behind will he be in terms of his comprehension skills if he continues his habit of not
reading any texts and relying on others to complete his work? Long-term English learners
are also more at risk of dropping out of school (Menken & Kleyn, 2009), and thus, it is
imperative that Farshad’s low comprehension and engagement levels be addressed.
Farshad’s inaccurate view of his reading abilities is problematic. My
interpretation is that Farshad truly believed he was a good reader. He told me that when
he started submitting all his assignments, he was averaging grades of As and Bs.
However, it would be interesting to know what Farshad’s performance was on tasks
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where he needed to work independently and could not ask for support, such as formal
assessments. These would be more indicative of Farshad’s actual reading abilities and
understanding of course content compared to homework where he could have the ESL
classroom volunteers locate or provide the answers.
Farshad’s case supports Monzo and Rueda’s (2009) notion that when English
learners try to pass themselves off as better English speakers and readers, they may
eventually begin to believe the image they are projecting is true. This may be the case
with Farshad. To deal with his embarrassment about still being in ESL class, he has
created an image of himself as a good reader. The data gathered through classroom
observations, QRI assessments, and interviews counter Farshad’s self-assessment.
Instead, the data points to specific instructional needs that will help to improve Farshad’s
reading abilities. For instance, he would likely benefit from more explicit strategy
instruction as this would facilitate increased levels of understanding from texts. As well,
Farshad seemed to engage with the content more fully when alternative texts and social
interactions were included in the form of guest speakers. When Farshad’s comprehension
levels improve, he may perceive more pleasure and satisfaction from reading. Once this
happens, it is plausible he would better appreciate the value of reading and, hopefully,
engage in more reading rather than continuing to think that reading is “just a waste of
time.”

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CHAPTER 6
“I Like Reading for Knowledge”:
The Hidden Reading Engagement of an African ELL
In this chapter, I describe the experiences of the final focal student, Oliver, an
eighth-grade student originally from the Republic of Congo who engaged in reading
activities without his teachers’ knowledge. A disengaged student who was extremely
bored in his classes, Oliver admitted to frequently sleeping in class. In stark contrast, he
avidly read informational texts on physics at home, where he read freely and of his own
volition because he was genuinely interested in the topic. Oliver’s positive reading habits
were not known in the school setting, however, and only his family members and a few
close friends knew about his interest in reading science texts.
Oliver’s case highlights the disconnect between home and school reading
practices of adolescent students. Researchers have noted the disparity between students’
out-of-school and in-school reading habits and attitudes (Hinchman, Alvermann, Boyd,
Brozo, & Vacca, 2003/2004; Kirkland, 2011; Moje, Overby, Tysvaer, & Morris, 2008;
Pitcher et al., 2007; Worthy et al., 1999). Despite reports that recreational reading is on
the decline for adolescents and young adults (National Endowment for the Arts, 2009),
others have found that these individuals do, in fact, engage in out-of-school literacy
practices (Moje et al., 2008; Pitcher et al., 2007). For example, Moje et al. (2008) found
that 92% of the 716 adolescents they surveyed reported reading outside of school at least
four times a week. Texts they read included websites, letters and notes, emails,
magazines, and novels.

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Oliver’s case adds to the evidence of previous studies that have noted the
disconnect between in-school and out-of-school literacy practices. Oliver had two distinct
reading engagement profiles. He was a very disengaged reader at school, where he was
unmotivated to read, utilized few comprehension strategies, and was uninterested in
learning from academic texts. In contrast, Oliver was an extremely engaged reader in the
home context when he was able to pursue texts that focused on science concepts, which
were of great interest to him. When reading these texts, he exhibited the traits of an
engaged reader, with the exception of participating in social interactions. In the remainder
of this chapter, I describe Oliver’s reading engagement in more detail.
Getting to Know Oliver
Oliver attended kindergarten in Congo but soon afterward moved to the United
States with his mother and older brother. He did not remember much about his native
country, but he was still fluent in French, which was the language spoken in his home.
Although Oliver was African, he was sometimes mistaken for African-American because
he had no strong accent and spoke fluent English. He also seemed to disassociate himself
from anything related to his native country.
When Oliver arrived in the United States as a six-year-old, he had not yet learned
how to read. He remembered that during his early years in the United States he spent
much of his free time watching television. Because she wanted him to learn how to read
in English, Oliver’s mother would mute the television and turn on the subtitles. Thus,
Oliver needed to learn how to read if he wanted to be able to make complete sense of
what he was watching.

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When Oliver was younger, he had a negative attitude about reading. He explained,
“I felt it was useless, learning how to read. What would you need reading for?” As a
young student, reading had no appeal for him. Rather than reading, he wanted to do
something else, such as play with blocks. This lack of appeal continued for most of
Oliver’s years in elementary school. When he was in the fifth grade, Oliver said, he
suddenly had the urge to “become smarter” and decided to start reading.
As a single parent, Oliver’s mother worked long hours to support her family,
leaving Oliver and his older brother to fend for themselves alone at home. She
encouraged Oliver to read at home, however. “My mom told me to read all the time.
When she sees me reading, she leaves me alone,” Oliver said. She also provided reading
materials for him. Aware of his interest in science, Oliver’s mother would occasionally
purchase science-related books for him despite the family’s limited income.
When Oliver was at home, he spent much of his free time either sleeping or
watching movies, and he usually spent 2 hours on Fridays reading his science books for
pleasure. When he ran out of reading materials, he walked to the public library, which
was approximately 2 miles from his home. When he became bored from staying at home,
Oliver would walk to a nearby neighborhood to play basketball with friends. Oliver spent
some time during the spring and summer mowing lawns for spending money because his
mother did not give him an allowance.
Adjusting to Middle-School Life
When Oliver first started middle school at FMS, he said, he did not like it because
it felt “too big” for him and he often got lost in the school. Overall, he considered his
middle school experiences more difficult than elementary school because there was much
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more homework given in middle school and stricter attendance policies. He also admitted
that he was lazy in seventh grade. During elementary school, Oliver had stayed home if
he did not want to go to school, but he was unable to skip school at FMS because
attendance was strictly monitored. While Oliver’s mother wanted him to have a good
education, it seemed that she was unable to monitor Oliver and his brother consistently
because of her work schedule.
Oliver attended Mrs. Blake’s ESL class for vocabulary lessons, but he had a
separate English class. During the sixth period, the entire class would spend
approximately 20 minutes at the beginning of class learning vocabulary words, but he
was one of the eighth-grade students who then went to the library. Oliver was
consistently one of the first students in the classroom. He would quietly take a seat and
had very little interactions with his classmates unless they were the ones who initiated the
social contact. During the vocabulary lesson, Oliver would consistently not volunteer to
participate unless Mrs. Blake called on him.
After the vocabulary lesson, the eighth-grade students proceeded to the school
library where students were supposed to work on projects or homework, and there were
typically tutors available to help them. Oliver did not utilize this time to work on projects
or assignments, though; instead, when Oliver entered the library, he typically headed to
the magazine rack, where he would read the latest issue of People magazine, which is
about popular culture, entertainment, and celebrities, or a science magazine. Sometimes I
observed that he was very involved with the text, whereas there were also instances when
he would not read and instead observed other students in the library. Following is an
excerpt of an interview in which we discussed my observation of him in the library:
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Selena: I often see you here in the library, getting up and looking at books. How
do you choose the books that you’re reading?
Oliver: Oh, I don’t really read here. I just sit here with the book and stare at the
book and look [around].
Selena: You just stare at it? You’re not really reading it?
Oliver: Unless it’s, like, really interesting, and I’ll start reading it.
Oliver admitted that although it may have seemed as if he were reading, he often
was just staring at the text in front of him. This behavior was also typical of what Oliver
did in the classroom. In my earliest observations in Mrs. Blake’s classroom, Oliver would
just sit quietly at the back of the classroom. In fact, Oliver was the only one among the
focal students who I observed in another context because I wanted to see if his behavior
was different in another classroom. Thus, I observed him twice in his English class with
Mr. Kilian.
Oliver could be the student often overlooked by teachers in the classroom. He was
not one of the rowdy students, but he admitted that his mind tended to drift in many of his
classes. He was blunt about his disengagement in his classes. Typically, when Oliver
arrived at the classroom he would greet some of his classmates, but then he would sit in
his seat and look at the ceiling or floor. Following is an interview in which he expanded
on his distractions:
Oliver: Oh yeah. I put my head on my desk a lot. I’m just lazy. I don’t even listen
much.
Selena: Why not? What are you thinking about?

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Oliver. Stuff. About like whether or not I should go home [and] read, or should I
read first or actually go on the computer or if my brother’s gonna be on the
computer or how I get him off the computer.
Oliver also said he did not like to participate in classroom discussions. During our
third interview in May, he said, “I really don’t remember the last time I raised my hand.”
Even when he knew the answer, such as in science class, he said he would “just sit there
and let someone else get it.” In Mrs. Blake’s sixth-period class, however, he could be
called on even if he did not raise his hand. “That annoys me a lot,” Oliver said; however,
he shared that he paid more attention in sixth period because he knew there was a
possibility that Mrs. Blake would call on him to answer a question. In his other classes,
his teachers never required him to participate in the discussions.
When I observed Oliver in his English class with Mr. Kilian, numerous students
in the class were extremely noisy and talkative; hence, the teacher’s attention was
focused on the students who were misbehaving. Oliver, who was very quiet, was simply
overlooked in this English class of more than 20 students. There were a few moments in
the school year that Oliver recalled that Mr. Kilian told him to wake up and pay attention.
Most of the time, however, Oliver was not reprimanded because there were other students
who were being disruptive in class, and these students were the ones on whom Mr. Kilian
focused. In contrast, there were only 14 students in the sixth-period class; thus, Mrs.
Blake was able to ensure that all students had a chance to participate in each class. She
ensured that she called on all the students to either read one of the sample sentences or
share the sentences they composed for the daily vocabulary lessons.

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Oliver was more attentive earlier in the school year. He recalled, “I focused, like,
really hard at the beginning of the year. I was, like, hyper or something. I was raising my
hand, doing everything. Like once a day, I would raise my hand.” Oliver talked about
how he was more conscious about participating in all of his classes. The only exception
was Mr. Kilian’s English class, which was his least favorite subject. Oliver found this
subject to be boring because he did not appreciate the assigned texts. Nonetheless, Oliver
indicated that he was more participative in his other classes, which contradicted the
behavior that I had been regularly observing in his ESL and English classes.
I asked Oliver why he did not participate in classroom discussions during the
second semester. He answered, “Don’t you just get bored?” His posing of the question to
me was sincere; he thought this behavior was typical. Although I found it encouraging
that Oliver had the capacity to be more engaged in class discussions and willing to
participate, it was also disheartening that he was unable to sustain his interest in his
middle-school classes.
Freeman and Freeman (2002) identified the following four pedagogical factors
that contributed to the academic success of older English learners:
•

engage students in challenging, theme-based curriculum to develop academic
concepts;

•

draw on students’ background—their experiences, cultures, and languages;

•

organize collaborative activities and scaffold instruction to build students’
academic English proficiency; and

•

create confident students who value school and value themselves as learners
(Freeman & Freeman, 2002, p. 16).
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Based on my classroom observations, Mrs. Blake was able to draw on students’
backgrounds and provide opportunities to build on students’ academic proficiencies by
working specifically on ELLs’ vocabulary knowledge. Meanwhile, based on my two
observations in Mr. Kilian’s class, he engaged his students in challenging curriculum and
looked for ways to engage them. For instance, when working on metaphors, he asked
students to bring lyrics of their favorite songs. Neither teacher was able to meet all four
of Freeman et al.’s criteria for ensuring ELLs’ academic success. For instance, Oliver’s
native language was not utilized or acknowledged in either of these instructional settings.
Also, from Oliver’s perspective, the instructional strategies utilized did not really engage
him with the class content.
Unlike the other focal students, Oliver did not have a set group of friends. Instead,
he said, he had a “wide variety of friends” from different classes, most of whom were his
friends from elementary school. Overall, Oliver did not seem to be bothered about his
status as an ELL, perhaps in part because it was not obvious that he was an ELL. Many
people probably assumed that Oliver was an African-American male who was born and
raised in the United States and did not realize he was actually from another country. In
terms of his English-speaking abilities, Oliver was very fluent, but he tended to mumble.
He was also very quiet, and it was often difficult to hear what he was saying.
Oliver did not acknowledge his ELL status. Unlike the three other focal students,
who explicitly talked about their feelings about being ELLs, Oliver did not mention this
at all. He was acculturated to the U.S. setting because he had been here for approximately
8 years already. Because of the length of time that he had been in the United States and
the fact that he had started his formal schooling experience in U.S. schools, Oliver is also
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a long-term English learner. On the surface, his academic English skills do not match his
oral speaking abilities; however, I would argue that when Oliver is truly engaged with
texts, his ability to comprehend them improves, which will be addressed later in this
chapter.
Oliver did not have any memories of his time in Congo. He admitted, “I really
know nothing about Congo.” The only aspects of his culture that he experienced were the
language, because his family spoke French at home, and their native food. Oliver said
that he really appreciated when his mother would spend time on the weekends cooking
their native cuisine.
There were a few instances in which Oliver acknowledged his immigrant status.
When we talked about social studies, Oliver said, “I don’t really like social studies. I
wasn’t even born in this country, so I don’t really care about the country’s history.” In
this instance, Oliver used his ELL status to explain his indifference to not only social
studies but to the history of the United States. This particular example is interesting
because it seemed that Oliver was disassociating himself from the U.S. context, yet in
earlier interactions, he also distanced himself from his native country. So how does he see
himself in terms of his ethnic identity? This identification is also a part of Oliver that
remains hidden.
In this section, I provided background information on Oliver. In what follows, I
provide in-depth descriptions of Oliver’s reading (dis)engagement. I show that Oliver is a
voracious reader of informational texts, although he keeps this interest hidden from the
school context.

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Motivation
When Oliver could pursue his own reading interests, he was intrinsically
motivated to read. His motivation to read came from his strong interest in science,
specifically any topic related to physics. His interest in reading science texts is related to
his career goal of being either a doctor or a physicist. At the beginning of the study,
Oliver stated, “I’m not quite motivated to read any book except science.” In a later
interview, Oliver shared, “I like reading for knowledge, that’s it.” When Oliver was
asked to read about any other topic, his motivation waned.
Oliver’s interest in informational texts began in the fifth grade. He began reading
for knowledge because he “wanted to become smarter.” Oliver explained, “I just woke up
one day, like, I wanted to become smarter and I just started reading.” As an eighth-grader,
Oliver read science texts at home. These were texts he chose himself and were not
connected to any of the academic texts he read in his science class.
His interest in science motivated him to explore different genres of text. For
instance, Oliver noted that he read an issue of Newsweek magazine because the cover
indicated it contained an article on “New Secrets of the Universe.” When I asked him
about his experience in reading the magazine article, he said, “It was fun to read. I like
reading about the universe and stuff.” Also, his family recently had acquired Internet
access at home. Oliver said that when he was reading something in a book that did not
make sense, he would go online and search for more information about the topic. During
this study, Oliver’s current interest was physics, although he had previously been
interested in chemistry, as the following interview excerpt demonstrates:
Oliver: I used to like chemistry and stuff, but I like stuff that didn’t originate from
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other stuff. So like chemistry, it all came from this theory called the exclusion
theory/exclusive theory. Some guy, I don’t know his name. I didn’t bother
remembering his name, but he [had] been observing electrons or particles moving
a lot and he noticed, like, their patterns of movement and stuff like that and that’s
the origin of chemistry so I didn’t really like that I guess.
Selena: So you didn’t like that chemistry wasn’t the original theory.
Oliver: Yeah, I didn’t like that chemistry was, at the beginning, it like came from
a theory about what? Unlike physics, it doesn’t really come from any theory. It’s
just how stuff works and everything about the world. Like, it can explain
everything. Chemistry can explain the actions of a particle. It can explain how it’s
made and stuff.
Based on this interview excerpt, Oliver was able to clearly articulate why he had a
particular interest in physics. It also illustrated the depth of thinking that Oliver has done
and his extensive knowledge on this topic. Physics was not a fleeting interest for him. He
was truly intrinsically motivated to know more about physics, and this motivation
prompted him to voluntarily read about this topic to increase his knowledge.
In terms of academic reading, Oliver said, “Like when I’m forced to read, I
usually read.” But Oliver admitted that he found academic reading to be particularly
boring. When I asked him about the reading he was required to complete for his contentarea classes, Oliver replied, “Yeah, that’s like my worst part. I’d rather do anything else,
like write, than read.” He admitted that reading in his English class was his least favorite
academic activity. He explained, “It’s boring. You try to read really fast and you just get
bored and you skip a whole bunch of stuff.” Oliver could not tell me the last text they had
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read in his English class because he said he was asleep for half the period during the last
four English classes. He usually sat at the back so that his English teacher, Mr. Kilian,
would not notice. One time, Mr. Kilian did notice that Oliver had nodded off and told
him to wake up.
In fact, when I observed him in Mr. Kilian’s class, Oliver had his head down on
his desk as the teacher was speaking. His seat mate, Molly, looked at him and said loudly,
“Oh my gosh! Are you sleeping?” Oliver then sat up, smiled sheepishly at Molly, but said
nothing. In a later interview, when Oliver revealed that he often slept in his free time at
home, I asked, “If you sleep so much at home, why are you still sleeping in school?” He
replied, “I don’t know. It’s just so boring, it makes me sleepy.”
Oliver also revealed that he did not like to read other types of books, such as
fantasy books: “I don’t really have that much imagination, so I can’t imagine everything
so I just get bored and then start skipping, and it doesn’t turn out so well,” Oliver
explained. He also said he did not read fiction because “why bother knowing when it’s
fake?” Oliver cited the popular “Harry Potter” books by J.K. Rowling as a specific
example:
Reading for information is good, but reading for the fun of it...I mean you’re
reading about a guy, okay, Harry Potter, you’re reading about a guy with a stick
that can do magic. He goes into this castle. I’m like, I’ll rather just watch the
movie.
Although the “Harry Potter” series is very appealing for many students, it is of no
interest to Oliver. He even said, “I don’t get it. It’s boring and it wastes your time.”
Oliver said there were times he tried broadening his reading horizons. “I read one of the
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books over there [pointing to the fiction section of the library] but I read the first page,
and I got bored.” Oliver had very strong preferences for reading, which influenced how
he perceived other genres of texts, such as fantasy and realistic fiction books.
In one interview, I asked, “How do you motivate yourself to read things that you
don’t want to read?” “I don’t,” Oliver replied. In sum, Oliver’s motivation to read was
driven by his purpose for reading. He wanted to read to gain more knowledge about
physics, and this desire fueled his motivation to read informational texts across different
genres. He found texts that did not meet that purpose to be boring or irrelevant, and he
had low to no motivation for these texts.
Strategic Knowledge
Oliver’s strategic knowledge presented an interesting case. On one hand, he was
unable to clearly articulate the strategies he used as a reader. When asked what
comprehension strategies he used, he did not know what comprehension strategies were,
despite admitting that Mr. Kilian had explicitly discussed these in his English class. On
the other hand, Oliver exhibited a wide range of comprehension strategy use during the
think-aloud component of the QRI assessments. Even though Oliver exhibited use of
various strategies in the think-alouds, the results of the comprehension assessments were
concerning. Based on the QRI word lists, Oliver’s instructional levels for decoding were
at the sixth-grade and upper middle-school level. Because I noticed that Oliver almost
reached the frustration level on the sixth-grade word list by missing six out of 20 words, I
decided to administer comprehension passages at the sixth-grade level rather than the
upper middle-school level (see Table 6 for results of QRI comprehension assessments).

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Given Oliver’s interest in science texts, his poor performance with the expository
passages was surprising. Although he was able to provide interesting statements for the
think-aloud portion of the assessments, he was unable to correctly answer the
comprehension questions. As indicated in Table 6, Oliver scored at a frustration level for
both expository texts. He was able to look back for the second expository passage, but I
forgot to complete the look-back portion for the first comprehension assessments, and
thus it is unknown if Oliver would have been able to improve his score for the
“Temperature and Humidity” passage.

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Table 6
Results of Oliver’s Comprehension Assessments
QRI Passage
(Genre)

Without
Look Backs

Level

With Look
Backs

Level

“Temperature and
Humidity”
(Expository)

4/8

Frustration

N/A

N/A

“Clouds and
Precipitation”
(Expository)

4/8

Frustration

5/8

Frustration

“The Early Life of
Lois Lowry”
(Narrative)

6/8

Instructional

6/8

Instructional

“Abraham
Lincoln”
(Narrative)

8/8

Independent

N/A

N/A

Oliver performed surprisingly better on the narrative passages. Oliver scored at an
instructional level for the passage on “The Early Life of Lois Lowry”, and he was able to
answer all questions correctly on the “Abraham Lincoln” passage even without lookbacks. As I mentioned in Chapter 5, the “Abraham Lincoln” passage contained questions
that could be answered even without reading it. Thus, although Oliver may have had a
better understanding of this particular passage, it must be pointed out that his high score
could also be due to his prior knowledge on this topic based on what he had learned about
the Civil War in his social studies class. Also, I noticed that, even when he was given a
chance to look back at the text, Oliver rarely took advantage of the opportunity. For the
look-back portions, when I asked some of the questions again, he replied, “I’m good,”

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which indicated that he was satisfied with the response he had originally given and did
not want to refer back to the text.
For the think-aloud portions, Oliver had 29 instances of strategy use, and he used
nine different comprehension strategies (see Table 7). The most common strategy that he
used was questioning, which he typically used when reading the expository texts that
dealt with topics such as clouds and precipitation, and temperature and humidity. Next,
he used paraphrasing, and these instances were done mostly with the narrative passages.
Oliver showed a great deal of interest in the expository passages. For instance,
when reading about clouds, Oliver asked, “Can you make a cloud?” He said it seemed the
text provided instructions on how a cloud could be formed. I then asked him what needed
to be controlled for him to make a cloud, and he said that the room needed to have high
temperatures because heat was necessary for clouds to form. Oliver was interested in
learning about how to form clouds, an idea he referred back to repeatedly while reading
the “Clouds and Precipitation” passage:
Maybe it’s warmer up there...’cause in winter, the cold air is on the bottom, so the
hot air has to get to the top or something. Like maybe it’s warmer up there. That’s
why the clouds are up there.
This quote provides confirmation of Oliver’s earlier statement that he liked
science because he wanted to know how things worked. It also shows that Oliver was
problem-solving. He used his prior knowledge (that heat rises) to think about how clouds
are formed. This example shows that when Oliver was curious about something, he
would continue to think about it until he found an answer that suited him.

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Table 7
Frequency and Examples of Oliver’s Comprehension Strategy Use
Comprehension Strategy

Number Percentage

Example from Think-Aloud

Questioning

8

28

Why can’t clouds be made of
anything else and just water? Like
carbon, why can’t it be made with
carbon?

Paraphrasing

6

21

They talk about comparing the
amount of water vapor to the largest
amount of moisture the air can hold
at that temperature.

Making connections

4

14

I’m just thinking of “The Giver”
that she wrote ’cause we read that
in seventh grade.

Integrating prior
knowledge

3

10

I thought the warmer the air, the
less water vapor it has, but it’s the
other way around.

Acquiring new knowledge

3

10

Right now, I’m thinking about dew
point. I didn’t know the point where
air or water vapor turn into water,
so I didn’t think there was a name
for that.

Making inferences

2

7

He’s wise, I guess. The way he said,
that thing he said, “A house divided
against itself cannot stand” was
pretty cool.

Clarifying

1

3

I always thought it was colder air
on the bottom and warmer air on
the top. Am I right? Is that right?

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Table 7 (cont’d)
Application

1

3

(Talking about instruction on how
to make a cloud) Like it gives
instructions right here. Put some hot
water until it starts evaporating. Put
some more water, like a little drop,
like really small drops and let it go
into the air. Just keep doing that
until it gets all foggy and stuff.

Summarizing

1

3

Dew point [is] the point where the
air holding 100 percent water vapor
can’t hold it anymore so it becomes,
returns to water. It just falls.

There were also nine instances that I documented during the think-aloud portions
where Oliver provided evidence that he was distracted and not really giving his full
attention to the task at hand. For example, during his think-aloud when reading the
passage about Lois Lowry, Oliver admitted, “I’m just really tired. I can’t really think of
anything right now.” During the same passage, he indicated, “I’m just thinking about
soccer right now. I’m sorry.” During another comprehension assessment, Oliver was
leaning his chair back, and the chair’s two front legs were in the air:
Oliver: And, like, if you lean back, do you get dumber? I heard this in seventh
grade. It’s like, it’s said that if you lean back, some of the stuff that you learned
goes to the back of your brain. If you lean forward, it won’t come back. Do you
get dumb or something?
Selena: They’re just telling you that so you won’t lean back on your chair, I think.
Oliver. So they’re lying? I’m going to tell Mr. Henry that and tell him that, ’cause
he’ve lying to me for, like, the whole year.

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Oliver also was somewhat distracted when reading the passage, “Clouds and
Precipitation.” During the think-aloud for this passage, he exhibited the use of several
good comprehension strategies such as clarifying, integrating prior knowledge, and
making connections. His mind would wander, however; for instance, after reading the
last paragraph in the passage, Oliver provided the following statement:
I just thought if you have one of those machines from those brothers that were
inventing how to fly and [you] were flying, and like it was like almost about to
rain, you can really drink some water from the clouds. Like, just fly through them,
and just start drinking water.
Oliver’s description provides a great visualization of someone riding in one of the
Wright brothers’ earliest airplanes and flying through rainclouds. However, it was really
not connected to what he read about in the passage. These are just a few examples of how
Oliver was distracted during the comprehension assessments, and it gives insight to how
distracted he might be during his classes.
It is noteworthy that, even though Oliver employed a wider range of
comprehension strategies with the expository texts compared to the narrative texts, his
comprehension levels were higher on the latter. A probable explanation is that Oliver was
not as focused on the expository text itself because he was so involved in making
connections and inferences. In fact, he had several distracted moments when reading the
“Clouds and Precipitation” passage such as the instance where he alluded to riding in one
of the Wright brothers’ airplanes.

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When I asked Oliver specifically if he ever had been taught comprehension
strategies, he first asked what comprehension strategies were. When I explained to him
what they were, he said that Mr. Kilian discussed them in his eighth-grade English class:
Selena: Did you understand when to use each strategy and why you should use
each strategy?
Oliver: Yeah.
Selena: So among those strategies, what do you use?
Oliver: I don’t think I use any of them.
Selena: What do you think you should be using?
Oliver: All of them.
Selena: So why aren’t you using them?
Oliver: I don’t really read much.
Based on this excerpt, Oliver has had some exposure to explicit comprehension
strategy instruction. He claimed he knew when and how to use the strategies, but he
chose not to because he “doesn’t really read much.” It is evident from the previous
section that Oliver actually does read a great amount of science texts, however. Perhaps
because the strategies were taught in Oliver’s English class, which he did not enjoy and
was not engaged in, he was not able to make the connection that these strategies could,
and should, be applied to all types of reading. In addition, when I asked Oliver about
comprehension strategies in the succeeding interview, he again asked me what they were;
it seemed he neither understood nor internalized the terminology. He also reiterated that
he did not frequently use comprehension strategies. For instance, he said, “I don’t use

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questioning much ’cause I know what’s about to come in the future. Prediction. I don’t
predict much neither. I was thinking about the last time I predicted but … [long pause].”
In terms of his pleasure reading, Oliver said one of the strategies he used was
rereading, especially when he was unable to understand the information in a science text.
As an example, Oliver said, “The science books I read, it has information that is based on
information in the past so I just go back.” However, when reading non-science texts,
Oliver did not reread even when he experienced comprehension difficulties. He also said
that when reading, he has gotten used to skimming the text because “it’s a lot of words so
you gotta get through them fast.”
Another strategy he admitted to using when reading science texts was clarifying:
“If I don’t understand something I just go up and search it up.” Since acquiring Internet
access at home, he had been exploring websites to find more information about the
science texts, especially when he needed clarification on ideas he encountered in his
science books. When asked about the trustworthiness of the websites he explored, Oliver
explained,
Usually when I read [a science book], it tells a brief description about it (the
topic) so I just reread it like four times. If I don't understand it and I go to the
website and if it tells me a completely different thing about it, it's not reliable.
Based on the preceding statement, Oliver was able to use his prior knowledge on
a topic to evaluate the trustworthiness of a website. The fact that Oliver even evaluated
Internet resources is important to note because researchers have found that, compared to
less successful learners, more successful learners were more likely to evaluate the

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credibility of an Internet source (Goldman, Braasch, Wiley, Graesser, & Brodowinska,
2012).
The information presented in this section provides both positive and negative
aspects of Oliver’s strategic knowledge. It is troubling that Oliver, an eighth-grade
student, obtained scores on the comprehension sections that indicated that sixth-grade
passages were at his frustration level. Yet, data obtained from the think-aloud portions of
the comprehension assessments and from interviews show that Oliver did, in fact, use
numerous comprehension strategies; however, he did not consciously realize that he was
able to use different comprehension strategies to make sense of texts.
Constructing Meaning from Texts
Because of his interest in science texts, Oliver realized that reading was a way to
acquire information. He said, “Reading is only for one thing, to get information inside
you. Learn information without another person telling you. So I think that’s what reading
[is] for.” From this statement, Oliver addresses Baker et al.’s (2000) argument that at “the
heart of engagement is the desire to gain new knowledge of a topic” (p. 2). After reading
science texts, Oliver was able to share facts that he learned. For instance, in our first
interview, Oliver shared that he had recently learned about dark matter:
It’s like a thing that goes out in the universe. It has its own gravity so it pulls the
universe together. It’s not like anything like a dark hole or something. It pulls the
universe together and it keeps it from expanding too.
In a later interview, Oliver shared what he had learned about fronts: “It’s like a
part where, like, the air is hot on one side and on the other side, the air is cold and the

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area where the air is hot and cold is the front.” Following is Oliver’s explanation from
our third interview of something he had recently learned from reading:
Oh, the article about the multi-universe [multiverse] thing. It’s like a theory based
on, it’s not just our universe. A whole bunch of universes. A bunch of big bangs is
happening at the same time. Not at the same time, but, like, you know, a bunch of
big bangs is really special. It’s like inflammatory theory or something. I don’t
really care about the name, but I just like [reading] about what happened.
Oliver said that he had gained this information from an article on quantum
mechanics. Initially, he did not understand the article, so he went home and consulted a
science reference book: “I have a book about everything, like every single science stuff,
so I skipped a little pages to learn about quantum mechanics.” These and other examples
provide evidence that Oliver was indeed a voracious reader of science texts.
Admittedly, I was skeptical during the earlier parts of the data collection process.
When Oliver told me he was interested in science, it seemed to contradict all of my
classroom observations. As the study progressed, however, I heard all of these
explanations that Oliver provided about interesting facts and ideas that he had learned
through reading.
In our final interview, Oliver expanded on what he had learned about inflationary
theory from the Newsweek magazine article he read:
Oliver: First, it talks about the inflammatory [inflationary] theory of how the
universe is actually made by something called a cosmic field. I don't really
believe in this, but it’s like if too much of it is put into one place of space, it
would explode and create a big bang. A lot of those has been happening and the
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effect of the particles is caused by this other one called string theory, which is
based on strings vibrating, creating other bunch of particles, like particles that
create our known particles that we know now like protons, neutrons and stuff like
that. So when the big bang is created, those strings started vibrating and then
creating photons, gluons, and stuff like that and that mixes up with others and
creates electrons and everything. It also talks about dark energy which is...they
don’t really know what it is. They only know what is does. They don’t know what
it’s made of but they know the density of it but I don't remember the exact
number ’cause that’s a lot of zeros (laughs). It also talks about gluons.
Selena: What are those?
Oliver: You know how a nucleus is created, right? And then the protons, neutrons
are ties to each other. They’re not like normally gonna come to each other unless a
gluon is there to attract them to each other.
Selena: So a gluon connects a proton and a neutron?
Oliver: Yeah. And it talks about dark energy. It’s a fact. It has really strong gravity,
like, it's about this big. I'm not sure how big it is, but it's as strong as a sun like 10
times bigger than ours or something and like with its effect it can make the
universe keep expanding. The universe is supposed to slow down by now but
because of it keeps expanding, and expanding and expanding to infinity.
This interview excerpt is remarkable because, even though it had been
approximately a month since he had read the article, Oliver did not need to think long
before providing this information. He was able to articulate this information immediately.
Also, when I asked for points of clarification when I was unfamiliar with a concept, he
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was able to explain these ideas in concrete ways, such as the explanation of a gluon. I
was astounded by how much he said he learned from reading the article. When I said this,
he clarified, “Oh, all this stuff I learned, like I have stuff I maintained, I learned from
other stuff and they helped me understand this article.” Thus, Oliver indicated that he was
able to integrate his prior knowledge from other reading sources with ideas he learned in
the magazine article.
It was encouraging to hear all the facts that Oliver had learned through reading.
More importantly, he was passionate and motivated when relating these ideas in our
interviews. In contrast, Oliver was barely able to provide any details of what he learned
in his middle-school classes, especially his English class. Oliver’s lack of interest in his
English class affected his construction of meaning with the texts he encountered. For
example, during my second observation of Oliver in Mr. Kilian’s English classroom,
students were supposed to bring song lyrics. Oliver did not bring any lyrics. Mr. Kilian
provided lyrics to the students who did not bring any. For this task, students were
supposed to examine the lyrics and look for metaphors within the song. I walked around
the classroom during this independent work time. As I passed Oliver, I noted that he had
not made any notes on his sheets. When Mr. Kilian said they had 2 minutes remaining,
Oliver then picked up his pencil and started writing. When the time came that Mr. Kilian
wanted to hear some examples from the class, Oliver did not volunteer to share anything.
During our interview, when I asked him about this activity and what he had
learned from it, Oliver said, “I don’t really remember that.” Although Mr. Kilian tried to
encourage interest on the part of his students by allowing them to choose the song they
wanted to work with, Oliver was so disengaged with his English class that he did not
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even take the opportunity to choose a song that interested him. He reiterated that he
thought his English class was boring. Based on my two observations, Mr. Kilian used a
lecture and recitation style for most of the classes, but as the earlier example illustrated,
he did try to incorporate student interest for individual activities. Perhaps, had there been
more opportunities for student collaboration or group discussions, Oliver may have been
more engaged.
As another example, Oliver had to complete a research paper for an
interdisciplinary project for his social studies and English classes. I was observing in Mr.
Kilian’s class when he introduced this project. He handed students a sheet of paper with
different people and events from the Gilded Age or the Progressive Era and gave them
time to go over the list and mark three topics in which they were interested. Oliver was
the second person called, and he chose to write his paper about William “Boss” Tweed.
Later on, I asked him why he chose to focus on Tweed. Oliver said, based on the
nickname, he thought Tweed would be an interesting character. He further explained,
“Every other thing sounds so stupid, so I just chose him.”
When I asked Oliver what he learned while writing this research paper, Oliver
said Tweed “was a businessman [who] stole a lot of money from the taxpayers.” Oliver
elaborated, “He was caught by this guy named Thomas, and he went to prison and he
escaped to Cuba and he went back to prison and died in prison.” When I probed for more
information, Oliver said, “Oh man, it was a long time ago. I don’t remember anything
[else].” Thus, I asked Oliver to reflect instead on this research and writing experience:

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I didn’t enjoy it much. He was boring. I thought he was like, his name was like
“Boss.” I think he would be bad or something. But, like, all he did was steal
money and was a really good part of politics and stuff. Politics is boring to me.
In his reflection, Oliver was able to provide more information he learned through
the project, but he emphasized that he did not enjoy completing it because it was boring.
Oliver also said his source was Wikipedia, which is generally considered an unreliable
source for academic papers, and then he backed it up with another website, but he was
unable to recall the source.
This section highlighted the contrasting level of meaning that Oliver was able to
construct based on his interest levels. When Oliver was able to choose what he read to
pursue his reading interests, he was able to articulate a depth of understanding about
physics concepts. Yet, when probed about information acquired from reading completed
for his English class, Oliver was able to provide only shallow details.
Social Interactions
In all of the classroom observations in both Mrs. Blake’s ESL class or Mr.
Kilian’s English class, Oliver rarely engaged in social interactions. Even in the hallway
between classes, Oliver was often alone. When I observed him in Mr. Kilian’s classroom,
he was one of the first students to arrive in the classroom, sat immediately in his seat, and
did not engage in any conversations with peers, even before the bell rang. When I asked
Oliver about his quiet nature in classes, he shared, “I don’t like to speak much. Like, just
raising my hand take a whole bunch of work for me ’cause I’m really lazy.”
Because Oliver does most of his reading at home, the only person he talked to
about reading was his brother. He said that when he saw something interesting in a
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science book, he showed it to his brother, but based on our interviews it did not seem as
though they engaged in a discussion. Oliver simply shared interesting pictures with his
brother.
In our final interview, in which Oliver talked extensively and passionately about
what he had learned from reading physics texts, I asked him if he ever engaged in any
discussions about what he read:
Selena: So all these things that you’ve been describing to me, have you ever
engaged in any discussions with anyone about them?
Oliver: Oh no. I’m good.
Selena: You’ve never talked to anyone about this?
Oliver. Yeah. This is, like, the first time.
Selena: Why is that?
Oliver: I don’t know.
Selena: This interest of yours in physics, does anybody know about this?
Oliver: I don’t think anyone would care about what I’m saying.
When talking about sophisticated physics concepts such as the multiverse and
inflationary theory, Oliver was more engaged and passionate than I had ever seen him.
He came alive when he was explaining these ideas to me, and it seemed so natural for
him to talk about these physics concepts. Then, he revealed that he never had discussions
with anyone about these concepts. It seemed as if he was hiding much of his identity by
not doing so. Physics obviously was his passion, yet no one in the school context knew
the depth of his understanding about these concepts, not even his science teacher.

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Oliver’s stance that nobody would care what he thought about what he was
reading was similar to the experience of Jake, an African-American male in Willis’s
(1995) study. Willis shared that Jake, despite having high writing motivation, did not
know what to write about for a class paper. Willis prompted Jake to write about his
amusing experiences at the barbershop, and he could share what occurs in this AfricanAmerican culturally defined event. Jake insisted that “they” would not understand or care
about this topic. Similarly, Oliver also assumed that people around him at school, such as
his friends and teachers, would have no interest in learning about what he learned through
reading.
A few of Oliver’s friends did know about his science interest. Oliver explained,
“They didn’t know back then, and they started coming up with all these science questions.
I started answering them like really quick, and so they just thought I like science, like, I
know a lot.” Even though they did not ask specifically about reading, Oliver’s friends
would sometimes ask him science questions such as “What does e=mc2 mean?” Oliver
answered these questions, but he did not discuss how he knew the information or initiate
a discussion about more complex science concepts that he enjoyed reading about.
In the ESL classroom, Oliver was typically quiet and usually did not exhibit any
behavior problems. Even in his regular English classroom, Oliver was one of the quietest
students. The majority of students in the mainstream English class were very talkative, to
the point that it was disruptive to the flow of the class. Meanwhile, Oliver just sat quietly
in his seat, sometimes staring ahead at the teacher, other times at the table. There were
also moments he laid his head on his desk. When Oliver tried these antics in Mrs. Blake’s
class, however, she immediately noticed. One time, she told Oliver, “I don’t know why
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you’re so sleepy. Sit up please.” She then asked him to read the next sentence on the
screen.
Oliver began misbehaving in the ESL classroom when he sat next to Adam, a
seventh-grade ELL from Sierra Leone. Oliver needed to sit at the front of the classroom
because of his poor eyesight; Adam, meanwhile, was assigned by Mrs. Blake to sit at the
front so she could monitor him because he was frequently off-task. These requirements
meant that Adam and Oliver sat next to each other. Adam would initiate off-task behavior
by whispering something to Oliver while Mrs. Blake was teaching the vocabulary lessons.
In February, Oliver got in trouble with Mrs. Blake. The ESL class was in the
library for sixth period so students could use computers to complete their projects; thus,
Adam was in the library with Oliver. Ten minutes before the bell rang, Adam and Oliver
sneaked out of the library and headed home. Someone reported to the office that two
students were outside of the school, and this information was passed on to Mrs. Blake.
That afternoon, Mrs. Blake called Oliver’s and Adam’s parents to let them know this was
a safety issue because they should not have gone home when school had not been
dismissed yet.
Oliver and Emir, an ESL student from Turkey, also tried similar inappropriate
behavior with me later in the semester. I was with the eighth-graders in the library during
the latter part of sixth period while Mrs. Blake was teaching the other ESL students.
Oliver and Emir told me they were going to consult with Mrs. Blake. Knowing that
Oliver had a tendency to leave school early, I said, “Okay, I’ll ask her later if you did go
talk to her,” and they left the library. Less than 2 minutes later, they reentered the library,

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and Emir said, “Okay, if you’re going to ask her, then you’re right. We weren’t gonna
talk to her.”
These two instances showed how Oliver could be negatively affected by peer
influences. When I brought up the second incident with Oliver in an interview, he
defended himself and said, “I didn’t say that. Emir said that.” Oliver said he typically did
not try misbehaving like that with Mrs. Blake because “it’s hard to get past her.”
Nevertheless, these two instances illustrate that, although Oliver would not typically
spearhead this kind of behavior during sixth period, when a friend of his would initiate
this behavior, he went along with it.
I happened to be in the library one morning when Mr. Kilian’s class was there for
a work session for their research paper. I saw that 5 minutes before the bell rang, Oliver
stood up from his computer and walked toward the door. When he thought no one was
looking, he stepped out and headed down the hall. A few minutes later, I saw him
loitering outside the library door, and once the bell rang he immediately left. This all
happened without Mr. Kilian noticing because he was engaged in discussions with other
students. This and the preceding examples show that Oliver has a tendency to leave his
classes, and for the most part, no one noticed. These examples also highlight how Oliver
tended to be overlooked in class by his teachers.
Overall, Oliver did not have any meaningful social interactions in school. When
he did interact with other students, it typically was not about any reading or academic
tasks. Instead, he and his friends, at least those in the ESL classroom with him, would test
boundaries and see what inappropriate behaviors they could engage in. Reading, for
Oliver, was an isolated activity, and it was something he did not share with others.
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Oliver’s Contrasting Reading Engagement Profiles
In this chapter, I discussed Oliver’s reading engagement, and presented two
contrasting profiles: Oliver was extremely detached from reading in the school setting
even though his interests were academic in nature. Oliver found reading about physics
concepts satisfying and pleasurable. This academic type of reading was his version of
pleasure reading.
Oliver’s complete disengagement from the school setting was troubling. His
grades in most of his classes were below average, he had a tendency to skip or leave
classes early, and he was unable or unwilling to provide much evidence of what he was
learning in his classes. Data gathered through comprehension assessments and interviews
confirm these points. When Oliver’s interest in a topic or text is low, he exerts little or no
effort to comprehend the material and becomes very distracted while reading. He scored
at frustration and instructional levels for most of the sixth-grade passages that he read for
the QRI assessments, yet he provided extensive evidence that he is able to construct
meaning from complex texts as long as he is highly interested in the topic.
Oliver consistently mentioned that his purpose for reading was learning. Yet, why
could he not apply this same rationale for school reading? Is not the purpose for reading
for school to learn as well? He proved that he has the capacity to construct meaning and
comprehend complex texts. If he could understand the ideas of inflationary theory, he
could understand the information in a middle school textbook. He just chooses not to.
With previous research on reading engagement, social interactions play a huge
role. For Oliver, however, his engagement is a solitary construct; his reading is not social
in nature. Does that mean his reading engagement is any less valid than others who do
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engage in social interactions around reading? It may be that researchers have yet to
consider that individual differences, such as personalities and dispositions, would affect
one’s ability and inclination to participate in social interactions. Some individuals are
introverted by nature, and they are inclined to use reading as a solitary activity. Are we
devaluing their reading engagement by making social interactions a necessary component?
Oliver’s case prompts the reconsideration of the inclusion of social interactions in the
reading engagement model.
Finally, it is unclear whether Oliver has unintentionally hidden his reading
engagement from others. He may have truly thought “no one would care,” or he may not
have wanted to share the fact that he was a voracious reader because he perceived reading,
as did many African- American boys, as “a passive, ‘female’ activity” (Tatum, 2005, p.
11). Whatever the case, it is unfortunate that no one in the school setting knew about
Oliver’s passion. There was a missed opportunity to build on Oliver’s interest. Had his
teachers known about his sophisticated out-of-school reading habits, they may have been
able to recommend texts or plan tasks connected to his passion, which may have
prevented Oliver’s complete disengagement with academic reading.

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CHAPTER 7
Discussion
In this study, I explored the reading engagement of four middle school ELLs. In
particular, I examined each focal student in the context of his or her English or ESL
classroom to determine how he or she engaged or disengaged with reading in school. I
also investigated focal students’ out-of-school reading engagement through interviews
and reading activity inventories. In the preceding four chapters, I provided detailed
descriptions of each focal student’s reading engagement. I found that each ELL had a
different reading engagement profile. The overall examination and analysis of the data
suggest that each ELLs’ reading engagement differed based on their purposes for reading
and the situations and classroom contexts in which reading occurred. This finding
confirms Guthrie and Wigfield’s (2000) assertion that reading engagement is situational.
For instance, Nabila and Jonathan were highly engaged when reading narrative texts for
pleasure, but they were disengaged when reading academic texts. Oliver, meanwhile, was
truly engaged when reading science texts he selected at home, but he was disengaged
when he had to read mandatory texts for his science class. Farshad exhibited traces of
engagement when he complied with reading tasks for his content-area classes, but he was
completely unmotivated to read outside of school.
Another key finding of this dissertation research is that ELL reading engagement
must be expanded to consider students’ ethnic, cultural, or religious identities. From a
sociocultural framework, reading cannot be separated from the context in which it occurs,
nor can it be examined without considering the sociocultural background of the reader
(Au, 1997; Rueda et al., 2001). ELLs’ identities influence their reading engagement,
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specifically their motivation to read and participation in social interactions. For instance,
Nabila, as a Muslim female, was drawn to multicultural literature. She wanted to read
about the experiences of protagonists from diverse backgrounds and experiences since
she could make connections with their experiences. Jonathan, meanwhile, wanted to be
more American. As a result, he only participated in social interactions wherein he could
help his American friends. As such, he used his academic achievement as a way to barter
acceptance into an American social group. These examples demonstrate that in order to
fully understand ELLs’ reading engagement, students’ identities should be examined from
a sociocultural perspective.
Data from this dissertation research also seemed to support the idea that the
sociocultural context in which literacy activities were embedded was extremely related to
their reading engagement. Specifically, other individuals in these ELLs’ social contexts
influenced either how they perceived themselves as readers or their participation in
literacy activities. For instance, Jonathan and Nabila’s desire to do well in school may
stem from their parents’ high expectations for them. In Nabila’s case, she wanted to
ensure that her family’s move to the U.S. for her and her siblings’ education was not done
in vain. The idea of others’ perceptions could also work in a negative way. Oliver, despite
being a good reader when tackling high-interest texts, did not put forth much effort when
reading academic texts. This may be related to his view that “no one would care.”
In the remainder of this chapter, I first present a summary of the dissertation
findings and relate these findings to previous research. Next, I discuss how instructional
practices in classroom contexts affirmed or hindered ELLs’ reading engagement. Then, I
discuss the results of the study in relation to the expectancy value framework. Finally, I
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provide an argument on why ELL identity should be considered an important aspect of
ELL reading engagement.
Summary of Findings
In this study, I investigated five research questions: (1) What motivates middle
school ELLs to read? What discourages middle school ELLs from reading? (2) What
strategic knowledge do middle school ELLs draw upon when reading? (3) How do
middle school ELLs construct meaning from texts? (4) How do middle school ELLs
engage in social interactions around texts? and (5) How do motivation, strategic
knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and social interactions interact to make up ELLs’
reading engagement? In this section, I summarize the findings for the first four research
questions and make comparisons across the focal students. Then, I present a discussion to
address the final research question. In Table 8, I provide a summary of each student’s
reading engagement profile with regard to each of the components.
Motivation. Students’ motivations to read texts were multifaceted (Guthrie &
Wigfield, 2000). In other words, focal students were motivated to read for very different
reasons. There were, however, a few commonalities across the focal students. Jonathan,
Nabila, and Oliver were intrinsically motivated to read texts that fulfilled their personal
interests, and their interests varied. Jonathan and Farshad appreciated adventure books,
while Nabila enjoyed multicultural literature. Oliver was the only focal student who
valued and read informational texts for pleasure. Two of the focal students, Jonathan and
Farshad, were also extrinsically motivated to read. Getting high grades and fulfilling
academic obligations prompted these two students to read, or skim in Farshad’s case,
assigned texts.
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In general, all of the focal students were unmotivated to read academic texts, such
as textbooks. Nabila and Oliver said academic texts were uninteresting and boring to
read. Textbooks could also be intimidating to ELLs. Jonathan indicated that textbooks
were difficult to comprehend, and he often had to reread assigned sections because of the
complex topics and language. Farshad was the most unmotivated to read out of the four
focal students and thought that “reading was just a waste of time.” However, he was
unable to articulate the reasons for his low reading motivation. I argue that Farshad had
not experienced the satisfaction of reading because of his low comprehension levels, and
this contributed to his low motivation. In addition, Farshad did not realize the value of
reading. He thought reading was a school-based activity, and did not realize that reading
was extremely relevant to his career goal of becoming an actor.
In sum, ELLs’ motivations for reading and reasons for not reading varied greatly.
The two consistent findings were the following: (1) students were motivated to read when
they were able to select reading materials that met their interests; and (2) students were
unmotivated to read academic texts.
These two conclusions are supported by the reading motivation literature. First,
the importance of access to interesting texts has consistently been found to influence
reading motivation (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Flowerday et al., 2004; Gambrell, 1996,
Meltzer & Hamann, 2004). The focal students’ motivation to read varied depending on
the kinds of texts they were reading. Fortunately, students had access to texts through the
school’s extensive library, and some focal students, such as Oliver and Jonathan, also
utilized the public library. Thus, when ELLs were able to pursue their reading interests,
their motivation to read was high.
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Second, results of this research provide additional evidence that supports recent
studies which have found that secondary students are unmotivated to read academic texts
(Guthrie et al., 2012b; McKenna et al., 2012; Pitcher et al., 2007; Wigfield, Cambria, &
Ho, 2012). Even high achieving students are unmotivated to read informational texts,
such as textbooks (Wigfield et al., 2012), which is similar to the sentiments expressed by
the focal students. In particular, although Jonathan was an academic achiever, he was not
intrinsically motivated to read textbooks because they were challenging; he read these
textbooks only to comply with academic requirements.
Strategic knowledge. Results of this study showed that students with higher
reading engagement, Jonathan and Nabila, used a wide range of comprehension strategies
while those students with lower levels of reading engagement, Farshad and Oliver,
demonstrated the use of fewer strategies.
Jonathan and Nabila not only exhibited the use of a variety of comprehension
strategies through the think-aloud component of the QRI assessment, but they also
demonstrated the use of strategies in their leisure and academic reading. These two
students also used higher-order comprehension strategies such as making inferences and
evaluating. They rarely used strategies such as paraphrasing because they often would be
using more complex strategies when reading. For instance, when Jonathan worked on his
mythology project, he was able to synthesize information across 12 websites which he
used as references. He was also able to recognize that a few of the websites were
secondary sources. Nabila, meanwhile, evaluated the actions of characters in the novels
she read for pleasure, and she consistently provided a rationale for her evaluation. When
reading academic texts, she was also able to use a multitude of strategies including
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paraphrasing, making connections, and making inferences, even though these texts were
of low interest.
When students exhibited lower reading engagement levels, strategic knowledge
was not very evident. For instance, during QRI assessments, Farshad only used
paraphrasing. In some instances, he was unable to paraphrase the text and resorted to
reading the text verbatim during the think-aloud portion. Compared to Farshad, Oliver
was able to demonstrate the use of a wider range of strategies. For instance, Oliver
frequently used the strategy of questioning, which was unsurprising given his inquisitive
nature on science topics. The informational texts Oliver read stimulated many questions
for him. He also used strategies such as integrating prior knowledge and making
connections when he was reading texts of interest. However, when Oliver read texts that
were of low interest, his strategic knowledge differed. Specifically, he was more
distracted, and he consistently resorted to paraphrasing rather than using active
comprehension strategies such as questioning or integrating prior knowledge.
The findings about ELLs’ strategic knowledge confirm previous research which
found that successful ELL readers utilized more reading comprehension strategies
(Jimenez et al., 1996). Conversely, Jimenez et al. (1996) found that less successful ELL
readers did not utilize many comprehension strategies and were less likely to use higher
order comprehension skills such as making inferences. Similar findings were obtained in
my study on the strategic knowledge component. Jonathan and Nabila, who were more
able readers, exhibited the use of numerous comprehension strategies while Farshad and
Oliver, who read below grade level, did not use a wide range of strategies. An additional
contribution of this dissertation research is that for seemingly less successful ELL
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readers, strategy use can be increased given high interest texts, as in Oliver’s case.
On another note, Jimenez (1997) had found that successful ELL readers
transferred comprehension strategies they used when reading in their native language to
reading in English. However, three of the four focal students were not literate in their
native languages. Jonathan, the only focal student able to read in his native language,
never mentioned the transfer of comprehension strategies from reading in Chinese to
reading in English. Thus, practitioners and researchers cannot assume that middle school
ELLs bring with them previous knowledge and experience with strategy use in reading in
their native language.
Constructing meaning from texts. Based on interview data, QRI assessments,
and student artifacts, students who were engaged readers had consistently high levels of
comprehension of both academic and leisure texts. Jonathan and Nabila were both very
verbose when they shared information from interesting texts they had just read for
pleasure. Jonathan shared a substantial amount of information on what he learned from
reading texts in his English classes. For example, Jonathan was able to provide an
extensive response about what he learned through the mythology unit, which
demonstrated his thorough understanding of the myths that he read for his English class.
Although Nabila had to be prodded to explain what she learned from reading texts in her
content-area classes, she was very enthusiastic to discuss ideas from pleasure reading.
Artifacts from both students showed they were able to construct meaning from texts and
they used the knowledge they gained from reading to fulfill their academic obligations.
For instance, Nabila’s English paper on the multiple meanings of the word “peace”
demonstrated that she was able to synthesize information from multiple sources and write
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a comprehensive paper. Although Nabila exhibited low motivation to read academic
texts, she was able to comprehend and make meaning from reading these texts.
In contrast, Farshad was unable to articulate his understanding from reading, even
with below grade level texts. When asked what he learned from reading, Farshad did not
offer much information on what he learned. When probed, he often would simply shrug
and not elaborate on any ideas. These pieces of data suggest that Farshad struggled with
comprehension and constructing meaning from the texts that he read. Farshad’s low level
of comprehensions probably contributed to his low reading motivation level.
Out of all the focal students, Oliver was the most interesting case in this specific
area. When he was asked to explain what he understood from reading in his content-area
classes, Oliver did not provide any information. In contrast, when he was asked to share
what he learned from texts that he self-selected on a topic of interest, Oliver was able to
explain highly sophisticated and complex physics concepts. Additionally, he was able to
respond to questions about these topics effortlessly.
As discussed earlier in the review of related literature, none of the studies
conducted on ELL reading engagement had focused on ELLs’ capabilities to construct
meaning from texts. For instance, Ivey and Broaddus’ (2007) formative experiment with
Latino/a students who were new English readers focused primarily on decoding lowlevel, beginner texts rather than on increasing these students’ comprehension abilities in
English. Thus, my study offers evidence on how engaged and disengaged readers
construct meaning and acquire knowledge from reading. Similar to the students in
Fairbanks’ (2000) study, the focal students in my study were able to use multiple sources
to gather information for their academic requirements. Fairbanks also found that students
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were more interested in the academic projects when they were given autonomy in
choosing topics and how to obtain information. This is similar to Jonathan’s enthusiasm
for the mythology project. In the case of Farshad and Oliver, their overall disengagement
influenced how much they were able to construct meaning from texts. For the most part,
these two students were unable to share information about what they had learned from
reading for school, which likely stemmed from the lack of relevance of academic projects
to their lives and interests.
Social interactions. Participation in social interactions and the quality of
participation varied greatly across the four focal students. Oliver rarely participated in
social interactions. Although he was a voracious reader of informational texts, he did not
share his insights and acquired knowledge with others. Sadly, he felt that “no one would
care about what he was reading.” For Oliver, reading was a solitary activity. On the other
hand, social interactions were highly motivating for Nabila. She enjoyed discussing
books with her friend, Aina. She also claimed that engaging in book discussions
prompted her to read more because she had someone to exchange ideas with around
reading.
Jonathan and Farshad both participated in social interactions around texts
although their purposes for doing so were not ideal. Jonathan participated in social
interactions where he could assume the role of the more knowledgeable student. As such,
he was able to provide answers to his classmates. Although his teacher, Ms. Costa,
modeled for Jonathan positive social interactions around texts, he was not able to assume
a coaching stance when working with his peers. Instead, he resorted to providing
answers. Farshad, meanwhile, participated in social interactions to obtain answers from
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others. Generally, he did not see social interactions as a venue for co-constructed
knowledge. Rather, it was an avenue for him to obtain support to fulfill his academic
obligations.
Research focused on social interactions indicates that engaged readers often
participated in book discussions around texts, collaborated on projects, and were included
as members of a community of readers (Klauda, 2003; Protacio, 2010; Smythe &
Neufeld, 2010; Strommen & Mates, 2004). Students who engage in social interactions
centered on texts are more intrinsically motivated to read (Guthrie & Anderson, 1999;
Guthrie & Knowles, 2001; Sweet & Guthrie, 1996). For instance, Smythe and Neufeld
(2010) found that ELLs who were able to collaborate on a digital project were more
motivated because of the opportunities to engage in discussions around the digital story
they were creating. The collaborative nature of the digital projects afforded ELLs to have
conversations with one another about their literacy practices, which might not have
occurred in a more teacher-centered instructional setting. In my study, I found that only
Nabila participated in positive social interactions with her peers. Engaging in discussions
with her friend, Aina, even influenced her reading motivation. She wanted to read the
books her friends recommended so they could engage in more discussions around texts.
The three other focal students did not participate in these types of social interactions.
Also, there were no opportunities for the students to collaborate on any major projects in
any of the classrooms in which I observed.
Research has also found that ELLs were able to obtain academic support through
social interactions (Cho et al., 2010; Cuero & Dworin, 2007). For example, Cho et al.
(2010) indicated that ELLs served as translators for one another in small group
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interactions whereas Cuero and Dworin (2007) found that ELLs shared resources among
one another. In my study, providing and obtaining support was the primary purpose of the
focal students for participating in social interactions, except for Oliver who did not
participate in social interactions. Nabila consistently sought support from the pre-service
teachers in the ESL class. Farshad, meanwhile, used social interactions as a way to obtain
answers for his academic requirements. As a high achiever, Jonathan did not need support
from his peers for his academics. Instead, he was the one who provided answers to his
peers whenever they had a social interaction. When he needed support, Jonathan
preferred to ask his teacher, Ms. Costa, for feedback.
In this section, I provided a summary of how the four reading engagement
components were enacted in the reading experiences of the four focal students, and I also
made connections to previous research. In what follows, I provide a discussion which
addresses the fifth research question: How do motivation, strategic knowledge,
conceptual knowledge, and social interactions interact to make up ELLs’ reading
engagement?

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Table 8
Summary of Focal Students’ Reading Engagement
Motivation
Jonathan

Strategic Knowledge Constructing Meaning

Social Interactions

Identity

Intrinsically
motivated to read
series and
adventure books

Used higher order
comprehension
strategies

Participated when he is
the more knowledgeable
other

Wanted to be
more American

Engaged in book
discussions with peers
for leisure texts

Embraced her
Muslim identity
and conformed
to religious
customs

Able to use a
multitude of texts and
synthesize
information gained

Read school texts
out of compliance

Nabila

Motivated to read
leisure texts
(multicultural
books and books
of high interest)
Unmotivated to
read academic
texts

Able to describe indepth what he learned
from texts

Used higher order
comprehension
strategies

Able to briefly
describe what she
learned from
academic texts
Able and willing to
describe in depth what
she noticed from
reading leisure texts

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Looked to adults for
support for reading
Absence of family
interactions around
reading

Table 8 (cont’d)
Farshad

Unmotivated to
read most texts
(academic and
leisure)

Unable to use a
variety of
comprehension
strategies

Unable to describe in
detail what he learned
from texts

Participated in social
interactions to obtain
answers

Embarrassed by
his ELL status

Was able to use a
few comprehension
strategies but not
many higher order
comprehension
strategies

Able to expand on his
learning from science
texts

Did not participate in
any social interactions
around reading

Did not identify
with his status as
an ELL

Had a high selfperception as a
reader
Read out of
compliance
Oliver

Extremely
motivated to read
science texts for
pleasure (out of
school texts)
Unmotivated to
read any other
texts in or outside
school

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Reading Engagement: Collectively Looking at the Components
Overall, results of this dissertation research indicate that all four components are
inextricably linked and are an integral part of ELL reading engagement. A missing component
can impact the quality of students’ overall reading engagement. As shown in each of the analyses
of students’ reading engagement profiles, each component can be analyzed separately, but
collectively, each focal student’s case illustrates how the interaction of these components
influences each ELL’s overall reading engagement. For instance, while Jonathan was intrinsically
motivated to read for pleasure and consistently completed required academic reading, he did not
engage in positive social interactions with his peers. A noteworthy point is that his English
classroom did not offer many opportunities for collaboration. As another example, Oliver
presented two very contrasting reading engagement profiles. He was a completely disengaged
reader in school, but he was very engaged to read at home when given the opportunity to follow
his reading interests.
These examples indicate that reading engagement is situational, and the classroom
contexts, including instructional practices, influence the reading engagement of middle school
ELLs. The idea that reading engagement is situational is in line with the sociocultural theory of
reading (Gee, 1996, 2000; Heath, 1983). Gee (2000) posits, “A Discourse-based, situated, and
sociocultural view of literacy demands that we see reading (and writing and speaking) as not one
thing, but many: many different socioculturally situated reading (writing, speaking) practices” (p.
204). From this quote, a sociocultural view of literacy is composed of multiple socioculturally
situated literacy practices.
Gee’s (2000) view that “meaning is always situated in specific sociocultural practices and
experiences” (p. 195) can be connected to the different classroom practices which either hinder
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or foster ELL reading engagement. Instructional practices in classroom contexts are integral in
creating a learning environment that fosters engaging and disengaging situations. In a review of
the literature, Guthrie et al. (2012c) identified the following characteristics of engaging
instructional contexts for reading:
• students were provided autonomy in choosing reading materials or tasks related to
reading
• instructional activities were relevant to students’ lives and interests
• teachers clearly explained the benefits and value of reading
• teachers emphasized collaboration and interpersonal relationships
• students were provided support in reading to increase their self-efficacy as readers (pp.
617, 625).
In their observational study of nine middle school teachers, Raphael, Pressley, and
Mohan (2008) identified distinct characteristics of teachers who provided engaging classroom
contexts. According to Raphael et al. (2008), highly engaging middle school teachers created
“caring and positive classroom environments that emphasized both the academic and affective
development of all students” (p. 67). These teachers encouraged students’ self-regulation,
modeled problem solving and strategy use within their content-area, scaffolded students’
learning, increased expectations for students’ success, and communicated the value of learning.
Given the situational nature of reading engagement, it is important to examine the
instructional practices that were used in the classrooms as these situated practices influenced the
focal students’ reading engagement. In Table 9, I provide a summary of the engaging and
disengaging instructional practices in Ms. Costa and Mrs. Blake’s classrooms. Since I only
observed twice in Mr. Kilian’s classroom, I provide only brief comments on the instructional
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practices that I observed, and I did not include him in Table 9.
Ms. Costa, a first year teacher, used some engaging practices such as providing students
autonomy to choose the topic on which they would write their mythology project. She also
provided scaffolding for her students as they worked on essays and major projects. In one-on-one
interactions, Ms. Costa was also able to provide and model meaningful interactions, as discussed
in Jonathan’s chapter. Yet, she struggled to provide a classroom discussion environment which
was more student-centered. In Ms. Costa’s English classroom, students were allowed to work in
pairs to complete worksheets, but there were no instances observed wherein students were given
opportunities to participate in meaningful discussions around texts. Instead, “discussions”
consisted of whole group interactions with much of the control maintained by Ms. Costa. There
were a few instances where one particular student asked insightful questions, but for the most
part, the classroom discourse followed the typical initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) pattern
(Cazden, 2001). The lack of social interactions hindered the potential for reading engagement in
Ms. Costa’s classroom.
Similar observations were made in Mr. Kilian’s classroom during the two observations.
There were no instances wherein students were given opportunities to collaborate on the tasks
assigned. Instead, students worked independently, and then a whole group discussion ensued. As
depicted in Oliver’s chapter, he did not work well in such a classroom environment. He spent
most of the time off-task and only started work on the assigned task in the final minutes of the
independent work session. When there was no accountability, Oliver did not exert much effort.
Also, there did not seem to be a focus on the interpersonal relationship between teacher and
students in Mr. Kilian’s class. Thus, there were missed opportunities for creating situations in
which students’ engagement might be piqued. For instance, Mr. Kilian could have recommended
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topics for Oliver for the interdisciplinary projects had Mr. Kilian known about Oliver’s interest
in science. Rather than choosing to write about William “Boss” Tweed, Oliver could have
chosen to focus on one of the inventions during that period since this is more closely related to
his interests.
There were several engaging aspects of Mrs. Blake’s ESL classroom. She formed
interpersonal relationships with many of her students although observations indicated that she
had stronger relationships with the female students compared to the male students. Students were
provided much support in the ESL classroom, but the support was mostly from the pre-service
teachers who needed to complete field hours in classrooms. As Nabila indicated, some of these
pre-service teachers were very helpful whereas some were not very committed to helping the
students with their academics. Another engaging aspect of Mrs. Blake’s classroom is the
opportunity to work in pairs or small groups around vocabulary. However, modifying the task
could allow these small group interactions to be more engaging. The vocabulary discussions
always centered around completing sentence prompts, yet there are numerous pedagogical
alternatives to this format which could still provide students an opportunity to demonstrate their
understanding of vocabulary terms. When working with her ESL class, Mrs. Blake also utilized
different instructional techniques. For instance, she brought in community members to speak to
the class about their disabilities when they were discussing invisible disabilities. She also chose
reading materials that were short and easily accessible to the ELLs’ varied reading levels.
There were also several practices which hindered students’ reading engagement. Mrs.
Blake’s focus was more on the newcomer ELLs who were still learning how to speak English.
Thus, there were instances wherein she did not monitor students who were off task because she
was preoccupied in working with the newcomer ELLs. Farshad, for instance, was consistently
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off task at the beginning of the semester. He was very unproductive during these classes, yet Mrs.
Blake did not address his off task behavior. Oliver was also consistently unproductive during the
period he spent in Mrs. Blake’s classroom and in the school library during sixth-period. Both of
these students would have benefited from a more structured routine wherein they had
accountability. Mrs. Blake allowed them to use time in her classroom to work on their projects
for other content-area classes, but these two students typically indicated they had already
completed the work. Their female classmates, who were more diligent, consistently used the time
in the ESL class productively. They completed assignments for their other classes during these
work sessions. One factor that may have helped the female students, Nabila included, is that they
asked one another for help or clarification. Finally, Mrs. Blake did not explicitly address strategy
use in her classroom. Her main focus was on vocabulary knowledge, but as indicated in
Farshad’s case, he could have benefited from explicit comprehension strategy instruction in his
ESL class as this may have influenced both his motivation to read and his ability to construct
meaning from texts.

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Table 9
Summary of Instructional Practices which Affirm or Hinder Reading Engagement
Ms. Costa

Mrs. Blake

Engaging
practices

• Students were given
autonomy in choosing
topics for projects
• Interpersonal
relationships were
formed with students
• Explicitly discussed
strategy use
• Scaffolded students’
learning and completion
of projects and papers

• Celebrated student
success
• Interpersonal
relationships were
formed with students
• Students were provided
support (preservice
teachers and classroom
volunteers)
• Clearly explained the
value and benefits of
reading
• Used a variety of
instructional strategies to
relate content (e.g., guest
speakers)

Disengaging
practices

• Students had required
readings
• Readings were not
relevant to students’
lives
• Compliance with
projects and assignments
were emphasized
• Collaboration was not
emphasized

• Minimal attention was
given to students who
were already proficient
in English
• Did not discuss strategy
use since the focus was
more on vocabulary
• Did not monitor students
during work sessions

Overall, the discussion on the different classrooms highlights instructional practices that
undermine reading engagement by promoting reading as an isolated activity because of the
absence of social interactions around reading. Middle school teachers find it difficult to maintain
order in the classroom when collaborative activities are offered, yet middle school students’
dedication to read increases when they are given opportunities to collaborate and have
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discussions with their peers (Guthrie, Klauda, & Morrison, 2012). In my study, Oliver and
Nabila’s cases provide contrasting views about the importance of social interactions to ELL
reading engagement. Nabila attributed her high reading motivation to her opportunities to engage
in book discussions, whereas Oliver was motivated to read self-selected texts because reading
was a solitary activity for him. Oliver’s case demonstrates that his engagement in reading physics
texts was still high despite the lack of social interactions. However, Oliver’s case also indicated
that he was very detached from the school context. He felt that not even his teachers would care
about his reading interests. Perhaps had Oliver been given opportunities to collaborate and
participate in discussions, he may have been more invested in his academics because of the
social relationships that he may have formed with his teachers and peers.
Jonathan and Farshad’s experiences also indicate that mere participation in social
interactions was not sufficient. The quality of these interactions must also be taken into
consideration. With these two particular cases, social interactions presented a venue where
answers could be provided and obtained instead of being contexts where meaning could be
constructed through thoughtful and meaningful book discussions. While social interactions can
certainly be used as venues for support, especially for ELLs, Jonathan and Farshad’s cases
highlight the unintended consequences of social interactions--receiving and providing answers-which do not promote higher levels of reading engagement.
In this section, given the finding that reading engagement is situational, I pointed out the
instructional practices that were engaging and disengaging for the focal students. In particular, I
note that from a sociocultural perspective, students need opportunities for social interactions in
the school setting to foster their reading engagement.

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Reading Engagement from an Expectancy Value Framework
A consistent finding across all four ELLs was their disengagement when reading
academic texts. Previous research has found that ELLs’ reading motivation is linked to their
perceived competence (Cho et al., 2010; Ivey & Broaddus, 2007). The qualitative data from this
dissertation supports this notion. Nabila and Jonathan, who were reading at or above grade level,
were engaged readers compared to Farshad and Oliver, whose reading proficiencies were below
grade level according to the QRI-5. In considering the expectancy value framework (Eccles et
al., 1983), Farshad’s perceived competence level was higher than his actual comprehension
abilities. He stated that reading was easy, yet comprehension assessments indicated that he
comprehended sixth-grade level texts at an instructional level. This finding highlights the
importance of gathering actual assessment data on students’ comprehension abilities and not
relying solely on self-efficacy reports as ELLs’ perceived competence may not be indicative of
their actual reading abilities. Monzo and Rueda (2009) said that, in fact, struggling ELL readers
may have inaccurate views of their English reading abilities. Thus, while high self-efficacy is
important in light of the expectancy value framework, Farshad’s case indicates that students’
expectation for success does not necessarily translate to higher reading engagement.
One plausible reason behind Farshad’s low motivation was that he had not yet realized or
acknowledged the value of reading. The other focal students realized the value of reading. Both
Jonathan and Oliver mentioned that reading was an avenue for learning. Nabila, meanwhile,
experienced the satisfaction of reading high-interest texts. Farshad was the sole focal student
who needed to understand the value of reading. For instance, Farshad did not acknowledge the
benefits of the vocabulary initiative even though, unconsciously, he was able to use the new
vocabulary he had learned in his content-area classes. In order for Farshad to become a more
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engaged reader, he needs to become motivated to read, and one way in which this can occur is if
he both believes he can succeed as a reader and if he can see the relevance of reading to his life.
Overall, one factor that leads to students’ disengagement with academic texts is the
disconnect between the broad range of topics and texts that students are exposed to at the middle
school level and their lives outside school. In this respect, the focal students did not find the
content of their textbooks relevant to their lives and experiences. Guthrie et al. (2012b) indicated
that for young adolescents, texts that are relevant are ones for which they could draw connections
to their own personal experiences, knowledge, goals or interests. As Brophy (2009) argues,
however,
I believe that much (probably most) school content is not perceived as highly selfrelevant…Learners who are determined to do so for extrinsic reasons can master certain
content domains thoroughly even if they have little interest in the content and do not
identify with it. (pp. 152-153).
Brophy’s statement raises the important point of extrinsic factors to student learning. As
he argued, students do not necessarily need to be interested in a topic in order for learning to
occur. Oftentimes, it is the promise or external reward or the possibility of punishment and
failure that prompts students to achieve in schools. This idea was supported by Jonathan’s case
since he was the focal student who was most motivated because of the external factor of grades.
As Jonathan asserted, “You don’t have to like the book, but you just have to have the heart to
learn it.” Extrinsic factors are inherent in the school system (Pressley, Dolezal, Raphael, Mohan,
Roehrig, & Bogner, 2003), especially if grades are considered. Grades are the most ubiquitous
extrinsic reward in schools. Thus, it is unsurprising that some of the focal students, Jonathan and
Farshad, were motivated out of a sense of compliance in order to obtain higher grades. In this
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sense, the value or relevance of the school tasks was associated with grades, which are what
these students valued. However, Brophy (2011) would argue that teachers cannot rely
exclusively on external rewards or extrinsic factors to engage students. Rather, students must be
shown the value of what they are learning. This is especially pertinent in Farshad’s case, as
earlier discussed.
Students’ reading engagement also depended on their reading abilities or perceived
competence when it came to reading. Those students who were more competent readers,
Jonathan and Nabila, were more likely to read compared to Oliver and Farshad, whose reading
abilities were below grade level. Specifically, Nabila and Jonathan consistently had reading
materials with them and regularly read for pleasure whereas Farshad could not even remember
the last book he had completed. The difference between the engaged and disengaged readers
provide further credence to the Matthew effect (Stanovich, 1986), which posits the gap in the
reading abilities of good and poor readers widens as these students progress through school. In
other words, the good readers become better, and the poor readers fall further behind their higher
achieving peers unless the factors that affect their reading engagement are addressed. Most of the
attention has focused on reading motivation as the key to improving reading ability (e.g., Guthrie
& Wigfield, 2000), yet results of my study show that all aspects of reading engagement must be
attended to with regards to ELL reading achievement. As the different focal student cases
illustrated, reading engagement is essential to reading comprehension, and by extension to
reading achievement and academic success (Guthrie et al., 2012; Mucherah & Yoder, 2008).
Students who had higher levels of reading engagement, such as Jonathan and Nabila, consistently
used more reading comprehension strategies and were able to discuss their learning from reading
with more ease compared to Farshad, who was a very disengaged reader. Oliver’s case is
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interesting to highlight. His case, in particular, illustrates that an engaged reader stance helps
facilitate comprehension. When he was reading science texts, he was able to recall more
information from what he read, whereas he was unwilling and unable to do so when asked to
relate what he learned from low interest texts.
In sum, results of this dissertation research point to the importance of ELLs being
competent readers, but more importantly, they need to recognize the value and relevance of what
they are reading to be fully engaged. In what follows, I argue that ELL reading identity needs to
be considered as an important factor to ELL reading engagement.
Identity Matters with ELL Reading Engagement
Identity is essentially one’s answer to the question “Who am I?” (Eccles, 2009; McCaslin,
2009). Researchers have focused on identity as a way to understand how immigrant students
have negotiated their ethnic identity in school contexts where they are minorities (Kanno, 2003;
Park, Goodwin, & Lee, 2003; Saito, 2002). However, none of these studies have focused
specifically on how ELL identity has influenced reading engagement. Below, Kaplan and Flum
(2009) emphasize the importance of identity to reading engagement.
Students’ engagement in school – their choices, struggles, and negotiations – is clearly
affected by, and in turn influences, who they think they are, who they think they want to
be, and who they actually become. Engaging deeply in a certain topic, or striving to
achieve high grades in a subject matter are precursors for, or perhaps already
manifestations of, students’ self and identity commitments that could have implications
for their future. The reciprocal relations and the integration of academic motivation and
identity are apparent in the social-cultural dynamics of students’ lives. (p. 76)
Kaplan and Flum (2009) recognize that considering identity is essential to examining
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student engagement. This was certainly apparent in the experiences of the focal students. The
four focal students’ identities as ELLs are closely related to their engagement in reading. For
instance, Nabila rejected pressure from her sisters to conform and become more Westernized.
Although she previously considered her sisters her reading role models, their contrasting beliefs
about assimilating affected the social relationship that Nabila and her sisters had around reading.
Also, Nabila’s identity as a Muslim female who strictly adhered to her faith ostracized her from
mainstream peers. Thus, although she enjoyed participating in discussions around texts, she only
talked with her fellow Muslim female friends about books, thereby limiting the social
interactions in which she could participate. Farshad and Jonathan, meanwhile, were similar in
that they had assimilated or had a desire to assimilate with the mainstream population. Jonathan,
in particular, admitted he was trying to become more American. He dismissed his native culture
and language in the school setting because he wanted to be like his mainstream friends. This deethnicalization stance has influenced what and how he engages his peers around texts. Jonathan’s
experiences were similar to those of Chinese students in Zhang’s (2008) study. Zhang found
these Chinese students wanted to fit in and become Americanized in terms of dress and food at
the school setting. Jonathan, thus, only participated in social interactions with American peers
and did not seek out any opportunities to interact with other ELLs. Farshad, meanwhile, had
assimilated well into the American culture, but he did not seem to overtly reject his native culture
nor did he embrace the American culture. Farshad was preoccupied with his ELL status; he
wanted his status as an ELL to remain hidden. This shame of being an ELL affected his
demeanor in his ESL class. He was unmotivated to be in the class because he felt that his English
abilities and reading abilities were more suited to a mainstream English classroom. Finally, not
much information was obtained about Oliver’s ELL identity. He had fully integrated into the
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American culture. He had spent two-thirds of his life in the U.S., and he knew more about the
United States than he did about Congo and was fully integrated to America. Oliver also tried to
keep his home life and school life separated. This separation affected his lack of involvement in
reading and social interactions in school. It also explained his tendency to hide his strong interest
in science texts.
Focal students’ stances on their ELL identities influenced primarily the social interaction
component. It affected not only who they interacted with, but it also influenced the quality of
interactions. For instance, Nabila engaged in a positive type of social interaction in that she
engaged in book discussions. However, these discussions were limited to her Muslim friends as
Nabila’s outsider status prohibited her from interacting with mainstream students about what she
was reading. Jonathan, meanwhile, engaged in social interactions wherein he could be the more
knowledgeable other. Jonathan used social interactions as a way to connect with his American
peers who needed his academic support. These group interactions provided him an opportunity to
have intellectual currency which increased his worth in the larger social dynamic.
Hence, students’ cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds should be considered in
relation to ELL reading engagement. More importantly, practitioners should explore how
particular aspects of ELLs’ sociocultural backgrounds, including labeling in school as an ELL or
as an ESL student, might influence their engagement with specific texts or specific reading
situations.
In sum, in this chapter, I presented a summary of the findings of the dissertation research.
I found that all four reading engagement components must be considered in relation to ELL
reading engagement. Collectively, all four components interact and determine whether or not
ELLs will be engaged or disengaged with reading English texts. Additionally, I explained that
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ELL reading engagement is situational in nature. Students’ engagement with reading may vary
depending on the situation and instructional contexts in which the reading is completed. Next, I
explored the expectancy value framework’s role in ELL reading engagement. Finally, I discussed
the importance of considering ELL identity in relation to reading engagement.

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CHAPTER 8
Implications for Reading Engagement Research and Practice
In the preceding chapter, I provided a summary of the findings of this dissertation
research. I also emphasized three key points. First, I discussed the need for a holistic view of
reading engagement. Second, based on the finding that reading engagement is situational, I
focused on the instructional practices which foster or hinder reading engagement. Finally, I
argued that ELLs’ cultural, linguistic, and religious identities must be considered in relation to
ELL reading engagement. In this chapter, I first address the pedagogical implications based on
the study’s findings. Then, I discuss the implications of this dissertation study for reading
engagement research.
Pedagogical Implications
Results of this dissertation study indicate that all four components are essential to ELL
reading engagement. Hence, attention must be given to all components in order to foster reading
engagement among middle school ELLs. In what follows, I describe ways in which practitioners
could address each of the components in their classrooms.
Motivation. Middle school practitioners must incorporate more practices that will likely
increase the reading motivation of their students. Previous research has documented the fact that
middle schoolers’ reading motivation declines in the middle school setting (Ivey & Broaddus,
2001; Kelly & Decker, 2009; McKenna et al., 2012; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). Adolescent
students have negative perceptions of reading at the secondary level (Pitcher et al., 2007) and
find academic texts to be challenging and uninteresting (Guthrie et al., 2012b; Wigfield et al.,
2012). The different cases demonstrated that focal students had very low motivation to read
academic texts such as textbooks. Middle school teachers recognize the importance of
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motivation in working with ELLs, but they need more information on how to effectively
incorporate motivation in their content-area classrooms (Hansen-Thomas & Cavagnetto, 2010).
There are several strategies that practitioners could use in their classrooms to address
reading motivation. First, Guthrie and Klauda (2012) recommend the use of supplementary texts,
such as short articles or websites, to help students better understand the complex content often
found in textbooks. Hence, middle school teachers should not rely solely on the textbook.
Students need access to a variety of texts at different reading levels. Struggling ELL readers may
choose not to read the textbook at all because of the complex language and vocabulary.
Providing access to diverse texts may ensure that students will have more opportunities to read a
text successfully rather than trying to force students to read textbooks which may prove to be too
challenging for ELLs.
Second, several studies have shown that middle school students seek autonomy. In other
words, students are more motivated when they are given an opportunity to choose texts to read or
tasks associated with reading (Guthrie & Davis, 2003; Ivey & Broaddus, 2001; Lapp & Fisher,
2009; O’Brien & Dillon, 2008). Students need to feel a sense of control in their learning (Turner
& Paris, 1995). For instance, Jonathan was very motivated to find information on his paper on
the Fates because he was able to choose the topic of his paper. Nabila also was more motivated
to write her English paper wherein she elaborated on the meanings of the word “peace” because
she was able to choose what reading resources she could consult. Thus, ELLs may be more
motivated if they are able to have choices in either the texts they read for class or a choice in the
way they can demonstrate their understanding. The choices may be limited, but nevertheless
having options to choose from may increase students’ motivation. For instance, students may be
given a choice of whether or not they would like to write a paper or perhaps create a PowerPoint
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or Prezi instead. Providing students choices also increases the likelihood that students’ interests
are addressed.
Next, students want opportunities to be able to read in their classrooms (Gallagher, 2009;
Ivey & Broaddus, 2001). Oftentimes, students are not afforded the opportunity to engage in
independent reading. As demonstrated through observational data in Ms. Costa’s classroom, oral
reading practices were used wherein the teacher and students alternated in reading the text aloud.
Yet, many researchers and practitioners have recommended that more time in the classroom
should actually be spent reading (Allington, 2011; Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Fisher, 2007;
Gallagher, 2009, Miller, 2012). ELLs may especially benefit from this practice. Nabila
consistently carried around reading materials. There was one instance when Mrs. Blake had to
tell Nabila to put away her reading materials because Nabila was distracted and unable to
concentrate on the vocabulary lessons because she wanted to read the magazine she had just
borrowed from the library. The only time students could engage in independent reading was on
Fridays for Drop Everything and Read time. For disengaged readers like Farshad, DEAR time
was the only moment when he actually admitted reading something he enjoyed since he did not
have access to books at home. Providing more opportunities for self-selected reading in school
may encourage more students, not just ELLs, to actually engage in reading.
Strategic knowledge. Findings from this study, specifically Oliver and Farshad’s cases,
highlight the importance of explicit strategy instruction in middle school classrooms. Farshad, in
particular, was unable to use comprehension strategies, which may have influenced his inability
to construct meaning from texts. Oliver, meanwhile, was able to use comprehension strategies,
but he tended not to be strategic when he was reading low-interest texts. In contrast, Nabila and
Jonathan were able to use comprehension strategies across all situations. Whether or not they
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were reading high-interest texts, Nabila and Jonathan used comprehension strategies.
Teaching comprehension strategies is the responsibility of all secondary teachers, not just
English or ESL teachers. The use of comprehension strategies differs based on the genre of texts
being read, and students need explicit instruction on different text structures (Almasi &
Fullerton, 2012; Duke & Roberts, 2010). ELLs may need additional support in recognizing and
comprehending unfamiliar genres. For example, Perry (2009) found that members of refugee
families needed support in navigating unfamiliar genres. Similarly, young adolescent ELLs may
need explicit instruction in both reading and writing unfamiliar genres of texts. It would be
beneficial for ELLs if each of their content-area teachers modeled the use of different
comprehension strategies through the use of think-alouds when working with content-area
specific texts.
Constructing meaning from texts. ELLs need exposure to a variety of pedagogical
strategies to help them construct meaning from texts. For instance, Farshad consistently
completed packets in his content-area classes, but he did not learn the content from this
instructional practice. In contrast, Farshad was able to learn about disabilities in his ESL class
through reading short texts, viewing a related film, and listening to guest speakers. The variety of
instructional strategies is in line with Rubinstein-Avila and Johnson’s (2008) suggestion that
ELLs’ comprehension of course content could be increased by the use of different strategies such
as reading related texts, viewing films, or exploring websites.
Data also showed that students were able to comprehend the most when they were able to
pursue their own interests. In connection to the idea of choices in the motivation section, teachers
should consider how they could design classroom activities or projects which students could use
to pursue their interests and have a sense of autonomy. The example of the interdisciplinary
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project in Nabila and Oliver’s social studies and English classes is a good example of how
content can still be addressed while simultaneously providing students autonomy. In Oliver’s
case, however, this project did not help in getting him as motivated because he did not choose a
high interest topic. In such cases, teachers should have enough background knowledge about
their students such that they could make recommendations of topics which may be of interest to
their students.
Social interactions. As demonstrated throughout the data chapters, there were minimal
positive social interactions in the ESL and English classrooms in which I observed. Incorporating
more social interactions around texts may encourage ELLs to become engaged with reading.
These social interactions will provide opportunities for students to co-construct meaning with
their peers and allow them to delve deeper into texts. It will also allow for students such as
Oliver to be less detached from the school setting. For Oliver, school seemed to be very isolating.
Oliver’s teachers could have explored reasons behind his disinterest in social interactions, and
they could have designed collaborative activities which addressed his disinterest. Had there been
more opportunities for Oliver to engage in discussions with his peers or teachers, he may have
become more invested in the school setting.
Teachers also have to be very mindful of how students are grouped. Nabila’s case
demonstrated that she felt out of place with her mainstream peers. Kanno’s (2003) study also
showed that ELLs may need support in integrating themselves into the mainstream social groups.
Keeping these ideas in mind, teachers should then plan to create heterogeneous discussion
groups rather than having students always choose their own groups. Having groups composed of
students from different backgrounds also ensures that all students are exposed to diverse
perspectives as they engage in discussions around texts.
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Addressing ELLs’ Expectancies and Values toward Reading
Based on the expectancy value framework, students’ low motivation to read academic
texts may be due to low self-efficacy as a reader or a low value placed on reading. Farshad’s
case, in particular, demonstrated that although he had a high self-perception as a reader, this did
not translate into higher reading abilities. Farshad’s high perception of his reading ability was
likely shaped by the adequate grades he received in his classes. However, these grades are likely
a reflection of the completion of tasks rather than his comprehensive understanding of the course
content. In addition, Farshad did not recognize the value of reading, and he insisted that “reading
is just a waste of time.”
Middle school practitioners, therefore, have to address two important factors. First, they
must help ELLs with their reading abilities. While there were ELLs such as Nabila and Jonathan
who were reading at grade level, there were also students such as Oliver and Farshad who
needed additional support for their literacy skills. These students were also the ones whose
reading engagement was generally lower. ESL teachers, in particular, should realize they are not
only language teachers, but they are also literacy teachers. As ELLs become more proficient with
their English speaking skills, they need instruction on how to become better readers and writers
in English. Mrs. Blake realized after our first and only formal interview that she did not know
much about the focal students’ reading abilities. Rather, she was focused more on their oral
language development. Thus, ESL teachers must also allot time to work on reading instruction.
Aside from working on vocabulary, which understandably seems to be a primary focus, attention
must also be given to strategic knowledge in order to foster ELLs’ comprehension abilities and
help them have higher self-efficacies as readers.
Middle school teachers also need to make texts and tasks relevant to students’ lives.
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Students are disengaged with reading academic texts because these texts are so disjointed from
their interests and experiences (Wigfield et al., 2012). Teachers can assist ELLs to recognize the
value of reading. For example, teachers can share how reading is essential to ELLs’ academic
success in U.S. schools. Many immigrant families value academic achievement (e.g., Li, 2007;
Zhou, 2001), and thus, this is one concrete example of how teachers can share the value of
reading with their disengaged students. There are many other ways in which teachers can show
the relevance of the text. Burke (2010) proposed that teachers have to examine the big themes in
texts and make them relevant to students’ lives. For example, when studying Romeo and Juliet,
the focus could be on the theme of relationships. Through this theme, relationships in the book
could be examined, but then students are also allowed to make connections and explore
relationships in their own lives. Relevance to students’ lives are added by connecting students’
interests and backgrounds to what they are studying (Guthrie et al., 2012b, 2012c), and doing so
would increase the likelihood of having engaged readers.
Incorporating Engaging Instructional Practices
The results of this study point to the need for engaging classrooms. The finding that ELL
reading engagement is situational points to the fact that ELLs’ reading engagement can be
increased given a classroom context which employs engaging instructional practices. Verdugo
and Flores (2007) noted that ELLs, in particular, need learning environments wherein teachers
show respect and care for their students while concurrently holding students to high expectations.
Research has shown that in engaging classrooms, students are provided autonomy in choosing
texts and tasks (Guthrie et al., 2012c; Turner & Paris, 1995). Modeling of strategy use and
problem solving skills are also frequently used in engaging classrooms (Raphael et al., 2008). In
addition, students are given opportunities to engage in discussions with peers around texts
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(Guthrie et al., 2012b). Aside from these affirming practices, teachers should also be able to
recognize existing instructional practices that actually undermine reading motivation and
engagement and avoid using instructional practices that hinder ELLs’ reading engagement.
Teachers who use engaging instructional practices would create a classroom environment
wherein students would have autonomy in the texts they read, have opportunities for in-depth
discussions with peers, and asked to complete open tasks that increase their understanding about
interesting topics. This is in contrast with a classroom that utilizes a lecture-based format where
mundane tasks such as worksheets, or a packet of worksheets, are consistently used, which is
what was frequently done in Farshad’s content-area classes. Teachers should consider using these
engaging practices to foster increased reading engagement among ELLs.
Addressing Identity Matters
An important aspect that emerged from the data is the idea that ELL identity influenced
the focal students’ reading engagement. Thus, middle school teachers need to take the time to get
to know their ELLs by asking them questions about their cultural, linguistic, and religious
backgrounds. Teachers can also draw upon ELLs as cultural resources in the classroom as way to
encourage their participation, but also to expose all students to diverse perspectives (Cummins et
al., 2005; Yoon, 2007). Thus, middle school teachers not only need to create an engaging
environment, but they must also create classrooms that are accepting of diversity. There should
not be a color-blind approach to teaching. Doing so neglects the rich cultural, linguistic, and
religious knowledge that ELLs bring to the mainstream classrooms. For instance, Ms. Costa
indicated that prior to my research she was unaware that Jonathan was an ELL. She could have
utilized Jonathan’s unique experiences as a student from a different cultural background to add
depth to classroom discussions.
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In sum, there are numerous strategies which could be utilized to address each of the
reading engagement components. Teachers must keep in mind that one component should not be
privileged over the others. Each of the components is an essential aspect of ELL reading
engagement. Neglecting to address all components will decrease the possibilities of encouraging
ELLs to become engaged readers.
Implications for ELL Reading Engagement Research
Results of this dissertation research point to the importance of a sociocultural lens to
reading engagement. While sociocultural theory has been emphasized throughout the
dissertation, it must be noted the original reading engagement model developed by Guthrie et al.
(1996), from which the four reading engagement components emerged, utilized a sociocognitive
perspective. Previous research has focused solely on the sociocognitive aspects of reading
engagement (Guthrie et al., 1996; Guthrie et al., 2004; Guthrie et al., 2012b), primarily because
their work focused on mainstream student populations. However, the current study has found that
both sociocognitive and sociocultural lenses need to be used with ELL reading engagement
research.
As discussed earlier, it is extremely important for the sociocultural lens be used given the
importance of ELL identity to ELL reading engagement. However, given the importance of all
the reading engagement components, among them strategic knowledge and constructing
meanings from texts, the sociocognitive approach is also very relevant to ELL reading
engagement. A focus on strategic knowledge and ability to construct meaning from texts is
crucial to ELL reading engagement. Given the paucity of research focusing specifically on ELL
strategic knowledge, it is even more important this component not be dismissed or overlooked in
connection with ELL reading engagement. Rather, sociocultural and sociocognitive theories
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could complement and inform one another in future research about ELL reading engagement.
A related implication from this study is that additional research should be conducted to
investigate further how ELL identity is connected to reading engagement. It seems from the case
studies examined that ELL identity is constructed not only through the individual but how the
individual is perceived and accepted by those around him or her. Adolescence is when students
typically undergo a major shift in their identity formation, and this is compounded even more for
ELLs who are trying to determine where and how they fit in to their new culture (Kanno, 2003;
Portes & Rumbaut, 2006; Zhou, 2001). Based on this study, the formation of ELL identity
impacts the kinds of texts that ELLs read, their attitude and demeanor in their ESL and
mainstream classes, and the social interactions in which they participate. However, more
research needs to be done to look more closely at other ways in which ELL identity impacts
reading engagement.
Practitioners and administrators may also need support to develop classroom and school
environments which accept and embrace diversity. Given previous research that has found that
ESL program segregate ELLs from native English speakers (Kanno, 2003) considerations must
be given on how to support ELLs to be included in mainstream students’ social networks. ELLs
not only need additional academic support, but they may also need guidance on how to make
connections with their native-English speaking peers. Nabila, in particular, felt excluded from the
mainstream population. Hence, if ELL identity is linked to reading engagement, how can support
be provided for ELLs to increase their sense of self? How can ELL identity be used as a way to
foster reading engagement? These are some questions that both the practitioner and research
fields have to grapple with and reconcile.

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Directions for Future Research
Given the paucity of research in the area of ELL reading engagement, the results of this
qualitative study provide much needed empirical foundation for future studies in this field. There
are several possibilities for research which would extend this dissertation study.
First, additional case studies of different classroom contexts are a natural extension of this
work. These qualitative research studies could provide more authentic, in-depth accounts of ELL
reading engagement in different classroom contexts and levels. For instance, to my knowledge, a
case study has yet to be conducted on ELLs’ reading engagement at the high school level.
Second, observational studies have been conducted looking specifically at engaging
classroom environments for mainstream students (Pressley et al., 2003; Rapahel, 2008), yet no
studies have been conducted looking specifically at how ESL classrooms foster reading
engagement among ELLs. What are the instructional practices used in these highly engaging
classrooms? The results of such a study would provide needed information for practitioners to
help create engaging classrooms for ELLs.
One of the strengths of this dissertation is that it was a classroom-based, in-depth
examination of ELL reading engagement. A natural extension of this work would be a formative
experiment, which is an investigation employing mixed methods to observe changes brought
about by an intervention in a classroom setting (Brown, 1985). Proponents of formative
experiments have argued this research design is more responsive to the needs of teaching and
learning in the classroom as adjustments are made to the interventions being implemented
(Baumann et al., 2007; Reinking & Bradley, 2004; Reinking & Watkins, 1998, 2000). Hence,
through a formative experiment design, researchers and practitioners can work with one another
to try to increase ELL reading engagement levels in the classroom. One study has already used a
253

formative experiment design to investigate ELL reading engagement (Ivey & Broaddus, 2007);
nevertheless, more studies should be conducted using this methodology to investigate different
aspects of ELL reading engagement.
Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, the results of this dissertation revealed that focal
students were highly disengaged with academic texts, providing additional evidence to previous
research which reported that secondary students were unmotivated and disengaged with
academic literacy (Guthrie et al., 2012; McKenna et al., 2012; Pitcher et al., 2007). Thus, a major
research question which has to be investigated is “How can ELL reading engagement with
academic literacy be fostered?” The disengagement with academic texts is a pervasive problem
in secondary schools (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Gallagher, 2009; Guthrie et al., 2012;
McKenna et al., 2012). It is a timely question which needs to be addressed by both the research
and practitioner communities.
Conclusion
In this dissertation, I described the reading engagement of four middle school ELLs. I
presented varying reading engagement profiles and highlighted three key findings. First, all four
components are essential to consider and address with ELL reading engagement. Second, I found
that ELL reading engagement is situational. In connection to this, instructional practices must be
used in classroom contexts in order to foster ELL reading engagement. Finally, results of this
dissertation revealed that ELL identity is also an essential component of ELL reading
engagement.
It is my hope the results of this dissertation research bring to light some aspects of the
reading processes of ELLs and second language readers that have been overlooked. After all, in
order to fully understand second language reading processes, second language reading
254

engagement must also be examined (Taboada & McElvany, 2009). Armed with this
understanding, practitioners may be in a better position to plan instruction with the cultivation of
reading engagement in mind. On a more theoretical level, through this dissertation research, a
more complete model of reading engagement can be formed. A model of ELL reading
engagement would involve the fusion of the sociocognitive and sociocultural perspectives on
reading engagement. By addressing both the sociocognitive and sociocultural aspects of ELL
reading engagement, my hope is that more ELLs will realize the value and joy of reading and
become truly engaged readers.

255

APPENDICES

256

Appendix A
Interview Protocol with New Focal Students
Introduction: Hi, I’m Selena, an international student from MSU. Through this interview, I hope
to find out more about your reading engagement and reading habits. Like you, I am from another
country, the Philippines. Have you ever heard of it? (Talk about this a bit). I was born in the
Philippines, and I came here to the United States when I was a kid, and so like you, I had to learn
English and I also went to elementary school in the US. Do you have any questions for me? Now
that you’ve learned more about me, I want to learn about you.
Background
1. Tell me about yourself (if not provided, ask questions about where students are from,

family background, how long they’ve been in the United States).
2. Can you tell me about your native country?
3. Did you go to school in your native country? Can you tell me about your experience in

school over there? Did they teach English over there?
4. Can you describe your experience when you first got to the United States and had to go to

school here? What were your experiences when you learned how to speak and read
English?
5. What was it like for you to start reading in English? What were some challenges you had

to face?
6. Can you tell me what you like about middle school? What do you like about it? What

don’t you like?
7. Tell me about your favorite classes. Why do you like them?
8. What kinds of reading do you do in middle school? What can you say about the reading

that you do in middle school?
Motivation
9. What makes you want to read?
10. What are some things that you don’t like about reading? When do you not like to read?
11. What’s your favorite book? Who is your favorite author?
12. What are the kinds of texts that you like to read? Why? What is it about these texts that

make them appealing?
257

13. What are the texts that you don’t like to read? Why not?
14. Can you tell me about a time in middle school when you were very interested in what you

were reading? Why did you feel that way?
15. Can you tell me about a time in middle school when you didn’t want to read something?

Why did you feel that way?
Conceptual Understanding
16. How do you use reading to learn new information?
17. What do you want to learn through reading?
18. What have you learned recently from reading something?
19. How do you use reading to learn in your ESL/English class?

Strategic Knowledge
20. What makes someone a good reader?
21. How do you know you are reading something well?
22. What do you do when you don’t understand something when you’re reading?
23. What are some strategies you use to help you understand?
24. How did you learn to use these strategies when reading?

Social Interactions
25. Who do you talk to about what you are reading? What do you usually talk about?
26. Do you and your friends talk about reading? If you do, how often? What do you and your

friends usually talk about when it comes to reading?
27. What are some good things about talking with others about what you are reading? What

are some disadvantages?
28. Is there anything you want to say that I did not ask you about?

Closing: Thank you so much (Name). I have enjoyed talking to you and learning more
about you.

258

Appendix B
Interview Protocol with Previous Focal Students

Introduction: Hi [Name]. It’s so good to see you again. Thank you for agreeing to participate in
this study.
Background
1. Tell me what has been going on with you since we last talked.
2. Can you tell me what you like about middle school? What do you like about it? What don’t

you like?
3. Tell me about your favorite classes. Why do you like them?
4. What kinds of reading do you do in middle school? What can you say about the reading that

you do in middle school?
Motivation
5. When we last talked, some of the books that you mentioned that you had been reading were

_______________. What are some books that you have read recently that you have liked?
Why did you like these books? What other things have you been reading?
6. How do you decide what you are going to read?
7. What are some things that you don’t like reading?
8. Can you tell me about a time in middle school when you were very interested in what you

were reading? Why did you feel that way?
9. Can you tell me about a time in middle school when you didn’t want to read something? Why

did you feel that way?
Conceptual Understanding
10. How do you use reading to learn new information?
11. What do you want to learn through reading?
12. What have you learned recently from reading something?
13. How do you use reading to learn in your ESL/English class?

Strategic Knowledge
14. What makes someone a good reader?
15. How do you know you are reading something well?
259

16. What do you do when you don’t understand something when you’re reading?
17. What are some strategies you use to help you understand?
18. How did you learn to use these strategies when reading?
Social Interactions
19. Who do you talk to about what you are reading? What do you usually talk about?
20. When we last talked, you told me that you liked to talk with your friends about what you
were reading. Do you still do that a lot? What do you and your friends usually talk about when it
comes to reading?
21. What are some good things about talking with others about what you are reading? What are
some disadvantages?
22. Is there anything you want to say that I did not ask you about?

Closing: Thank you so much (Name). I have enjoyed talking to you and learning more about
you.

260

Appendix C
Interview Protocol for Teachers
Introduction: Hi [Name]. Thanks for agreeing to participate in this study and for allowing me to
observe in your classroom. Through this study, I would like to know more about ELLs’ reading
engagement.

1. First of all, I’d like to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
2. I would also like to know more about your teaching background. How long have you been

teaching? Where? Aside from what you are currently teaching, what else have you taught?
3. What are some of the things you focus on specifically in connection with reading instruction?
4. What are some ways in which you support ELLs in general in your classroom?
5. Let’s turn our attention to the student(s) I am focusing on for my study. Can you tell me a little

bit about [Name of Focal Student]?
a. How is [Name of Focal Student] doing in your class? What are his/her strengths in

terms of reading? What are his/her areas of improvement?
b. What can you say about [Name of Focal Student]’s motivation to read?
c. Can you tell me what you have noticed about [Name of Focal Student]’s comprehension

strategy knowledge? What about his/her use of comprehension strategies?
d. Have you noticed whether or not [Name of Focal Student]’s work indicates a good

understanding of the topics you are studying?
e. How does [Name of Focal Student] do when working in groups? Can you describe some

things you have noticed about his/her participation in these social interactions around
reading?
6. Is there anything you want to say that I did not ask you about?

Closing: Thank you so much. I have enjoyed talking to you and learning more about you and
your students.

261

Appendix D

Reading Activity Inventory

Name: ________________________________ Date: __________________

READING ACTIVITY INVENTORY
Directions: We are interested in knowing about your reading activities and in finding
out how much you read different kinds of texts. You will circle the answers to some of
the questions, and write the answers to the others.
Practice Question
1. Do you watch television? (Circle only one)
No…………… 1

Yes………….. 2

If yes, write the title of your favorite television show.
Favorite television show: _________________________________

2. How often do you watch this television show? (Circle only one)

Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

262

Questions About Reading For
Your Own Enjoyment
Directions: In this section, think about texts that you read for your own interest that
are not assigned for school or homework.
1. Did you read a mystery book anytime in the past two weeks for your own interest?
(Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have.
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
2. How often do you read a mystery for your own interest? (Circle only one)

Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

3. Did you read an adventure/suspense book anytime in the past two weeks for your own
interest? (Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have.
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
263

Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
4. How often do you read an adventure/suspense book for your own interest? (Circle only
one.)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

5. Did you read a fantasy book anytime in the past two weeks for your own interest? (Circle
only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have.
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
6. How often do you read a fantasy book for your own interest? (Circle only one.)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

7. Did you read a science book anytime in the past two weeks for your own interest? (Circle
only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have.
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
264

Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
8. How often do you read science books for your own interest? (Circle only one)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

9. Did you read a humorous book anytime in the past two weeks for your own interest?

(Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have.
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
10. How often do you read humorous books for your own interest? (Circle only one)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

11. Did you read any other kind of book in the past two weeks for your own interest that
was not mentioned? (Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

265

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
something you learned from that text and other comments you may have. I have included three
spaces below in case you have read books from a variety of genres in these past two weeks.
Genre: ________________________________________________________________
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________

Genre: ________________________________________________________________
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________

Genre: ________________________________________________________________
Book title: _____________________________________________________________
Author: _______________________________________________________________
Topic: ________________________________________________________________
Main idea: _____________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
12. Did you read a magazine anytime in the past two weeks for your own interest? (Circle
only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2
266

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
other comments you may have.
Magazine title(s): _______________________________________________________
Article Topic(s) you read about: ___________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
13. How often do you read magazines for your own interest? (Circle only one)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4

14. Did you read online in the past two weeks for your own interest? (Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the names of the websites you typically visit and specific topics you read about.
Please also provide something you learned from what you read online and other comments you
may have.
Website(s): ___________________________________________________________
Topic(s) you read about: __________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Something you have learned from reading online: ______________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
15. How often do you read online for your own interest? (Circle only one)
Almost never………….. 1
About once a month….. 2
267

About once a week…… 3
Almost every day……… 4
16. Did you read a text in your native language anytime in the past two weeks for your own
interest? (Circle only one)
No…………. 1

Yes………… 2

If yes, write in the title, author, or the specific topic that you read about. Please also provide
other comments you may have.
Title(s): _______________________________________________________
Topic(s) you read about: ___________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Other comments: _______________________________________________________
17. How often do you read materials in your native language for your own interest? (Circle
only one)
Almost never………….. 1

About once a week…… 3

About once a month….... 2

Almost every day……… 4
(Adapted from Guthrie & Wigfield, 1997)

268

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