9 Limited English Support
Based on personal experience, and not much else, I have often commented that “English as a Second Language is the first language of global computing”. Many of us have had the experience of taking CS classes at university from professors whose technical skills were powerful, but whose English pronunciation was strained at best. Likewise, the sort of global corporations that employ much of the IT workforce include entire divisions of workers who speak non-native versions of English. Thanks (or no thanks) to the historical dominance of the British Empire, English is effectively the leading language of science and technology worldwide. Many of our students are international and are somewhere in the process of learning English. How can we make IT instruction more effective for these students?
ESL instruction is not my expertise, but efficiently managing classes and curriculum is. From an efficiency standpoint, the last thing you want to do is to invent some parallel silo of instruction specifically to accommodate ESL students or any other special category of learner. In the EDI world, there will be no end to that! A more workable approach is to embed your diversity interventions right into whatever becomes your main approach. Do not retrofit diversity onto a curriculum that was really built specifically for highly educated native English speakers. Rather, create a program of instruction that works for different levels of language proficiency at every phase of the instructional process. To illustrate how this can work, the analysis below will sample some ESL teaching ideas from the references also below and show how they align with the more general philosophy expressed in this guide.
Cultivate relationships and be culturally responsive
It is a good idea to cultivate relationship with all students. You will not need to do this differently for ESL students.
Teach language skills across the curriculum
Absolutely! IT workers need communication skills. Artifacts like progress reports, network diagrams, and comments in code should be part of any IT training program. You do not need to be a stickler for grammar, spelling, or an academic writing style. I tell my students: “Keep it short and sweet. Get to the point. Imagine this is for a busy boss who needs the report, but has no time to waste.”
Emphasize productive language
That is, make the students speak and write. Although this may be challenging for ESL students, they need the practice. (So do IT students in general). You can be gentle in grading where ESL students are involved. If an ESL student needs to prepare an oral report, this is one occasion for which the proverbial “A for effort” is not unreasonable.
Speak slowly – and increase your wait time
Fast talker here! But you can compensate for that. If you say something fast or complicated the first time, you can also restate the same idea more slowly, in shorter sentences, with easier words. Keep downshifting until you are sure