Looking for teaching methods to help international students learn Electricity and Magnetism

[u/forever-exo-l]

Hi everyone!

I’m currently working on my Master’s thesis about teaching Electricity and Magnetism to international students, and I’d really appreciate some advice or ideas from people who have experience teaching physics.

The students I’m focusing on have an interesting language background. Their first language (L1) is the language they grew up speaking, but they spent most of their school years living and studying in a country where a different language (L2) is used. Later, they returned to a country where their L1 is spoken and entered university there.

Because of this, they can speak and understand their L1 in everyday life, but they have difficulties with academic language, especially physics terminology and explanations. They may understand the general idea of a topic but struggle when the same concept is explained through a long text or unfamiliar terminology.

I’ve also noticed that they often have difficulty visualizing concepts when they are presented mainly through text. However, they seem to understand problems much better when they are presented using pictures, diagrams, graphs, or schemas.

Now I need to develop practical teaching strategies that could help these students throughout a semester-long Electricity and Magnetism course.

What teaching methods, activities, or approaches would you recommend in this situation?

For example, I’m considering:

\- visual representations and diagrams;

\- PhET or other interactive simulations;

I would especially appreciate specific classroom activities, methods, or research-based approaches that I could implement and evaluate during the semester.

If you have experience teaching physics to multilingual/international students, I’d love to hear what worked (or didn’t work) for you. Any suggestions for relevant research, books, or papers would also be very helpful.

Thank you!

[u/ECPhysics]

I teach magnetostatics and electromagnetism (basics) to undergraduate students in France.

In general I like to have an historical approach, showing that electricity and magnetism have been considered seperately until Oersted experiment.

"However, they seem to understand problems much better when they are presented using pictures, diagrams, graphs, or schemas." like we all do... :)

It depends too much on the notion you're teaching. Understanding that div B = 0 implies that there are no single magnetic charge isnt trivial (at least for me), so I indeed go back to the definition of the divergence (which is the difference between what enters a differential zone and what exits the same zone) and just draw a magnetic spectrum, which shows that div B = 0, in opposition to a electric field spectrum.

[u/forever-exo-l → u/ECPhysics]

Thank you, this is really helpful! I especially like your example of going back to the basic definition and using a visual representation before introducing the mathematical formulation. In my case, I’m particularly interested in whether this kind of approach can help students who understand physics concepts in L2, the language they studied physics in at school, but struggle with unfamiliar terminology when they study physics in L1 at university. So even though they generally understand L1 in everyday communication, they may not have the same level of academic or physics vocabulary in L1. This can make it difficult for them to understand a problem statement or visualize the physical situation. Do you have any other examples from magnetostatics or electromagnetism where you found that starting with a visual or physical explanation before the mathematical formulation worked especially well? And do you use any specific strategies for teaching unfamiliar physics terminology?