It is no surprise that English language learners (ELLs) struggle to follow lectures. ELLs can struggle for a number of reasons, including because of the speed of a lecturer’s speech, the complexity of the sentences and ideas, and an unfamiliarity with the vocabulary. The problem, however, may be more serious than teachers realize.

A study by Mulligan & Kirkpatrick (2000), for example, found that a much larger than expected group of ELLs had trouble understanding lectures. In courses that included Architecture and Construction, and Economics and Finance, it was found that fewer than 1 out of 10 ELLs understood the lectures well and perhaps 1 out of 4 ELLs had not understood anything at all (Mulligan & Kirkpatrick, 2000).

This suggests that instructors need to construct their lectures and design their courses with ELLs in mind, being more thoughtful to this group.

If students are struggling to understand course content, there are a number of ways to reduce cognitive and language burdens. In the literature, learning aids and support are frequently referred to as scaffolds (Bradley & Bradley, 2004; Solomon, Lalas, & Franklin, 2006; Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000). Scaffolds are described as “thoughtful ways of assisting students in experiencing successful task completion” (Watts-Taffe & Truscott, 2000, p. 261). Some important examples of scaffolding include outlines and dynamic visuals, and the modeling of activities for students. Instructors can also assist students by thinking carefully about the language they use for instruction, introducing small pauses in lectures, slowing down the pace of the class, and thinking carefully about how to reduce teacher talk time.

Example Scaffolds

Lecture Outlines

A well-organized outline can significantly reduce the amount of new language a student has to process. These outlines can be created with gaps so that students simply need to fill in information or supplement the outline with important details. The instructor may also pass out the outline a day prior to the lecture to allow students to mentally prepare.

Dynamic Visuals (Charts, Graphs, and Pictures)

It is often said that a well-chosen picture is worth a thousand words. For students struggling to understand key concepts, dynamic visuals not only help to give context and meaning to what they are hearing, but can also provide motivation and spark interest in a topic. A dynamic visual that conveys important information can also allow instructors to elicit key information from the students, thus decreasing instructor talk time.

A few key concepts regarding visuals bear mentioning:

• Use color: Instructors should make the most of color schemes to help clarify concepts.

• Allow for viewer interaction: Visuals can be used as interactive tools. They can be designed so that students can fill in missing pieces of information, add information, or speculate about possible answers.

• Maximize the data-to-ink ratio: When an instructor presents data in the form of a chart or graph, he or she should make sure that the data is easily understood and that there is no unnecessary clutter in the graph. In other words, the audience gets the most data for the amount of ink used.

Modeling Activities

Another important form of scaffolding is modeling activities to students. As key studies of ELLs in mainstream classrooms have found (see Solomon et al., 2006), students like examples, not wordy explanations. Thus, when presenting an abstract concept to students, an instructor should also try to imagine several concrete examples to help make the concept real for students.

Word Choice

Many instructors intuitively understand when their students need concepts simplified and broken up into smaller, more digestible chunks. This same technique can be taken a step further to help ELLs. The instructor can think carefully about how to avoid wordiness in explanations and how to use simpler language to convey ideas.

Teacher Talk Time

The instructor may also wish to reduce teacher talk time and give students more opportunities to participate in class. This allows students to shape the content of the class, increases student attentiveness, and reduces the amount of new language that needs to be processed. In reducing teacher talk time, the instructor should use elicitation and promote a communicative classroom.

Elicitationrefers to the process of getting students to explain key concepts through carefully targeted prompts and questions. An instructor, for example, might write key words from the chapter on the board and ask students to explain what they know. A communicative classroomis a classroom where students have ample opportunities to use their language skills in meaningful contexts. This might include debates, discussions, presentations, or group activities.

Pacing, Small Pauses, and Reviewing Information

Instructors can also help their ELLs by slowing down the pace of the class, using small pauses in speech, and reviewing key concepts periodically.

• Pacing:In some situations, instructors might not be able to control the pace of a course. Perhaps there is a specified amount of material that must be covered over a certain period of time. However, when an instructor does have control over the pacing of the course, a slower pace usually works better for ELLs. Often, I have found that changing the pace is merely a matter of taking out unimportant content and replacing it with opportunities for student-generated content, activities, or review.

• Small pauses:Some instructors have made it a habit of talking slower for their ELLs. I find that learners adjust well to native speakers’ rate of speech, but that they struggle with extensive listening. The longer a speech goes on without a pause, break, or activity, the less likely a student is to retain what he or she has heard. For this reason, I have developed a habit of introducing small pauses in between key ideas. As discussed earlier, decreasing the complexity of your sentences also allows students to process what you are saying more thoroughly. A combination of small pauses and simpler sentence patterns and vocabulary usually does wonders for ELL comprehension.

• Checking comprehension:One way an instructor can make lectures more interactive is by periodically pausing the lecture and testing students on their comprehension, either through a simple question-answer session or through an activity.

• Review and recycle:Another way to reduce both cognitive and language burdens for students is to repeat key points and activities. Periodic review will help students to refresh and confirm important information.

Conclusion

The final point that needs to be made about scaffolds is that instructors should not overuse them. As Watts-Taffe & Truscott (2000) point out, the level of support students need should decrease over time. Many ELLs will survive even without these thoughtful scaffolds. They will respond to the additional “hard knocks” of native lectures by working harder and finding their own adaptive mechanisms. However, others may not be so resourceful. For these students, a little bit of help might make a lot of difference. For this reason, I highly encourage you to consider using the tips in this article to make more ELL-friendly lectures.

References

Bradley, K. S. & Bradley, J. A. (2004). Scaffolding academic learning for second language learners. The Internet TESL Journal, 10(5). Retrieved from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Bradley-Scaffolding/

Mulligan, D., & Kirkpatrick, A. (2000). How much do they understand: Lectures, students and comprehension. Higher Education Research and Development, 19(3).

Solomon, M., Lalas, J., & Franklin, C. (2006). Making instructional adaptations for English learners in the mainstream classroom: Is it good enough? Multicultural Education, 13(3), 42–45.

Watts-Taffe, S., & Truscott, D. M. (2000). Focus on research: Using what we know about language and literacy development for ESL students in the mainstream classroom. Language Arts, 77(3), 258–265.

Daniel Clausen has taught ESL, English composition, and other courses in the United States, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. He has also conducted research in the field of international relations. His work has appeared in The Diplomat, e-IR, East Asia Forum, and The Korean Journal of International Studies, among other places. He currently works as an English language instructor for Coco Juku in Japan.