Unit 9 -Observations of Technology in Action for ELLs

"Lisa" and "Cece" were sent to school in Canada to learn English and were both in my math class.  When I met them, they tended to sit apart from the other students.  They were quite withdrawn and kept themselves apart from other students in the class.  Both girls had good numeracy skills and could answer math questions fairly easily as long as there were no confounding English words.

When I arrived mid-term, the class was already set up.  It was flipped, with content lessons occurring on video, accessible on a class website, and requiring all students to complete information gap notes on content as homework.  This was an advantage, made possible by technology, because all students could repeat any parts that were not immediately understood. One thing I noted was that students had to be explicitly instructed to stop and start the video until they found the information they were seeking, even though they were far more familiar with the technology set up than I.  Another detail I might have tried changing for these particular students would have been changing the focus of the information gap exercise.  Lisa and Cece had already learned the math concepts in their home country, so I might have tried their information gap focus more on the English math words than the computational examples.

During class, as we generally worked on the practice questions and I pulled aside small groups, the girls used their devices to access an electronic dictionary in their language. Again, they accessed this technology on their own devices. They were diligent in recording any translation in notebooks set aside for the purpose.

One change I made, as much as possible, was to simplify the instructional language and to illustrate questions as much as possible.  This doesn’t sound much like technology, but is only truly possible in an efficient manner if technology is available to search images and edit questions easily.

Still, the girls were not really interacting in English with their classmates or with me.  They were not successful in solving word problems.  I invested in the relationship, and they could see I was trying to help them, but we were all frustrated at our lack of progress. 

This was what inspired me to start taking TESL classes.  It was very hard to see how withdrawn and exhausted the girls were by the end of every day, and I thought there had to be a better way to engage them.

Last week, I found myself substituting in the school. Lisa came into the class, shrieked and hugged me. This exuberant greeting was a departure from her behavior in the past.  It slowly dawned on me that she told me she was happy to see me in English!

She set up her computer and put in one earpiece.  S-+he beckoned me over to ask a question in English about her math work. I noticed as she spoke, she was animated and smiling, and the computer was running a script of her language.  It turns out the school had made Microsoft Translator available to all students.  As she was speaking to me, the program was translating audibly and in writing.  She was smiling and responding in English.

It seemed a miracle to me.  Not just the English and the participation with me and her fellow students.  What really grabbed me was her happy demeanor and her confidence.  Later I saw Cece in another class and she was similarly transformed. 

It turns out the school had made Microsoft Translator (Education Version) available to all students. It has a number of features. It can translate audibly in real time, recognize images and “pin” a word and pronounce it.  It can provide transcripts of audible speech.  The difference it has made for these two students is incalculable.  It’s not just the ability to participate in class, it was the conversation the students generated when not using the device that has stunned me.

Byrne, R. (January, 2018.)How to Use Microsoft Translator. [Youtube Video.] Retrieved from https://youtu.be/xWIiS_12wqQ