I want to let you know it will be difficult for us to communicate with each other if you group all the nonnative speakers in one room/group.
During the workshop, I have twice located in the zoom room, where none of us speaks English as the native language. For example, today, two of us were Chinese, one Japanese, and one unknown. During the practice, we find that extremely hard to communicate. We could not even understand what the tutor wanted us to put in the terminal.
Let me give you an example if one nonnative speaker understands 90% (that is a fair assumption) of the content. You grouped five nonnative speakers, which is 0.9**5=0.59.
Hi Shawn
Thank you for letting us know.
We did not ask about languages during registration and the automatic room assignment in zoom is based on the order people join the call. (Traditionally at the in-person meeting English is not the first/only language for about 25% of attendees and I think it has been about the same online).
We will see if we can come up with a better way to take this into account for next time.
best wishes
Sarah
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