%20(1).png)
In June 2024, I spent a month in Costa Rica in a Spanish immersion program. I always regretted not studying abroad in college, so as a near 40-year old adult, I found a program, lived with a host family, and did the whole study abroad shebang. It was hugely insightful.
Thankfully, I was ONLY learning Spanish, in Spanish--and I already had a lot of background in the language upon arrival. ESL kids are learning subject-level content (math, science, etc) on top of learning a language.
Additionally, the students are simultaneously trying to maintain good grades, they are dealing with their personal trauma and issues, and guaranteed, they are experiencing TONS of emotions about the whole situation. They are brave, brave rockstars to show up each day and keep working to move forward.
Here are 11 insights I gained while studying abroad:
Reading out loud: there are two types of reading out loud. One is reading out loud for the class, and the other is reading out loud to yourself.
If you ask ESL students to read aloud in class, there is a good chance they’re losing comprehension of the meaning. When I had to read aloud in Spanish, I was focusing so hard on pronunciation as to not sound stupid. I lost ALL comprehension, and when the teacher immediately started asking questions after the passage, I had to quickly re-read everything (and then I was stressed, so I was still missing the content).
When I read something in Spanish, it helps me SO much to read out loud to myself. There is something about hearing the words that helps my brain process it better--and because it’s to myself, I can go at my pace, re-read as necessary, and not focus so much on not looking stupid to others.
Vocabulary makes or breaks you. I could understand almost everything my professors were saying in the classroom, but my host family often used vocabulary words I didn’t know, and so I had a hard time following their conversations (speed and cutting words were also issues with the host family--more on that later). You can really help ESL kids out by giving them key vocabulary words ahead of time.
Please let ESL students use their phones to look up translations. While I understood most of what was said in class, there were still many times where I didn’t know what a word meant--especially when given an instruction for an activity. It was SO helpful to be able to pull up my dictionary and translate the word. Often, understanding the translation of just one word made all the difference in understanding the activity.
Some ESL students might feel scared to speak up when they come across a word they don’t know, or an instruction they don’t understand.
There were several times I didn’t know the vocabulary word, but I already asked about like 2 of them, and didn’t want to look more stupid.
There were also several times that our teacher gave us an instruction for an activity, and my class nodded along. When it came time to do the activity, the majority of us sat there, confused, asking each other, “What are we supposed to do?” None of us wanted to speak up about not understanding, because of that fear of looking stupid. It wasted so much time!! The teacher would think we were working, she’d eventually realize we weren’t, and then she’d have to re-explain everything in a different way.
Natural language is much harder to understand! When you learn a language in classes, the words are pronounced clearly, slowly, and with little to no slang. In the “real world,” that language is so different. As mentioned earlier, in classes, I could understand 95% of what my teachers said. I could understand 90% of what my host family said if they talked directly to me. But when they talked to each other, I was totally lost--they talked faster, smashed words together, cut endings off words, used vocabulary and slang I was not familiar with, etc. ESL students will surely learn how to understand more natural English usage, as they are surrounded by students who speak it all the time, but it will still likely be super fast at first and a challenge to understand. When working with ESL kids, speak clear and slow (not necessarily louder!), and if they look confused, try to re-word what you said in a different way/using different vocabulary.
Put captions on videos!!! We’d have to watch video clips in our classes from time to time. If students are not solid in their English, these video clips will likely be hard to understand…and putting on subtitles makes a WORLD of a difference.
If you have kids starting from zero--put the captions in their language!!! If captions don’t exist in their language, you can always change the language of the auto-generated captions. Sure, the translations might be a little off, but it’s better than nothing.
If you have students who have a decent understanding of English, put the captions in English. This will really boost their comprehension of the video.
Their brains are SO BUSY processing information all day long (especially if they are coming in with no background in English). These kids will be tired. They will get frustrated. It’s INCREDIBLY challenging and they might need to just go and cry somewhere. Have empathy for all that they are going through.
Breakdowns are normal. Most kids probably won’t show it in class, but outside of class, I guarantee they’re crying at some point. I had breakdowns at least 2x per week.
Listening comprehension develops first; speaking comes later. These skills are housed in different parts of the brain. I remember being dumbfounded by a friend who grew up in a Filipino household, and she could understand it, but she couldn't speak it. I could not imagine how this was possible, until I started working on speaking Spanish prior to my trip. If you are not pushed to speak, you will NOT develop that skill.
This is FRUSTRATING. You feel like a toddler because you cannot express your thoughts. You find yourself having tons of thoughts in your head, but you have absolutely no way of expressing them.
Most people are afraid to speak because there is a fear of looking stupid and making mistakes--it is a VERY vulnerable thing. Have compassion. NEVER tease someone for saying something incorrectly; provide a gentle correction, or even let the mistake go entirely. Once I accepted that I was going to sound like an idiot sometimes, it got easier. And if I made a mistake (for instance, accenting a word wrong and saying “potatoes” instead of “parents”), I learned to laugh at it. I never felt judged by my host family, as they knew I was learning, and that allowed me to feel more confident to try.
When students are learning to speak, it takes time to think and process before words actually come out--so you can help them in those early stages. Give ESL students choices so they can pick topics or parts of a project to speak about that they are comfortable with. For instance, I do a lot of concept mapping & conferencing about the maps in Enviro Sci. When one of my ESL students worked with a group, I always let him pick the section of the map that he wanted, and he would explain that part to me in the conference. For the rest of his group, it was random who talked about which part, and they had more to discuss. But for my ESL student, there were no surprises, and he could practice his section ahead of time to become more confident and comfortable in speaking.
Use Chat GPT to translate. When translating worksheets, instructions, or just general information to give to a student, Google Translate works, but it’s only “okay” at doing its job. Chat GPT It’s so much better because it understands the nuances of the language. It can also be told to do things like, “Translate this into Latin American Spanish” (vs Spanish from Spain), as vocabulary is different from country to country. (Note that Chat GPT may be blocked on student devices, so ESL students will most likely use Google Translate to help them with assignments, which is why the wording often sounds weird).
The biggest things you can do to help these students are: be supportive, nonjudgmental, empathetic, and encouraging.
Comments