USING VIDEO AND SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE PERSISTENCE IN LATIN

AMERICAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH IN THE UNITED STATES: AN ACTION

RESEARCH PROJECT
Rebecca Allen
1​
University of Cincinnati (United States of America)

Abstract
This research uses an action-based research lens to determine the needs of adult Latin American
English as Second Language learners in the United States and develop curriculum enhanced with
social media and video content that both meets the learners’ needs and encourages them to persist
studying so as to achieve their own goals. Qualitative methods including focus groups, interviews, and
teacher observation journals were used to inform curricular and programmatic development, ultimately
promoting student engagement and persistence.
Through qualitative inquiry, the learners' needs and motivations became clear. Students expressed
a clear need to learn language to equip them to advocate for themselves and their families in
high-stakes situations such as police encounters and educational settings. Understanding the needs, I
then designed a curriculum to help learners reach their stated goals. It became apparent, however,
that the program faced the same challenges as adult education programs everywhere: student
persistence.
Examining the data and reflecting on possible causes and solutions of this lack of student
persistence, it was determined that many factors feed into a cycle of student discouragement and
disengagement. Many of our students had experienced disrupted education - this lack of educational
experience contributed to unrealistic goals about the ease of English learning and lack of study skills
to carry out the necessary studying between classes. Our students often had unstable work and
immigration situations which contributed to sporadic attendance. This sporadic attendance meant that
students may have felt behind when they did come to class, contributing to discouragement and
ultimate student stop out.
Looking to find a means to engage students and scaffold their learning, it was determined that
majority of students were on social media, and the distribution of video content via social media may
allow all learners, even the students with more emerging literacy, to connect with the class content
during the week, thus contributing to more effective engagement.
Keywords: English as a Second Language, Latinos, Learner Persistence, Technology

1 INTRODUCTION
Reflecting on immigration, many readers may be able to either personally relate, or at least on
some level, imagine, the uncertainty, and distress that accompanies leaving one’s home, family and
belongings for something or somewhere largely unknown [1]. Rebuilding a life – whether the
immigration was voluntary or forced – is difficult. Many might say that learning English will certainly
pave the way to a better life for immigrants, and, perhaps, learning English may indeed do so. But it is
important to realize that immigrants have left more than just their languages and prior livelihoods;
many of them have left behind their previous abilities to find whom to talk to, how and when, that is,
their networks. In Stanton-Salazar’s conception, networks are composed of people who transmit
cultural and social knowledge that results in access to professional and academic opportunities [2] .
Yet, within immigrant community English as a Second Language classes, there is often the notion of
just giving students survival English in the form of a pre-determined curriculum which prepares
students for low level employment [3] because the real needs of community knowledge and
connectivity and care are never met [4]. Action research, along with a focus on learner participation in
curriculum development, has been proposed as way for educators to develop more holistic community
ESL programs that empower students to form networks, develop community knowledge, and
ultimately succeed [5]. So teaching an ESL class in close communication and concert with our
learners – really trying to listen to what they were telling us and trying to connect them to additional
educational opportunities -- is what we set out to do.
However, in conducting this action research project about ESL for Latinos, I ran into what so many
adult educators know too well: low student persistence [6], [7]. Classes that are really designed to
move students forward in life are superb – if students attend those classes. We, the teachers,
wondered: Why were many of our students not persisting? As a teacher, uncomfortably, I questioned:
Is there something I should do – or should not do? Thus, as a teacher-researcher, I developed the
following research questions: 1) What actions could promote student persistence - that is, encourage
students to continue to attend - so that student could reach their own goals, goals that they
themselves had expressed? 2) What role could technology play in potentially promoting our learners’
persistence and access to education? In the end, what I realized is that although technology can be
useful in that it can be used to create a positive retention climate, societal factors temper learner
motivation and success. An environment where students are investing and invested in must be
created [8]. Creation of this environment is not easy. Empowerment and grassroots change of the
injustices faced by immigrants are long overdue. We may not be able to, speaking in cliché, change
the world, but our own professional and personal ethics compel us to work alongside immigrants to
widen the “pipeline” [2, p. 1066] towards their own successes.

2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
This article draws from the critical literacy approach of Freire and Horton. Both Freire and Horton
leveraged literacy to bring about empowerment [9]; Freire, to Brazilian agricultural workers, and Horton
to disenfranchised African Americans of the American South. For critical theorists such as Freire,
teachers are obligated to “figure out some better way” [9, p. 233] of doing education; there is a call to
action to not simply exist within a system, but to change it. This acting in the system, changing it,
“learning how to make history” [9, p. 216] is far from simple.
Tied up in this making history, is the language, but not just the language. Significantly, language
teachers have seldom grappled with the fact that English language – its forms, its structures, its words
-- is not the only challenge that immigrants face when learning to speak the discourse of the larger
society [10]. Embedded under and within the language, sometimes outside of our immediate notice,
are power structures that regulate whom we talk to and how we talk to them and just what we can
normally expect to get from our talking [10], [11]. As teachers, we need to give students the nuts and
bolts of the actual language, but also the connections and the know-how to employ linguistic
knowledge to achieve goals. Stanton-Salazar calls this linking of student to networks promotion of
social capital [2].

3 METHODOLOGY
From a methodological standpoint, action research is championed as a way to empower
immigrants to find this social capital and see ways forward towards bigger achievements [5], [2].
Action research is a cyclical methodology that endeavors to understand problems carefully, take
appropriate actions, reflect upon the results of those actions, refine those actions and try them out
once more until a satisfactory resolution is reached [12]. This methodology was pioneered by Kurt
Lewin in the aftermath of World War II. Lewin, looking for a way to address the racial and
socio-economic inequities in American society of his day, stated “research that produces nothing but
books will not suffice” [13, p. 35]. Subsequent to Lewin, Freire was instrumental in further carrying out
action research to aid leaners to gain a voice in the society where they live [9].
Action research can be done from a variety of perspectives and approaches [14]. This particular
action research project draws on multi-modal qualitative data primarily from a first-person stance;
namely here I tell my story as a teacher and reflect on the efficacy of my own actions [15]. I chose to
report the research primarily from my perspective. As will be later elaborated, for a variety of social,
logistical, and cultural factors, it is difficult to dialog with students who do not come to classes. Hence I
had to draw connections between the data that I could gather from and about the missing students
and other teachers’ experiences to build my own understanding. However, the fact that the research is
in my own voice is not to the exclusion of student voices: I aim to actively incorporate student voices to
the extent possible. This inclusion is for reasons of both democratic participation as well as validity –
more voices mean deeper understanding of the problem and more robust solutions [14].

3.1 Participants
The participants of this study are myself (a teacher), the two other teachers from the program, and
the learners who were active in co-constructing the content and focuses of the class and overall
program. The learners were Latino and indigenous immigrants, primarily from Guatemala, but also
from other parts of Central and South America. Many of the Guatemalan learners also spoke
indigenous languages such as Mam or Ki’che’. Interrupted education was common amongst the
students, or as one student put it: “I only studied until third grade, and I wanted to do more, but I
couldn’t.” Thus, approximately half of the leaners were binate learners, learners who may have never
achieved a high level of proficiency reading in their native language(s) because of disrupted education
[16]. Learner names have not been used in this paper. The number of students varied at each weekly
class; the average number of students who attended was eight. The classes took place weekly, on
Saturdays, in the context of a free community ESL program in a medium-sized Midwestern city in the
US.

3.2 Data Sources

Two focus groups were conducted, and I kept journals and took field notes of my teaching
experiences, classes, and conversations with students. I along with the other teachers, am proficient in
Spanish (though am not a native Spanish speaker), so the data were collected in Spanish but notes
were taken and kept in English with view of eventual dissemination. Given the tense immigration
climate in the US, voice recording student voices was deemed inappropriate and to be an impediment
to the sharing real opinions. Instead, I aimed to take careful notes of verbal interactions, transcribing
information and key quotes.

3.3 Analysis
For analysis, I drew upon thematic analysis [17] influenced by Fairclough’s critical discourse
analysis [10]. I feel strongly that my biases and intentions should be clearly disclosed, the reader: in
this article I attempt to contemplate the power bound up in the majority language (in this context,
English), and try to challenge what Fairclough calls “common sense” assumptions about immigrant
literacy. Unabashedly I seek this understanding to try to empower our students to find voices in society
and promote their own successes. I have chosen to interweave the themes while presenting the data
narratively to portray my evolution as teacher and paint a picture of the learners’ stories.

4 LITERATURE REVIEW
However, before the narrative aspect of the paper, it is important to understand why English class is
important and why persisting in English classes matters. To begin with, many Latino immigrants
grapple with low proficiency in English; only about one-third of immigrants from Central America and
Mexico are English proficient [18]. This lack of English proficiency has negative consequences for
families and communities. Over lifespans, English language proficiency has been associated with
enhanced socio-economic status for Latino immigrants [19], [20] and thereby improved educational
and health outcomes [21] for whole families. Yet adults often do not persist in English language
classes [6], [22]–[24]; it has long been documented that adult learners who persist in adult education
programs, such as this ESL programs, do so against the “odds” [25, p. 3].
If then, adult learners tend to drop out of ESL programs, what are the causes? Social capital
theory suggests that students need not only to have the traditional psychological construct of
motivation, but also to perceive that continued language study will create real value for them [11]. In
the literature it is clear that learners seek not just their own personal success, but often try to create
success for the whole family. In many cases, learner families provide motivation and support that
students need to initiate English studies in the first place, as time spent studying English is time not
spent working to earn money to support families [26]. The associated feelings of guilt of depending
upon one’s family or actual needs may contribute to students dropping out of classes [27]–[29].
Furthermore, It has been seen that the stepped up US deportations have resulted in undocumented
persons forgoing healthcare [30]; if immigrants are compelled to abstain from healthcare, it may not be
surprising that consistently investing in English class may not be deemed worth the reallocation of time
or the incurred risks of traveling to places (i.e. possibly being detained by immigration authorities). It
would seem the current immigration climate in the US is not conducive to behaviors that promote
long-term well-being in Latino immigrant families.

5 RESULTS

5.1 Needs Analysis

​Early in the program, after we had enrolled students, the teachers conducted a focus group to
determine how best to begin developing curricula. The 12 learners expressed interest in learning
English for the tasks of daily life: for example, they wanted to talk with children's school teachers and
request items in the supermarket. Learners also wanted to learn how to communicate in emergency
situations, such as calling 911 (the US emergency services hotline). This ability to report crimes was
very important to learners, as they shared many stories of victimization, including one in which a
woman had been locked in the walk-in freezer of her workplace three distinct times while the
restaurant was robbed. Furthermore, learners wanted to learn grammar and structure of the language,
because this would allow them to “enter conversations.” Learners also expressed great enthusiasm
about the ability to prepare for and take the GED (high school equivalency) exam in Spanish, which
was a new option in our locality. With these goals in mind, we made tentative plans for the coming
weeks, to structure the curriculum around the needs of the learners.

5.2 Reflecting and Assessing

As the weeks passed, despite our best intentions in implementing a learner-centered,
transformative curriculum, we encountered what so many adult educators know so well: low student
persistence [6], [22], [23]. In the early weeks of our class, there was an average 10-12 students; over
the period of a two months, the attendance dropped to as few as 3 students (with an average of 5-6).
Clearly our program was not the first to deal with this persistence issue, but as much as we tried to
meet needs, if students did not attend, they did not learn.
How to encourage persistence was not, at first, easy to determine. After all, students who do not
come are, by definition, not immediately available for face to face discussions. Reaching learners by
phone was sometimes quite difficult, and calls and texts to missing learners generally did not provide
insight. When reached, missing learners nearly universally said that they would come “next week” and
then seldom did. Asking the learners who did come to class about why others may not be coming was
useful, because leaners could often explain if life circumstances, such as work, had interfered with a
particular peer’s attendance. For example, after an enthusiastic student stopped attending, one of her
peers was able to explain that the student now had to work every other weekend. There were,
however, many learners who simply dropped out for untraceable reasons.
Looking for answers to the dropout issue, I wondered then, could the literature shed any light
on the problem of retention? As aforementioned, in the literature, improving the family’s lot in life was a
strong motivator for English study, yet at the same time, learners may opt to forgo English studies to
provide for the family’s immediate needs [27]–[29]. What I found in the literature rang true with what I
had observed. In fact, several of our core group of students were transported to class by their spouses
who already spoke English or did not themselves want to learn; also, advocating for children had been
a major motivational theme observed in the focus groups. What is more, just as the literature
described, there were students with supportive families who still dropped out of class to work to
provide money. For example, one of the students who stopped coming to classes did so to paint on
the weekends to support his mother and sister (who were also students in our class and were able to
explain this to us). Students are torn between boosting their own long term prospects and meeting
short-term needs of their own families.
Unfortunately, understandable though these dropouts may be, these dropouts then impact the
pattern and climate of the group in a type of vicious cycle. In his seminal book, Mager suggests that
often, when students begin to miss class, returning is difficult because returning involves some
explanation of their previous lapse, an uncomfortable situation that may cause avoidance of the
classes [31]. If students do in fact return, they are behind. This being behind causes individual student
confusion and discomfort, but we observed that the confusion of individuals also interrupts the flow
and coherence of the class and curriculum. Finally, these very absences can be contagious in that
they impact school climate, creating a perceived norm of dropping out [32]. Clearly, as well intentioned
as the curriculum may have been, if a healthy group climate of achievement was not established, the
class was to flounder.

5.3 Taking Action

Contemplating interventions to promote a climate of persistence, we held a second focus
group. Many of our students wanted worksheets and exams – ways to engage and study between
classes. Yet, when homework was given, it was seldom completed; I documented only one instance
when a student completed homework. If we could get students to invest in English learning throughout
the week, would they be more likely to persist? Pencil and paper traditional “do your homework
between classes” was not working; what else could be done? I had observed that almost all of my
students were smart phone users , which is consistent with a Pew Center report that 78% of Hispanic
Immigrants are online [33]. When asked, all of our students save one reported that they were on
Facebook. Would providing videos on a platform that learners already knew help them engage
between classes?
Six weeks were spent creating weekly or biweekly videos and making them available through
our group’s Facebook page. Each learner was asked if he or she wanted to follow our Facebook page,
and students were aided in finding and following the page if they desired to do so. The videos made
were all intended to be short (on average three minutes or less), specific, and geared toward topics of
high-student interest which had been covered in the class. There were two ways to assess the reach
of the videos. First of all, I just asked the students. Perhaps not surprisingly, students reported that
they had watched the videos, but based on my observation, not everyone did. As many students could
not articulate any specific questions or comments about the videos, it may be that they had not
watched them, but simply endeavored to tell me what they thought that I wanted to hear. I genuinely
appreciate my students’ attempts to be kind, but asking the students directly did not yield any data that
I deemed fully reliable because of this researcher reactivity. However, YouTube, where I posted the
videos (and then linked through Facebook) does offer viewing statistics. I did not promote or distribute
the videos outside of the context of the class. Within the first weeks of posting, the videos received an
average of twenty views per week. While this may not be a large number of views in the internet world,
it does suggest that some of our current or potential students were, in fact, watching the videos.
The videos also helped in ways that I had not anticipated: as it turns out, it seems that the
videos did aid learners in helping to develop social capital. Because our learners became followers of
our social media page, learners’ friends and many more potential students also followed either my
personal-professional page or the class page. For a period of a month, after posting the videos, each
week we received at least one new student who found out about us via Facebook. The potential
learners had not known about the classes, and a representative comment we received was “why had
not anyone told me about this before?” Having new, enthusiastic students helped to change and
stabilize the class climate. Whereas we had only had several students who consistently attended
before the videos, over the past three months, we developed eight core students who attend almost
weekly along with newcomers and sporadic attenders, meaning that we have had sufficient numbers
to split our leaners into two groups, based on levels. This ability to customize the classes has allowed
for the class teaching to be more relevant to learner needs. As I teach the intermediate students, I
have been able to focus a bit more on basic, essential grammar for constructing sentences and
questions, which, as my student said is “exactly what we need.” It would seem that there was a need
to develop a core, enthusiastic community to infuse the classes with social energy and a positive
climate move forward. For us, social media, happily and accidently, proved to be a way to do this.
There were also indications that learner investment in the classes grew. Literature features
examples of Latino high schoolers [20, p. 242] and community college students needing to feel [34, p.
55], in the words of both articles, “cared for” in order to invest and persist in education; it may follow
that adults have a similar need. In making the videos I tried to work in close contact with learners and
deeply understand their needs. Several examples point to my increased investment resulting in
increased learner investment, even if the learners did not invest in the videos specifically. For
example, I recorded several potential examples of learner investment during the time that the videos
were made available. The videos were largely about intelligibility and pronunciation, which the learners
had asked to learn. The topic of how to pronounce past tense verbs came up in class, and one student
asked for a list of the verbs that “do not do that” (i.e. irregular verbs). The same learner later showed
me how she was writing out verb forms in her notebook to memorize them. While memorizing verb
forms may not be the highest priority learning item, clearly the learner was engaging. Another
instance, after we had studied how to talk about future events, upon leaving, a learner smiled and
said, in English as she left “I WILL study.” In a more traditional setting, attitude surveys or other
instruments may capture the class climate and learner attitudes and behaviors, but we deemed that
these may not work well with all of our learners, some of whom were binate learners. However, these
examples from my field notes may indicate some examples of positive impact.

6 CONCLUSIONS
Supporting the students in persisting was a complex, multi-faceted endeavor. I first tried to
understand what the leaners’ needs were. The Latino ESL learners were able to share well-defined
ideas about what they wanted to learn: Learners wanted to function in high-stakes situations such as
police encounters, and they also wanted to advocate for their children. There was a consensus
amongst the group that learning form-based components would allow them to better construct the
language they need for speaking in specific tasks. Although I endeavored to work with my students to
provide a participatory, learner-centered curriculum, my students, like so many others [6], [22], [23]
struggled to persist in English study. The prioritization of immediate family needs over long-term
possible improvement was a reason that some of our students dropped out. Even though
fully-determining the cause of all dropouts was difficult, theory and practical observation suggests that
dropping out often creates a nasty cycle: dropouts are reluctant to return [31] and as people
increasingly drop out, a climate of dropping out [35] becomes the tacit norm. Being that learners had
expressed desire to study and engage between classes, and were nearly all on Facebook, posting
easy-to-use videos covering core class concepts was thought of as a possible way to help students
stay engaged and catch up if needed between classes. Only some leaners adopted the use of these
videos; nevertheless, the use of social media caused a flurry of new students to enter our class,
changing the climate from one of people leaving to one of people coming; in the case of my class, a
critical mass of engaged students stabilized the attendance and helped the class move forward and
invest in their goals. Leaners are also able to invest in their learning when they feel the their teacher
cares about them, and the increased student investment I witnessed may not be a direct function of
the videos per se, but rather a result of a perceivably invested teacher.
Problems of persistence in adult ESL learners merit more attention. Recently, TESL Quarterly,
one of the premier journals in ESL theory and pedagogy, wrote of the need for “research that takes a
more holistic, integrated approach—investigating LLS alongside other factors in a situated manner”
[36, p. 418]. This call is nothing new; nearly thirty years ago, Pennycook lamented that “a major lacuna
in second language education is its divorce from broader issues in educational theory” [37, p. 303].
Learner persistence is of those “broader issues” that needs to be investigated “alongside other factors
in a situated manner.” No doubt, persistence is a widely researched issue in education overall [23],
[38], [39], but little attention has been given to persistence of adult ESL leaners even though we know
that they tend to drop out [6], [22], [23]. We also know that numerically, the need is great: there are a
staggering 44.7 million immigrants in the US, and only about half of them are proficient in English [18].
As teachers, we hold out English to be a path to a better life, and data suggest that English does
enhance socio-economic outcomes [19], [20]. But fundamentally, students who do not stay in classes
might not learn. Teachers need to stop and ask the basic but uncomfortable question: what can I do to
help my learners stay? Still, Latino immigrants, let alone immigrants in general, are by no means a
homogenous group. What worked for this group may not work for others, but teachers need to talk to
leaners, read the literature, and try, try again until the most optimal outcomes are found.
My word choice of the “most optimal outcomes” over “solutions” was quite deliberate. In our current
political climate, solutions are hard to come by. As one student put it, she “may return to Guatemala
next year” In these days, immigration and deportation is at the forefront of many of my students’
thinking. Immigration is highly significant: immigration status overshadows the learners’ abilities to
commit to the long-term social capital gains associated with language learning. Nevertheless, as a
teacher, I recognize that I hold little or no direct power to act to change the US immigration system.
What I can do though, is help leaners find their voices. In fact, critical theory would have us notice that
in seemingly impossible historical situations of injustice, literacy education has been key in bringing
about major reforms [9], [40]. In a small way, equipping my students to find their voices is my answer
to a problem that I cannot immediately solve.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A heart-felt thanks to Prof. Mary Sovik Benedetti for the kind words and advice given to me and the
advocacy for immigrants in our community that you model.
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