A part of 5.2: Lightning Talk session.

Increasing EAL International Students’ Confidence to Participate in Online Classrooms: Using an Anti-Oppressive Framework
Yaseen Ali, Learning Strategist, Academic Success
Jasjit Sangha Learning Strategist, Academic Success

Societal inequity is reproduced on university campuses, in a myriad of ways, from how course curricula are designed to how students are expected to interact in the classroom. For international students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) – many of them racialized – deficiency attitudes around language proficiency such as native-speakerism negatively impact their confidence to participate verbally. EAL international students thus often feel pressure to continuously adapt their speech to meet a “standard” in order to be successfully understood. As learning strategists working directly with these students, we have observed that the shift to online learning has exacerbated these issues. Using videoconferencing platforms, students convey a sense of unease when attempting to demonstrate involvement in conversations that move too quickly yet tend to blame themselves. Since March 2020, we have offered workshops for graduate students to further articulate this unease, by openly discussing these barriers as a systemic issue instead of a personal one. We address the impact of the hidden curriculum on their learning experiences, such as dealing with others’ microaggressions or biases. We also affirm the World Englishes that these students already speak as legitimate by highlighting the number of global EAL users (versus L1 speakers). In this session, we will share our anti-oppressive framework by sharing facilitation strategies used in our conversations with students. Namely, we attempt to align with Tsuda’s Ecology of Language Paradigm (2019) to “raise consciousness about issues such as the right to language and equality in communication”.