Research focus
My research focus lies in two major areas: children’s writing development and literacy for new immigrant students. Currently, I am conducting research in an elementary school while helping the school implementing effective writing instruction across grades that goes beyond test-preparation. For a decade, I have been working in the K-12 schools of New York City, which house a large percentage of new immigrant students: helping teachers improve their instruction for students with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, while conducting research on literacy instruction for new immigrant students. My work in NYC schools has been expanded from one middle school to thirteen K-12 schools from lower Manhattan to Bronx. My book, An Island of English: Teaching ESL in Chinatown, published in 2003 by Heinemann has reported my work and research in an inner-city middle school of NYC and addresses the following issues pertaining to the literacy education for new immigrant students:
- Content knowledge in bilingual instruction
- Systematic development of oral language skills
- Diversified instruction for ELLs
- Writing instruction for ELLs with limited English proficiency
- Developmental views on assessment of ELL'slanguage errors
In addition to my two books on literacy instruction for new immigrants, I have published numerous articles and book chapters for children’s writing development. My most recent research is on English language learners’ writing development from their first language to English, which illustrates four stages of ELLs’ writing development: (1) First Language Usage; (2) Mixed Language or Code-switching Usage; (3) Trans-language Usage; and (4) Approaching Standard English. This study stresses the important role of the students’ first language and highlights the values of mixed-language, code-switching and trans-language usages in ELLs’ writing development. The research has been presented at various conferences at the national and regional levels.
