Supporting the Language Development of international students in an Online Higher Education Context

Breakout Room I

International students, the critical stakeholders of Canadian higher education, deserve attention and efforts to maximize their academic acculturation and post-secondary success. In the educational context, many international students reported experiencing major linguistic challenges which significantly hinder them to understand and digest teaching content (Zhou & Zhang, 2014). When the learning environment changes from face-to-face to online, communication becomes difficult, in general, and international students’ linguistic barriers become intensified. The symposium draws upon sociocultural learning theory to discuss the potential linguistic challenges international students are facing in an online higher educational learning context, and what teachers can do to support students’ language development across the discipline.