Which is a better solution for our non- English speaking students? 1 Susana Pinto Spring 2010

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RESEARCH DESIGN Nonequivalent Control Group Design: Two groups are pretested, exposed to a treatment (x), and post tested (o). Symbolic design: – O X 1 O – O X 2 O 3

Threats to Internal Validity History: During allotted time there may be distractions, i.e. weather, phone in classroom, fire drills, etc. Maturation: Students over time may lose interest or may be embarrassed to be in the group and not pay attention. Testing/Pre-test Sensitization: Students can expect what will be on the post-test since there will be a pre-test to asses the students. Instrumentation: Students might get bored of taking the surveys or parents might not fully understand what is being asked. Mortality: Students might be absent or move away. Differential Selection of Subjects: Each group is in a different school. One group will be given material in their native language and the other group will only be given English material. 4

Threats to External Validity Ecological Validity: The results of this study can be generalized with other students that are facing the same language barrier. Selection Treatment Interaction: Students were not randomly selected. Both groups were selected because they are learning to read the English language. Multiple Treatment: The researcher is using two treatments, immersion / bilingual lesson plans. Experimenter Effects: Researcher does present a threat due to the fact that they have a personal connection with the topic. Reactive Arrangements/Participants Effects: This could possibly be a threat to the study because since this is new for the students they will do better than on ordinary circumstances, i.e. Novelty Effect. 5

Proposed Data Survey ResultsScores 1 – Never read to my child in English 50 % 1 – Never read to my child in English 60% 1 – Never read to my child in English 50% 4 – Read to my child 3 times or more 100% 2 – Read to my child once a week 75% 4 – Read to my child 3 times or more 90% 1 – Never read to my child in English 65% A question that was given to parents on a survey: How often do you read to your child in English? Pre-Test to each student in both groups - G:\WHAT AM I WORKSHEET.docG:\WHAT AM I WORKSHEET.doc 6

Pre-test & Parental Survey Results Do parents reading to their child in English help literacy skills? 7

Proposed Data Analysis & Correlation From the previous Bar Graph we can see that the more a parent reads to their child in English the higher the pre-test score is. This is a good indication that immersing the student in English language has higher benefits than bi-lingual instruction. Also, our correlation chart shows a high positive correlation. The Rxy is

References O’Connor – Petruso, S.,(2008) Stat.scales.analyses.threats.design.ppt. 9