For Xiyu Xiao, arriving on time to any lecture prior to 10 a.m. has always felt like an extreme sport.
But since winter quarter kicked off with a remote start, the first-year psychology student happily said goodbye to her customary dash to campus. Like Bruins across the Hill, she simply rolled out of bed in the afternoon to watch recorded Zoom calls from the comfort of her dorm room.
However, when Xiao sits down to play recordings of her early morning lectures, the videos are more than simple conveniences that allow her to sleep in for just a few more minutes. She enjoys slowing down the audio, toggling the closed captions and replaying any confusing sections. These features allow her to understand her instructors’ fast-paced English better than ever before.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers and K-12 teachers have set off alarm bells about the impacts of distance education on students who are learning English as another language. Young English learners have fallen significantly behind their native English-speaking peers because of the transition to remote instruction, said associate professor of education Lucrecia Santibañez.
Despite this trend, international university students like Xiao as well as UCLA’s English as a second language specialists have observed a remarkable phenomenon taking place on the college level – Zoom learning actually helps ESL and multilingual Bruins.
Xiao is an international ESL student from Beijing. She began learning English in school around the age of 6 and attended extracurricular English lessons during first through seventh grade. Seeking a fresh start for high school, Xiao moved to the small town of Gastonia, North Carolina, to study abroad, plunging herself into constant English immersion.
For Xiao, distance-learning methods such as recorded lectures are helping her complete her entry-level writing requirement in a way she would have been unable to do in person.
“If I don’t have recordings, I will have trouble because some teachers just speak too fast, and I can’t catch on in class,” she said. “So I have to go back and watch the recording and slow it down or pause.”
Xiao said Zoom classes not only buy her more time to sleep but also provide extra time to complete course readings.
“If other students are all native speakers, they can read passages much faster than I do and complete homework in an hour,” Xiao said. “But for me, I might take more than two hours or three hours to finish reading.”
But Zoom classes are not just convenient for ESL and multilingual students. Remote learning also facilitates a variety of helpful language-building tools.
Leslie Sherwood, an ESL lecturer and member of the UCLA Writing Program’s ESL committee, said Zoom capabilities such as recording, closed captioning and the chat function are generally major advantages for English development. She pointed to small-group breakout rooms as helpful tools for building English learners’ self-assurance, allowing them to prepare themselves for speaking in front of the larger lecture.
For Yiheng Zhao, a first-year mathematics/economics student from Beijing, small groups on Zoom ease the anxiety she typically experiences during in-person classes.
“It’s kind of scary at first to speak out in (a) language that is not your mother tongue,” Zhao said. “During seminars or lectures, maybe local students ... are very excited to join the conversations, but international students sometimes are not so confident in their speaking levels.”
Small groups in Zoom calls have made participation less frightening for her.
Jia Shing Wee, a first-year pre-financial actuarial mathematics student from Malacca, Malaysia, agreed that remote learning makes class participation less intimidating. Zoom functions such as virtual hand-raising allow him to gather his thoughts before contributing to discussions.
“Currently, I’m quite comfortable speaking up in class,” he said. “I like the remote options.”
Although younger students may face difficulties with online learning, Sherwood said she believes that ESL and multilingual college students’ often more advanced English proficiency and older age allow them to succeed in a remote environment.
International students often have to take multiple English language exams before starting classes at UCLA. Prior to applying, students must score competitively on the Test of English as a Foreign Language, and upon admission, some students whose native language is not English have to take the English as a Second Language Placement Examination.
Wee, for example, tested into English Composition 3D: “English Composition, Rhetoric, and Language” by way of his SAT score and feels that growing up with English in his home life prepared him for the challenge. Sherwood said she has noticed that most ESL and multilingual Bruins don’t seem to need to take ESL courses at UCLA, Wee among them.
While online courses can help ESL and multilingual Bruins’ comprehension in class, Sherwood cautions that remote instruction is often a double-edged sword. Although virtual classes offer flexibility, they lack opportunities for students to make meaningful social connections with each other, Sherwood said. According to Sherwood, these social connections, such as group appointments at the Undergraduate Writing Center, can help multilingual students with their academics.
“Physically being in the classroom helps with a sense of belonging,” Sherwood said. “A sense of belonging is important for all students, but especially for students who are here trying to have the experience of studying abroad.”
Though the advantages of remote learning initially pleased her, Xiao said that as the weeks of distance learning dragged on, she felt less engaged with her coursework and classmates. She struggled to grasp the technical jargon of her psychology classes, given that she could not incorporate the new vocabulary into informal conversations with classmates. Xiao also found contributing to group conversations more stilted and less natural given the lag produced by Zoom.
“Even though I did personally participate in discussion and class conversation, it was not like in-person talking when I can see you and I can feel what you are talking about,” Xiao said.
Zhao also considered making new friends difficult during distance learning, adding that the language barrier is a compounding challenge for connecting with classmates.
“English is a kind of obstacle for being open to local students,” she said. “For example, if you’re in a group of 10 students and the other nine are Chinese, you might think that it’s very awkward for you to join their community. For us, it’s the same. ... Joining groups is hard for lots of international students.”
Sherwood recommended that ESL and multilingual students seek out virtual connection spaces as a means of finding the community interactions they require.
“That social aspect is really the hardest part of replicating (teaching) online,” Sherwood said. “Virtual events as a place for people to connect and really speak up and have small group discussions, I think that would be useful.”
When weighing remote learning’s flexibility versus its social drawbacks, Wee and Zhao still prefer Zoom classes.
“For me, there are a lot of pros and not so many cons,” Wee said.
Given the apparent success of distance learning, UCLA’s ESL experts hope to carry over virtual innovations as classes move back in person.
Alison Bailey, a professor of human development and psychology and the director of the UCLA Language and Literacy Research Group, believes all UCLA instructors should prioritize the accessibility of their coursework for ESL and multilingual students.
“We have to ... think very flexibly so that students can participate in the ways that they feel most comfortable,” Bailey said.
Bailey said she recommends instructors continue to embrace combining communication channels as many have done during the turn to remote learning. Overlapping opportunities to speak, type in a Zoom chat and interact with visual aids exemplify a technique known as multi-semiotic teaching, she said. Bailey added that this teaching style not only helps students for whom English is an additional language but also benefits the comprehension of all Bruins.
“I think once we’re back in the classroom, ... personally, I will be more attuned in to thinking of if there are other ways to convey information,” Bailey said. “(Multi-semiotic teaching) would be something to take back into our in-person classrooms.”
This type of adaptation on the part of instructors would help imbue in-person classes with the flexibility that multilingual students, such as Zhao and Wee, have appreciated in remote learning.
But Xiao said she feels conflicted about UCLA’s recent pivot back to in-person classes and hopes her instructors continue to show compassion to ESL and multilingual students by keeping aspects of remote learning.
“Understanding. ... That’s what I need,” she said. “I want (professors) to know that I have this trouble and (for them) to want to help me. That’s all.”