Ryan T MillerKent State University | KSU · Department of English
Ryan T Miller
Ph.D. (Carnegie Mellon University), M.A. (Michigan State University)
About
46
Publications
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Introduction
I am a professor in the TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) program in the Department of English at Kent State University. My research investigates cross-linguistic transfer of reading skills in second language reading, and development of disciplinary genre knowledge among second language writers.
Additional affiliations
September 2013 - August 2014
Education
August 2009 - August 2013
August 2007 - May 2009
August 1996 - May 2000
Publications
Publications (46)
Background: In recent years, the number of Japanese Language Learner (JLL) students, or children who speak a language other than Japanese and require Japanese language instruction, has been rapidly increasing in Japanese schools. Successful inclusion of students who use Japanese as a second language in the classroom creates opportunities for all st...
Public schools in Japan have become increasingly linguistically, ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse (Furuta et al., 2022). In rural regions, the number of Japanese-national students is declining in schools, and education services are shrinking (Mantanle, 2014) because of the aging population and low birth rate. This has led to serious...
The purpose of this study was to analyze international graduate students’ study abroad experiences at a university in Japan. In this qualitative study, in-depth, semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 1998) grounded in the concept of the sojourner (Siu, 1952) were conducted with international students studying in an English-medium graduate program at...
Teaching literacy skills that require critical reading and linguistic output can feel like an insurmountable challenge when presented with students of varying language proficiencies. One valuable but often unused tool to surmount these challenges is wordless picture books (WPBs). WPBs can be used to develop literacy skills more equitably among lear...
The purpose of this study was to investigate five Japanese graduate (master’s level) students’ experiences in online courses in international development and peace through sport that used English as the medium of instruction. The study was situated in the framework of andragogy theory and used a descriptive-qualitative design using an in-depth, sem...
The purpose of this study was to describe and explain in-service Japanese elementary classroom teachers’ experiences with parental involvement of immigrant parents as it pertains to physical education (PE). The study was framed using the theory of teacher development. This study used a descriptive-qualitative methodology and an explanatory case stu...
The purpose of this study was to analyse Japanese elementary school teachers’ learning experiences during professional development (PD) regarding immigrant parental involvement in physical education (PE) at public schools in Japan. Based on andragogy theory, this study used an explanatory case study research design. Nine Japanese elementary teacher...
This qualitative study examined professors’ experiences in teaching online courses in an English-medium graduate program at a Japanese university. Based on Andragogy Theory (Knowles, 1989), data included in-depth, semi-structured interviews (Seidman, 1998) with six professors who were faculty in a graduate program in Sport for Development. Synchron...
This study aimed to validate the Simple View of Reading (SVR) in L2 English readers
with alphabetic and morphosyllabic L1 writing system backgrounds. Forty-five L2 English learners enrolled in American university bridge programs completed a set of tasks that measured real word decoding efficiency, pseudoword decoding efficiency, linguistic (listeni...
This volume brings together original papers from language education scholars from around the world to explore, exemplify, and discuss the multiplicity of boundary crossing in language education. It emphasizes the potential of boundary crossing for expansive learning, and aims to generate new insights, through boundary crossing, into the complexity...
This chapter first discusses the concept of boundary crossing and its learning potential in education and underscores the urgency of crossing a multitude of boundaries for researching, understanding, and improving language education. It then discusses the important role of expert boundary crossers. In particular, it highlights how G. Richard Tucker...
While writing courses often include instruction in rhetorical aspects of writing (i.e., learning to write), business content courses often assign writing as a tool for learning and assessing content knowledge (i.e., writing to learn), with little attention to students' rhetorical understanding of genres. This leaves students with an incomplete unde...
The establishment of TESOL as a professional field in the 1960s was led by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), where Dick Tucker played a crucial role in shaping its missions and strategies and deconstructing diverse boundaries for understanding the profession and supporting teachers (Crandall & Tucker, 1990; Tucker, 1993). Due to its origin,...
The purpose of this study was to explain secondary PE teachers’ positioning regarding teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) in urban schools. PE teachers may be fearful of looking inward to examine and share their beliefs and values of hidden conscripts of race, ethnicity, class, and languages. This study found that PE teachers sought ways to i...
The purpose of this study was to describe and explain Japanese generalist elementary teachers’ experiences teaching physical education (PE) to Japanese language learner (JLL) children in public schools in Japan. Participants were seven public elementary school teachers (two females and five males) who had experience teaching JLL children. Data sour...
The purpose of this study was to describe and explain in-service Japanese elementary classroom teachers’ experiences with parental involvement of immigrant parents as it pertains to physical education (PE). The study was framed using the theory of teacher development. This study used a descriptive-qualitative methodology and an explanatory case stu...
The bulk of second language (L2) vocabulary learning happens incidentally through reading ( Rott, 2007 ; Webb, 2008 ), but individual differences, such as prior knowledge, modulate the efficacy of such incidental learning. One individual difference that is strongly predicted to play a role in L2 vocabulary is declarative memory ability; however, li...
The bulk of second language (L2) vocabulary learning happens incidentally through reading (Rott, 2007; Webb, 2008), but individual differences, such as prior knowledge, modulate the efficacy of such incidental learning. One individual difference that is strongly predicted to play a role in L2 vocabulary is declarative memory ability; however, links...
This study examined the cross-linguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy development. The analysis included 34 correlational studies with 40 independent samples (N = 4,056). Correlational coefficients were meta-analyzed, yielding four main findings: (1) the correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) MA wa...
The purpose of the current study was to describe and explain American domestic students’ experiences interacting with international students in a conversation partner program at an American university. This study used an explanatory (holistic) multiple case study design using in-depth, semi-structured interviews grounded in positioning theory. The...
https://my.vanderbilt.edu/slrf2020/files/2019/09/Second-Language-Research-Forum-2020_-10.12.pdf
This study explores the relationship between second language writers’ feedback seeking behavior (FSB) and students’ L2 writing performance. Ashford (1983) defined FSB as “the conscious devotion of effort toward determining the correctness and adequacy of behaviors for attaining valued end states” (p. 466). Previous research has considered FSB as a...
Much L2 vocabulary acquisition happens incidentally through reading (Rott, 2007; Webb, 2008). Incidental vocabulary learning has been found to be affected by individual differences in working memory (Cain, Lemmon, & Oakhill, 2004) and L2 proficiency (Lee & Pulido, 2017), and some research has suggested the existence of Matthew effects (Stanovich, 1...
When learning to read, one of the most fundamental processes for learners is understanding relationships between printed text and spoken language. Orthography refers to the language‐specific variations in these relationships. As one of the deepest alphabetic orthographies, the orthography of English is highly irregular and inconsistent in the relat...
Much of L2 learners’ vocabulary acquisition happens incidentally, particularly through reading (Rott, 2007; Webb, 2008). Previous research has found individual differences such as working memory (Cain, Lemmon, & Oakhill, 2004) and L2 proficiency (Lee & Pulido, 2017) play a substantial role in incidental vocabulary learning. Furthermore, Matthew eff...
Reforming and modernizing higher education has recently become an
important goal in the national vision of several Middle Eastern countries.
To move toward this goal, a common strategy has been the emulation
of models from abroad—mostly Western models—by establishing
international branch campuses (IBCs) on their soil. Of the 240 IBCs
established wo...
L2 reading entails a complex cross-linguistic interaction between L1 reading
ability and L2 linguistic knowledge. As such, it is seen as a dynamic process of
coalescing diverse resources, including cognitive skills, linguistic knowledge, and
metalinguistic awareness, in two languages. In this chapter, we explain the nature
of morphological awarenes...
This paper reports on an SFL-based writing intervention in a university global histories course and examines differences in developmental trajectories among students after the intervention. Based on our previous research on writing in this course, we developed three Systemic Functional Linguistics-based workshops to explicitly teach valued linguist...
This study investigates the effects of individual differences in declarative memory and vocabulary size on L2 incidental vocabulary learning through reading among American intermediate-level L2 Spanish learners. The results have implications for memory- and usage-based models of language as well as for individual differences in L2 vocabulary instru...
University students across disciplines are often expected to write argumentative texts. However, many students, particularly L2 writers, struggle writing arguments and teachers may not be prepared to effectively scaffold argument writing. Despite its importance, argumentative writing is still an underresearched area in second language writing. In t...
In recent years, corpus methods have increasingly been applied to the study of disciplinary genres (e.g. Cortes 2004 ; Flowerdew 2015 ; Hyland 2008 ; Nesi and Gardner 2012 ; Swales 2014 ). These studies are important because university students must learn to understand and produce disciplinary genres in order to become a full-fledged member of thei...
Understanding the roles of general cognitive processes in language learning is one of the central goals of research in second language acquisition (SLA). Of these cognitive processes, the role of attention in second language (L2) learning are central to numerous theoretical frameworks (e.g., Ellis, 2006; Gass, 1997; Leow, 2015; Schmidt, 1990; Tomli...
Recently, many western institutions have established international branch campuses (IBCs) in many parts of the MENA region. However, to be successful, IBCs must adapt to the needs of the context in which they operate. This chapter investigates challenges and adaptations in integrating academic writing across the curriculum at a branch campus of an...
The authors examine the challenges students faced in trying to write organized texts using effective thesis statements and topic sentences by analyzing argumentative history essays written by multilingual students enrolled in an undergraduate history course. They use the notions of macro-Theme (i.e., thesis statement) and hyper-Theme (i.e., topic s...
This study examines case analysis writing in the field of Information Systems (IS), focusing on the roles students adopt in their writing and the functions that these roles perform. Previous research on case analysis in business has found that adoption of specific roles, such as business consultant or manager, is important in case analysis writing....
Drawing on data from a 4-year longitudinal study of literacy development at an English-medium university in Qatar, this paper aims to document the challenges and development of multilingual students' literacy skills in their transition to college. Interviews reveal students' challenges during the first semester in terms of reading comprehension dif...