Tips for Students

Tips for Students

Read the tips below or download our tip sheet [PDF]

 

1. Bilingualism is good

Speaking another language is an asset.  Research shows long term benefits to cognitive function for bilingual speakers who use both of their languages regularly (Bialystok et al., 2004).

From: Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R., & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control: Evidence From the Simon Task. Psychology and aging, 19(2), 290-303. https://doi.org/10.1037/0882-7974.19.2.290

2. Monolingual students benefit

Students who are monolingual also benefit from the first-hand experiences of students from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Celic & Seltzer, 2011).

From: Celic, C., & Seltzer, K. (2011). Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators. CUNY-NYSIEB. New York.

3. Home languages help with English schoolwork

Use your languages to help you with your schoolwork in English. Think about trying these ideas:

    • If you need to write about a topic for school and your first step is to brainstorm ideas, this can be done in your home language and also in English.
    • It can be helpful to talk about the topic with your parents and family members in your home language.
    • You can also discuss the topic with a classmate who speaks your language.
    • It will be useful to listen to or read a text in your home language as well as engaging with the English texts offered at school.
    • If you don’t have someone who shares your home language at school to talk to, check out what is available using technology.

4. Discuss homework with your family

You can use your home language to discuss your homework and assignment tasks with your family members. This will help you to think about the topic and the task. You can also ask your family members for advice. The more help you get, the better. It doesn’t matter that the discussions are not in English. It is the ideas that matter!

5. Learn about your family’s home country

When you discuss your homework and assignment tasks with your family members such as parents, you will learn a lot about your family’s home country.

For example, in the Home Languages in Schools project, the students learnt about the following topics, thanks to discussions with their parents (in the home language):

Geography: Urbanisation in Brazil

History: Civil rights in Brazil and the impact of Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights movement in the USA on people of slave backgrounds in Brazil

Maths: Different equations and maths processes.

From: https://research.qut.edu.au/hlins/

6. Lexification

Discussing your schoolwork in the family’s home language has a lot of benefits. It will help you learn more words in the home language, or what is called ‘lexification’. This means an increased number of words and more academic words in the home language. Being more proficient in your home language will help you to be bilingual in both your home language and English. Being proficient in your home language will help you to communicate with family members such as grandparents in your family’s home country.

7. Your family has a wealth of knowledge

You will be surprised when you discuss your schoolwork with your family members. They know a lot more than you might think!

8. Use technology

Microsoft Word uses functions such as ‘Translate’ in a growing number of languages to assist bilingual speakers in quickly translating a written text.  ‘Immersive reader’ is another function that provides text to speech in a number of languages. There is also the ‘Read Aloud’ function.

You can also try these apps to transfer written text to spoken text:

    • Voice Dream Reader: lets you listen to any document with text-to-speech function. NOTE: This is not a free app.
    • OTTER: lets you speak and transfers this to written text
    • PDF Voice Reader Aloud: provides text-to-speech functions for scanned written text

There are many others too!