Dissertation Defense: Negar Siyari

Candidate: Negar Siyari

Major: Linguistics

Advisor: Lourdes Ortega, Ph.D.

Title: From Displacement to Empowerment: An Investigation of a Task-based Approach to Teaching English to Afghan Newcomers in the U.S.

 A mass evacuation and displacement of Afghan citizens took place after the United States military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Within a year, nearly 100,000 Afghans arrived and resettled in the U.S. One critical aspect of their settlement and integration is learning English. This will help them find jobs, take care of their families and personal wellbeing, and eventually to thrive in the new society (Smart, De Maio, Rioseco, & Edwards, 2017). However, flexible teaching approaches are required for addressing the unique needs of refugee and newcomer language learners. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has an edge over other teaching approaches because it has proven to be effective not only for needs-driven learning of language, but also for its potential of accelerating the attainment of sufficient proficiency to conduct daily real-life tasks (Long, 2015). Yet much of the English language instruction resettlement agencies offer is of a traditional kind, focusing on explicit teaching of general grammar and vocabulary (Sharifian et al., 2021). Effective pedagogical approaches such as TBLT among new waves of refugees with urgent language learning needs deserve more attention in applied linguistics research. This dissertation aims to investigate the possible contributions that TBLT can make to refugee language education and the ways Afghan newcomer language learners can alter or reinforce these contributions. I present this research in two main empirical studies: a needs analysis (NA), and a curriculum implementation. The first study focuses on an NA among nine Afghan newcomers designed as the first step in a TBLT curriculum. Two resulting curricula were implemented individually for two Afghan women who had come to the U.S. in 2021. The implementation is examined based on Afghan English learners’ linguistic, content, and socio-emotional outcomes and performances using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework. (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; 2007) Findings from this study can inform the design of TBLT host-language education for Afghan newcomers and other refugees in the U.S. The study also has implications for ongoing Participatory Action Research in applied linguistics and education, emphasizing the inclusion of refugees as research collaborators to inform studies.