Imagine being five years old and suddenly your school is now online only. Parents are having to take up the role of at-home teacher in order to achieve distance learning objectives. This presents its own unique host of challenges in general but now add into the equation that your parent is not a fluent English speaker -- what then? How do they help their young children do the schoolwork they themselves have trouble reading and understanding? Which is where my title for this blog post comes into play -- as if online learning isn't hard enough, let's contend with language barriers.
We have been learning a lot these past few weeks in class about dialects across the United States but for my last post I wanted to travel back to some of our discussions from earlier in the semester (a simpler time when I got to see you all in person instead of through my laptop screen). We had spent time talking about the different languages spoken across the United States and the differing experiences of those whose native language is not English.
In this new, online based world, life for these non-native speakers is becoming even more challenging. An article published by a Floridian news outlet titled "Language Barrier Makes Distance Learning Hard for Some ParentsLanguage Barrier Makes Distance Learning Hard for Some Parents" explains the specific problems they are facing.
The article focuses on an Hispanic mother named Martin del Campo who has four children who are now learning online at home. She explained that she had been having difficulty understanding the assignments she is trying to teach her youngest children since they are in English and as such has had to have her older kids become her unofficial teaching assistants -- something that detracts from their own studies.
Paired with the already difficult work of trying to navigate unknown online programs -- which del Campo admitted "I struggle a lot because I also don’t know how to use a computer...I couldn’t understand when it says go to this link, log in to this website, so it gets really complicated.” these language barrier issues are making the transition to distance learning extra hard for families.
The problem of language barriers in the world of distance learning is something that I had not even considered when we all switched to an online based education in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic but it is truly a serious concern. What do you all think of the problems presented by language barriers in regards to online learning? What do you think are the best ways to try and help these families who are struggling?
