Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans for Multilingual Students

Abstract

With the increasing mobility of higher education students across the world, institutions and instructors are confronted with the need to mitigate the linguistic challenges that multilingual students face in learning advanced content in universities or colleges where English or another language is the medium of instruction. This usually pertains to students who have low competence in the language of instruction, as it is a second or third foreign language for them, hence encountering difficulties in the mastery of discipline-specific content and knowledge. First and foremost, this chapter explores the specific linguistic barriers that multilingual students encounter in this context, which relate to several elements of communicative competence in the language of instruction, while investigating empirical studies on instructional strategies for multilingual classes. Secondly, it discusses the use of Merrill’s (2013) first principles of instruction as the main framework in the design of technology-enhanced lesson plans and in the selection implementation of technology-nested instructional strategies, which can assist instructors in creating linguistically inclusive learning environments across disciplines, while maintaining high academic standards. The chapter critically addresses the use of ICT tools in supporting instructional strategies and lesson plan design to mitigate students’ linguistic difficulties with the receptive and productive language skills within discipline-specific contexts. Finally, it provides a lesson plan template and examples encouraging instructors to carefully plan and design instruction and to experiment and monitor the outcomes in their classes.

Citation

Moni, A. (2020), "Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans for Multilingual Students", Mather, P.-A. (Ed.) Technology-enhanced Learning and Linguistic Diversity: Strategies and Approaches to Teaching Students in a 2nd or 3rd Language (Emerald Studies in Higher Education, Innovation and Technology), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 131-151. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83982-128-820201009