Online Education: Learning English a second language for international students in China
Index
- Introduction
- Benefits
- Less cost and more time for studies
- Accessibility
- Wide range of knowledge
- Disadvantages
- Self-discipline
- Internet delay
- Lack of teamwork
- How to solve these problems
Introduction
Many international students in China have begun to use online education to develop their second language because of Covid-19 nowadays. When some schools asked the students about their feelings, some of them showed their satisfaction with online study while others are worried about this method. So, this article will talk about what benefits online education can bring to international students learning English as a second language and what disadvantages online education may have. Also, the article provides some solutions to solving these problems for international students.
Benefits
1. Less cost and more time for studies
Students just need to prepare a computer to attend classes at home, so online education helps people save money on expenditure on transportation. Also, some international students may have to go abroad and rent an apartment near their language school to study a second language. For international students who study in the USA, travel costs from $300 to $700 while accommodation costs between $5000 and $7500 per year (Piyush Kohli, 2020). So, online education may also help them save a lot of money on both transportation and house rent.
Moreover, through online education, students get to have more time for their studies, as they do not have to spend time to get to commute to their school. The research by Carole Turley Voulgaris of California Polytechnic State University, Michael J. Smart of Rutgers University, and Brian D. Taylor of UCLA shows that long commutes to school have negative impacts on children’s well-being, especially on sleep and exercise ( Richard Florida, n.d.).
2. Accessibility
In the last century, the Chinese never even considered ‘online education’ because scientific technology was poor at that time. However, with the efforts of scientists, technology has improved rapidly and almost most Chinese people have a chance to use computers and smartphones nowadays. The internet system covers almost every major city in China and provides a chance for online education.
In addition, China has many advanced applications for online education. Aside from normal social media like WeChat and QQ, which can provide video communication for individuals and small groups, professional applications for online study are also very advanced. Education applications like “Xuexi Tong” and “DingDing” provide the function of video education where many classes of students can be handled at the same time.
Zoom is also a suitable choice for online education, especially for international students who have classes with teachers from other countries. Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars (Official website of Zoom, n.d.).
3. Wide range of Knowledge
Unlike having classes in schools, online learning can provide students with different educational videos from different schools. Many online applications provide various kinds of high-quality educational information. Moreover, international students can find lessons from other countries to broaden their horizons and exercise their listening skills for their second language. For example, NetEase OpenCourse and BILIBILI are all good applications that Chinese students can use to find online courses from different professors or teachers.
Disadvantages
1. Self-discipline
Online education requires students to have more self-control than they would have in a normal class. The teachers in online classes can only see the students’ faces instead of their whole bodies, so the students need to restrict themselves from losing their attention in class by playing with their smartphones. Unlike in a normal class, they cannot finish some homework with the teachers’ supervision. For students in China, a lot of them have self-study classes that allow students to finish their homework in classrooms and ask teachers questions while doing their homework. It has been shown that teacher supervision can improve classroom instruction and enhance the students’ skills of effectively accomplishing the job in the future( Penerbit Akademia Baru, 2015). Therefore, without the teachers’ supervision, they also need to restrict themselves from copying answers directly from the internet.
2. Internet delay
Although almost all places in China are covered by high-speed internet, if the students have a video class with the teacher who lives at a long distance from the student’s location, the internet delay will be obvious. The internet delay may disrupt the online class negatively. For example, internet delay may cause a disruption of the teacher’s voice or internet disconnection.
3. Lack of teamwork
In online education, students may just sit beside the computer screen instead of sitting in classrooms, which gives them a chance to communicate and have teamwork with their classmates. The most important lesson students can learn from working together as a team is how to effectively communicate with others. Social skills are useful in almost every situation and can help people succeed no matter their career or situation (Anon, 2017). In an online class, if all the students want to chat with their classmates, the internet delay may make the video call noisy and interrupt the class.
How to solve these problems
For the problem with self-discipline, schools can provide some online exams to force the students to listen to the class carefully and finish their homework seriously. The teacher can make the student put the computer or smartphone far enough from their body to make sure that the teachers can see their whole physical activities.
For the lack of teamwork, I think the teachers can require the students to have internships in some companies to improve their cooperative skills. Furthermore, the teacher can recommend that the students who live in the same city to get together to finish some group tasks.
For the internet delay, I believe that, with the development of technology, one day, we can solve this problem through a complete cover rate of 5G internet.
In conclusion, online education has many benefits for second-language learners like saving money and time, having accessibility, and giving them a wide range of knowledge. However, for students, they also need to overcome many challenges, such as the lack of self-discipline, internet delay and the lack of teamwork, which all can be solved if we put our hearts into it.
Reference list
Anon, 2017. How Teamwork Helps Kids Succeed In Life. [assessed 15 August, 2020]. Available from: https://groupdynamix.com/teamwork-kids-succeed-in-life/
Official website of Zoom, n.d. [assessed 15 August, 2020]. Available from: www.zoom.cn/.
Piyush Kohli, 2020. Cost of Living in USA for Students. [assessed 17 August, 2020]. Available from: https://studyabroad.shiksha.com/cost-of-living-for-international-students-in-the-us-articlepage-548
Richard Florida, n.d. Long School Commutes Are Terrible for Kids. [assessed 11 August, 2020]. Available from:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/how-distance-to-school-affects-student-well-being
Penerbit Akademia Baru, 2015. The relationship between teaching supervision with teachers’ motivation in secondary schools. [assessed 13 August, 2020]. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330716990_The_Relationship_between_Teaching_Supervision_with_Teachers’_Motivation_in_Secondary_Schools