Over the years as a teacher, I've come across many bright foreign students who take classes below their learning ability because they fail to make the passing grade when tested in English and they struggle to make themselves understood. This is a shame because it is holding back students' real capabilities.
This might be especially true in Hong Kong, where students from around the world struggle to find the correct words in the English vernacular to explain what they already know. Often it is the language rather than the difficulty of the concept that is hindering them.
Language Central for Science is an iOS application, created by education publishers Pearson, to provide additional support to readers of basic English. It uses activities to drum home scientific terms, giving users the vocabulary to explain concepts.
The app covers ecology and biology with three learning activities: flashcards to help build understanding of the words, trivia questions to test their understanding and Word Fly to strengthen their spelling.
In flashcard mode, students can have the words read aloud so they hear the correct pronunciation of tricky phonemes like 'endoplasmic reticulum'.
This can be especially useful for aural learners, who can read along as definitions are read aloud.
The trivia challenge is a multiple-choice game testing knowledge of definitions. But it is a pity that if an answer is wrong, users cannot find out the correct answer and learn from the mistake.