By Imagine being surrounded by people you didn’t understand and couldn’t understand you. No matter how slow they talked, how friendly they smiled, or how hard you tried, it sounded like gibberish. You’d never be able to tell someone you were happy or sad, and even your most basic needs like feeling hungry or needing to use the restroom may go unheard.
That frustrating world of not having a voice and not understanding what is going on around you is the world of every single English language learning (ELL) student.
Here’s your chance to learn how English as a second language affects learning and how SYSTRAN can help break down the language barrier while avoiding the need for slow, expensive education translation services.
What Are the Challenges of Learning English?
Because ELL students often can’t understand or communicate effectively, a school may unaware of ongoing issues. Some of the challenges ELL learners face include:
- Low self-esteem. Because ELL students are often seen as outsiders, they’re frequently bullied, ridiculed, and picked on. Additionally, because they cannot accurately communicate about that bullying, it is never addressed or resolved. This can make them feel even more separated from their peers because they feel overlooked or ignored when they are in pain.
- Inability to practice and be exposed to native speakers. ELL students spend most of their free time with friends and family with whom they can communicate. While these support groups of their native language speakers are important to establish a community they feel a part of, without exposure to native speakers it takes them longer to learn English.
- Being disengaged. Learning a new language is difficult. There are no shortcuts to the process, and it takes time and hard work to become fluent. While children can learn new languages faster than adults, many children don’t have the motivation to put in the time and effort required. Because learning a language is hard, they shut down and become disengaged in the entire learning process.
- Improper academic placement. Just because a student doesn’t know English doesn’t mean they are uneducated. However, because ELL students cannot communicate their past experiences and their existing knowledge base, they are often forced into lower-level classrooms. Sitting through lessons and concepts they’ve already mastered can drive them to further disengagement and lead to classroom behavior issues.
- Communication and Support from the Family. Parental support is one of the biggest indicators of success within education. When parents and the school support each other, they’re able to work together to help the student succeed. For ELL students this can be difficult, because there is a good chance that their parents are English language learners as well, making it difficult for them to collaborate and communicate with the school.
How Does English as an Additional Language Affect Development?
Major educational milestones, like reading ability by the end of third grade or math achievement in eighth grade, are used as vital checkpoints that can determine a student’s ability to progress to higher-level courses. While success or failure with these milestones doesn’t automatically correlate to the success or failure of a student, they can be used as indicators.
Because of the language barrier ELL students face, they underperform and struggle to meet these milestones. On average, the gap between ELL and non-ELL students is about 40 percentage points in both reading and math.
SYSTRAN Can Help All Language Learners
SYSTRAN breaks through the foundational problem all ELL students are faced with and makes it possible for them to have a voice and understand those around them.
SYSTRAN uses an AI-powered neural machine-based translation solution that provides automatic and professional-grade translation. This makes it possible for ELL students to finally have a voice and be heard by their peers and the faculty that works with them and for the faculty to interact with the student. Classroom resources, syllabi, and even worksheets can be easily translated to help students continue building on their existing level of education independent of their mastery of English.
Because we understand the need for a quality translation solution in the classroom and its impact on the education of ELL students, SYSTRAN offers a discount for educators, schools, and districts. Contact us today to see for yourself how SYSTRAN can help.
