| This dissertation consists of an introduction and three articles on the academic vocabulary skills of language-minority community college students. Abstracts for each article are presented below:; Article 1. This study identified background factors that are predictive of differences in academic-vocabulary knowledge among language-minority community college students and in comparison to native English-speaking students. Certain background characteristics may predispose some students to struggle with academic vocabulary. Among language-minority students, the study identified Asian students in ESL classes and GED (General Educational Development) holders in mainstream courses. Some risk factors that are common to native English-speaking students and language-minority students include: being a first-generation college student who is moderately integrated into the academic life of the community college, being of African national origin, and studying part-time. Findings suggests that community colleges would improve academic outcomes if they directed vocabulary instructional resources to students with these at-risk characteristics.; Article 2. This study examined how ten language-minority community college students infer meanings of unknown words in academic texts. The analysis examined the sources of information students use to infer word meanings, including contextual cues (e.g., interpretation of text content), intralingual cues (e.g., syntactic function of the unknown word), and interlingual cues (e.g., cognate relationships). Lexical inferencing represents an essential skill for language-minority students who inevitably will encounter unknown words in their academic texts. However, successful inferencing depends on the students' facility in other areas of L2 reading development, such as word recognition, academic vocabulary, and comprehension.; Article 3. This study explored the academic vocabulary knowledge of 10 language-minority community college students, including breadth of knowledge (how many academic words students know) as well as their depth of knowledge (how well students know academic words). Data indicate that students with greater breadth of academic word knowledge also demonstrated greater depth of academic words. Students' L1 academic proficiency was also related to variation in vocabulary knowledge: students exhibiting weak academic skills in both the L1 and English demonstrated particularly weak academic vocabulary knowledge. Community colleges should direct instructional attention to breadth and depth of academic vocabulary knowledge to promote the academic success of language-minority students. |
