A social-belonging intervention improves STEM outcomes for students who speak English as a second language

Yes, this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

English has taken its place in the world and most communication happens in English. Going by L1, English stands third in the total speakers; however, it must be noted that English is the most common language spoken if L1 and L2 are combined. Although most scientific communication happen in English, few countries have journals in local languages. A lot of countries in Europe and China have journals in their local language [1][2]. The fact that journals are available in other languages encourages students to pursue research. However, countries like India fail to have journals in their local vernaculars, forcing all students to learn English so as to survive in the academic world.

India is home to 1.3 billion people with more than 19,500 languages and 22 official languages, so it might be difficult to get all of them on one board [3]. This forces the entire 1.3 billion people to learn English so as to survive in academia. Unfortunately in India, there is job-based discrimination, wherein certain jobs are respected and paid more, while some are considered derogatory. Students migrate to engineering and get placed in software etc., while jobs such as teaching in schools and preschools are filled by the so-called non-performers. Thereby reducing the quality of teaching. Most of the people who score 100 percent in schools and colleges basically know nothing. There is a reason behind any and every logic, but the teachers, themselves being less knowledgeable, are unable to generate the passion for learning, and simply push for good grades.

Although in a diverse country of 1.3 billion it might take time to rectify and the current national education, policy seems to be good[4]. On the flip side it introduces a lot of innovative techniques; on the other side it makes a kid learn three languages only to be called literate. Note he/she is not going to be skilled, he or she is only going to be literate. The current government is pushing one nation one subscription plan--they are more focused to make the link language as Hindi, which would mean not many people would have the opportunity to learn English [5]. This language barrier, coupled with economic constraints, forces many to drop out of research even at the masters level.

The following questions need to be answered:

Should all countries encourage publishing in English?

Should all universities and high schools have a science writing course?

Should all countries have journals in their local language?

Should big publications houses like Nature, Science, etc translate and make their content available in other languages? or at least publish reviews in local languages? This is tough. But can be considered if a language has more than 10 million speakers.

Should publication houses offer services similar to Grammarly that helps non-English speakers write more efficiently?

Should each university have a writing assistant to help their students?

SWAN is a desktop tool that helps students in writing.[6] We still have a long way to go.

References:

[1] https://www.researchtrends.com/issue-31-november-2012/the-language-of-future-scientific-communication/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1796769/

[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/more-than-19500-mother-tongues-spoken-in-india-census-5241056/ [4]https://www.mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/Draft_NEP_2019_EN_Revised.pdf [5]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02708-4 [6]http://cs.joensuu.fi/swan/