Memo #2: Searching for Scholarly Sources and Educational Research!

            The idea of searching for information via library database overwhelmed me at first. I remember my first time using HELIN for a final paper in my American Literature class. It was a tedious experience of having to narrow down a plethora of academic journals to what was relevant and what wasn’t necessary. I ended up with heaps of irrelevant information that didn’t go well with my thesis. For my I-Search Project, however, HELIN proved me wrong. 

In searching for scholarly sources that could assist me with exploring the English Language Learner’s cognitive experience while writing in English, I at first grew irritated because many of the options had to do with the English Language Learner and technology…completely irrelevant to my search. In digging deeper, however, my anxiety eased because I found articles such as “The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach: A model for Linguistically Diverse Classrooms” by Anna Uhl Chamot, as well as “Independent Language Learning: Building on Experience, Seeking New Perspectives” by Bruce Morrison. Just by getting a general idea of these articles, I know it will benefit with my search in understanding the English Language Learner, simply because these articles don’t just draw on strategies for teaching the ELL (which many of the articles do). It isn’t that I am completely uninterested in learning strategies in order to help the ELL, but I’m looking for something, anything that will help me to take on a new perspective. If I know what the English Language Learning student is going through when faced with a prompt, I can be that much more useful in assisting them and easing them of an upcoming learned helplessness. Knowing that there is educational research available for me to use in understanding the English Language Learner without so much of a focus on “what can we do to help”? “How can we engage them”? These articles focus more on: ”what is it that disengages the English Language Learning student?” -which is the main focus of my search. I believe this educational research will bring me closer to understanding my future English Language Learning students.