Supporting EAL Students

for Supporting Students who have English as an Additional Language (EAL)

These tips are for fac­ul­ty sup­port­ing diverse stu­dents who have Eng­lish as an addi­tion­al lan­guage.  Con­tent cre­at­ed by Mar­garet Hearn­den, Cen­tre for Teach­ing and Learn­ing Inno­va­tion, North Island Col­lege.

Three Tips for Supporting International Students

This pre­sen­ta­tion is for instruc­tors new to work­ing with inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. We dis­cuss three tips for work­ing with and effec­tive­ly sup­port­ing inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. Fur­ther details and links to oth­er resources are avail­able in an accom­pa­ny­ing hand­out. 

Down­load­able PDF of the remain­der of this page.

Potential Challenges Facing Some EAL Students

While all stu­dents are fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges at this time, there are some chal­lenges that might affect some EAL stu­dents to a greater degree:

• Being very far from home and wor­ry­ing about fam­i­ly (e.g., India – polit­i­cal unrest in addi­tion to COVID)
• Being far from Courte­nay and wor­ry­ing about con­nect­ing with their instruc­tors / peers
• Gen­er­al stress of liv­ing in a for­eign coun­try / func­tion­ing in a sec­ond or addi­tion­al lan­guage
• Liv­ing with oth­er fam­i­ly members/friends in tight con­di­tions (mul­ti­ple stu­dents shar­ing one room / lap­top)
• Not hav­ing phys­i­cal access to library / com­put­er labs
• Reliance on using a phone to con­nect with instruc­tors, peers and course mate­ri­als
• Racism / xeno­pho­bia relat­ed to COVID / neg­a­tive per­cep­tions of ‘oth­ers’ 

Assess

• Avoid Timed Assess­ments
  Strict­ly timed assess­ments dis­ad­van­tage stu­dents func­tion­ing in an addi­tion­al lan­guage in ways that do not reflect their knowl­edge by also assess­ing their speed of read­ing / pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion (‘dial-up’ ver­sus ‘high-speed’)
• Invite Reflec­tion
  Use assess­ments that require indi­vid­ual reflec­tion rather than ‘Googling’ and ‘cut­ting and past­ing’ con­tent, forces stu­dents to cre­ate orig­i­nal work and shares their under­stand­ing
• Include Spo­ken Assess­ment
  Con­sid­er using oral assess­ments for stu­dents who are less strong in writ­ten skills (unless you are teach­ing them writ­ing)
• Be Flex­i­ble
  Ask stu­dents about how they can demon­strate they have met the course learn­ing out­comes – that can take the heat off you as the instruc­tor and can pro­vide ideas you’ve not thought of (this also pro­motes feel­ings of inclu­sion and engage­ment)

Communicate

• Focus on Rela­tion­ship Build­ing
  • Instruc­tor – stu­dent: Ini­ti­ate one to one con­tact, e.g., send an intro­duc­to­ry email with a pho­to, video pre­sen­ta­tion of you talk­ing and intro­duc­ing the course, and / or arrange one to one office hours using Blue­Jeans.
  • Stu­dent – stu­dent — Put stu­dents into small groups so they can work offline togeth­er. Begin with ‘get to know you’ exer­cis­es). Build­ing trust is key to engage­ment.
• Be Flex­i­ble
  • Con­sid­er using student’s alter­nate email address it not engag­ing using NIC email.
  • Use Bright­space to email / send reg­u­lar announce­ments
• Cre­ate Com­mu­ni­ty
  • Use com­mu­ni­ty build­ing activ­i­ties from the out­set (e.g., dis­cus­sion board ques­tions – stu­dents share some­thing about them­selves that they are hap­py shar­ing; Padlet with a map to show where they are cur­rent­ly liv­ing or from where they orig­i­nate).
• Think about Lan­guage
  • Use mul­ti­ple ways modes of pre­sent­ing infor­ma­tion and oppor­tu­ni­ties for engage­ment that sup­port EAL learn­ers in terms of lan­guage.
  • Use plat­forms such as YouTube and TED Talks that have func­tions such as close cap­tion­ing or sub­ti­tles in mul­ti­ple lan­guages. Include mate­ri­als that can be viewed mul­ti­ple times.
  • Present infor­ma­tion using nar­rat­ed Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions with an accom­pa­ny­ing tran­script;
  • Con­sid­er using anno­tat­ed PDFs of read­ings, where stu­dents can bring up the def­i­n­i­tion of words they may not know;
  • Cre­ate or get stu­dents to cre­ate a glos­sary of key terms for stu­dents to refer to ahead of read­ing and asso­ci­at­ed online engage­ment). Explain idioms and metaphors.

Engage

• Opti­mize the Oppor­tu­ni­ties of Asyn­chro­nous Learn­ing
  • Focus more on asyn­chro­nous activ­i­ties to reduce stress of ‘live’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion if you know stu­dents are in oth­er time zones / might not have access to good Inter­net or tech­no­log­i­cal tools.
• Fos­ter Inclu­sion
  • Find out as much as you can about stu­dents’ indi­vid­ual cir­cum­stances (obvi­ous­ly with­out pry­ing) – helps guide what is fea­si­ble to include in instruc­tion and makes stu­dents feel like they’re being includ­ed – e.g., any tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions (access to cer­tain sites if abroad, dif­fer­ences in time zones).
• Invite Stu­dent Expe­ri­ence
  • Draw on indi­vid­ual stu­dent expe­ri­ences. One of the biggest bar­ri­ers to stu­dent engage­ment / moti­va­tion is not feel­ing ‘part of a com­mu­ni­ty.’
• Engage in Diverse Ways
  • Allow stu­dents dif­fer­ent ways of engag­ing depend­ing on the com­fort lev­el in dif­fer­ent lan­guage skills (e.g., some stu­dents may be able to bet­ter engage and demon­strate their learn­ing through video­ing them­selves with their phone explain­ing a con­cept, rather than writ­ing a paper and email­ing it to the instruc­tor).
• Use Sign­post­ing
  • Key points are orga­nized in dif­fer­ent places across lan­guages. EAL stu­dents are often look­ing in the ‘wrong place’ for the key ideas.
• Use Visu­als
  • Use dia­grams, pho­tos, pic­tures etc. to sup­port expla­na­tions, espe­cial­ly if they help with under­stand­ing abstract con­cepts. Con­crete exam­ples that illus­trate the con­cept or the­o­ry you are explain­ing increase under­stand­ing.

Support

• Reas­sure
  • EAL stu­dents often need a lot more reas­sur­ance in terms of lan­guage skills. If you are not assess­ing writ­ing / lan­guage let stu­dents know you are focus­ing on the con­tent of their ideas, not how they artic­u­late it. NB – reas­sure more if using ‘chat,’ ‘dis­cus­sions,’ etc. that are syn­chro­nous, where it can be hard for stu­dents to focus on the idea, gram­mar and spelling of how they express that idea, all at the same time.
• Invite Diverse Ways of Inter­act­ing
  • If using Blue­Jeans, encour­age use of the chat func­tion (but bear in mind the above com­ment);
  • Use asyn­chro­nous dis­cus­sions, wikis etc. so stu­dents have more time to think and for­mu­late ideas;
  • In syn­chro­nous ses­sions, be mind­ful that it’s hard to inter­rupt in a sec­ond lan­guage and much hard­er in an online envi­ron­ment, since we can’t see as clear­ly non-ver­bal cues that help us know it’s okay to speak next.
• Pro­vide More Time for Learn­ing
  • Hav­ing EAL is like hav­ing ‘dial-up’ ver­sus ‘high-speed’ Inter­net. There are also more like­ly to be ‘con­nec­tiv­i­ty’ issues (find­ing the right word), and ‘tech­ni­cal’ prob­lems (access­ing appro­pri­ate sen­tence struc­ture, idioms etc.).
  • It takes 2–3 times longer to read com­plex arti­cles in a sec­ond / addi­tion­al lan­guage. This is impor­tant to con­sid­er when plan­ning the amount of writ­ten con­tent that you expect stu­dents to get through and also when cre­at­ing assess­ments.