Supporting EAL Students

While all stu­dents in our pro­grams and class­es meet spec­i­fied lan­guage require­ments, it is a real­i­ty that for some of our stu­dents (inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, new Cana­di­ans), Eng­lish is their sec­ond, third or even fourth lan­guage. Func­tion­ing day-to-day in Eng­lish is not the same as engag­ing in study, where there might be dif­fer­ent lan­guage demands for dis­cussing abstract con­cepts, tech­ni­cal lan­guage relat­ed to an area of study or jar­gon spe­cif­ic to cer­tain pro­fes­sions.

There are many ways of sup­port­ing EAL stu­dents that also ben­e­fit all stu­dents.

offer support
  • Reas­sure
    • Some stu­dents with EAL may need 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. Some stu­dents (not only stu­dents with EAL) may feel inse­cure about their spelling and hes­i­tate to engage where every­one can see how they write
  • Invite Diverse Ways of Inter­act­ing
    • If using Teams, encour­age use of the chat func­tion (but bear in mind the above com­ment) to allow stu­dents more think­ing time
    • Use asyn­chro­nous dis­cus­sions, again 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. Equal­ly, the non-ver­bal cues we sub­con­scious­ly absorb that let us know it’s ‘our turn’ to speak, vary across cul­tures and lan­guages
  • Pro­vide More Time for Learn­ing
    • For some stu­dents, 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. The time it takes to read an arti­cle is not a direct indi­ca­tor of lev­el of com­pre­hen­sion
Reconsider AssessMent
  • Avoid Tight­ly 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 rather than their knowl­edge or abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly
  • Include Spo­ken Assess­ment
    Con­sid­er using oral assess­ments for stu­dents who are less strong in writ­ten skills (unless, of course, you are teach­ing them writ­ing)
  • Be Flex­i­ble
    Ask stu­dents about how they believe they can best 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 Teams
    • Stu­dent – stu­dent — Put stu­dents into small groups so they can work offline togeth­er. Begin with ‘get to know you’ activ­i­ties. Build­ing trust is key to engage­ment and build­ing trust
  • 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 ‘call home’
  • 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 closed 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/class engage­ment). Explain idioms and metaphors
    • Remem­ber that cul­ture is encod­ed in lan­guage. Just because some­one under­stands a word or phrase, does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean they ‘under­stand’ the cul­tur­al mean­ing. For exam­ple, “it’s not far” means some­thing very dif­fer­ent in a coun­try the size of Cana­da ver­sus a coun­try the size of Eng­land
Engage
  • 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 intime 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 have dif­fer­ent ways of engag­ing depend­ing on their 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).
  • Use Sign­post­ing
    • Key points are orga­nized in dif­fer­ent places across lan­guages. EAL stu­dents are often look­ing in the ‘wrong place’ for the key ideas. This may also be true for some neu­ro­di­verse stu­dents
  • 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. Equal­ly, avoid visu­als that do not sup­ple­ment under­stand­ing and may acci­den­tal­ly cause con­fu­sion