{"id":23923,"date":"2023-05-03T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T16:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23923"},"modified":"2023-05-08T13:04:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T20:04:01","slug":"multilingual-student-support-shows-the-ropes-to-camosun-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/05\/03\/multilingual-student-support-shows-the-ropes-to-camosun-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Multilingual Student Support shows the ropes to Camosun students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College\u2019s Multilingual Student Support (MSS) is a service that helps students who don\u2019t speak English as a first language adjust to the change in their environment in terms of both studying and culture. The service, which started last September, helps students through workshops, self-access materials, conversation circles, and one-on-one advising and coaching. There will be new features to this service next semester, such as short videos providing study tips.<\/p>\n

Conversation circles are simply a space for students to talk to each other. Although MSS is for students who are non-native speakers of English, conversation circles are for everyone because it helps multilingual students develop conversations and relationships. They are just one tool MSS uses to reach students, and according to English Language Development instructor Cristina Peterson, who is one of the three instructors at MSS, MSS\u2019 reach has been growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve definitely reached a lot more students this semester than the last semester,\u201d says Peterson. \u201cMostly because as the word gets out people realize, \u2018Oh, I can come and get free help,\u2019 and I meet people and all these things. So, the word of mouth, I think it helps.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Camosun College students can use Multilingual Student Support for help (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Throughout the winter semester, Peterson has been helping many students with preparing for their presentations and encouraging and directing them to go to help centres for assistance with their essays. Peterson says she helps students grasp a deeper understanding of grammar for them \u201cto do their error analysis to identify repeating grammatical issues,\u201d she says. Since MSS is a relatively new service that the college provides, it\u2019s experimenting with delivery methods.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to see more people come into conversation circles,\u201d says Peterson. \u201cI\u2019d like to see more students from across the campus. I\u2019d like to see faculty promote it more, because I don\u2019t know how much they promote it. I send out emails and ask them to share the information, and I don\u2019t hear back from people sometimes and it is hard to know whether it went anywhere or not. We have posters around campus, but I\u2019d also like to see development in the social media area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peterson knows the difficulties multilingual students can face and wants to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just want to be that buffer for them,\u201d she says. \u201cMost of us in the ELD department have taught English to a very wide range of international students from different cultures for years. And most of us worked overseas; most of us studied different languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peterson says that her experience working overseas helps her at her job, both as an instructor and at MSS.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the feeling of being homesick, and I know the feeling of being lost, and not speaking the language well,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I was in Japan, I had spoken barely any Japanese. I hardly knew how to say \u2018hello.\u2019 Same with Korea\u2014I went there and barely spoke Korean. So, I\u2019ve been living in countries where I don\u2019t speak a word of their language, and it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s that feeling of bewilderment.\u201d<\/p>\n

See camosun.ca\/services\/academic-supports\/multilingual-student-support for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College\u2019s Multilingual Student Support (MSS) is a service that helps students who don\u2019t speak English as a first language adjust to the change in their environment in terms of both studying and culture. The service, which started last September, helps students through workshops, self-access materials, conversation circles, and one-on-one advising and coaching. There will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-may-3-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23924,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23923\/revisions\/23924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}