Giving Feedback to English Language Learners in Their Home Language

Picture a student named Sofia. She arrived from Guatemala in August. She's sharp and hardworking, and she understands the science. In her lab report she wrote, "The plant grow more because it have more light."

Her teacher writes back: "Good observation! To strengthen your conclusion, incorporate quantitative evidence from your data table and address potential confounding variables."

That's helpful feedback in teaching terms. But Sofia can't read most of it yet. So she does what most students do with feedback they can't understand. She looks at the score and moves on.

Now imagine the same feedback, in Spanish, in plain words:

"Encontraste el patrón correcto: más luz, más crecimiento. Ahora usa tus datos. Escribe los números: la planta en la ventana creció 8 cm y la del armario creció 2 cm."

("You found the right pattern: more light, more growth. Now use your data. Write the numbers: the plant by the window grew 8 cm and the one in the closet grew 2 cm.")

Sofia can act on that tonight.

Why feedback in English often doesn't land

There are a lot of students like Sofia. In fall 2021, about 5.3 million students in U.S. public schools were English learners. That's 10.6% of all public school students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. About three out of four of them spoke Spanish at home. Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese were next.

Many of these students spend much of the school day in regular classrooms, with teachers who give feedback in English. And good feedback for students from teachers tends to use exactly the kind of language that's hardest for a new English learner: specific terms, longer sentences, and words like "strengthen" and "incorporate" that don't show up in everyday conversation.

Here's the problem that creates. Feedback is supposed to close the gap between where a student is and where they need to be. But if a student can't read the feedback, the gap stays open. Worse, the student may decide they're "bad at science", when really they just couldn't read the note.

That's not a language problem. It's a feedback problem. And it has a fix.

What does the research say?

The short version: a student's home language is one of the most useful tools they bring to school, and using it helps them learn, including learning English.

A few things researchers and education agencies agree on:

• Skills transfer between languages. Students who learn to read, reason or write well in one language carry a lot of those skills into their second language. Researcher Fred Genesee, writing for Colorín Colorado, points out that students with strong reading skills in their home language tend to have strong reading skills in English too.
• The U.S. Department of Education recommends it. A January 2025 brief from its Office of English Language Acquisition tells teachers to "provide home language accommodations and resources," including "instructions in students' home language," and to encourage students to use their home language to deepen their thinking about content.
• Mixing languages on purpose is a real teaching strategy. It's called translanguaging: letting students use everything they know, in every language they know, to understand and express ideas. The same federal brief describes it as "drawing upon one's full language repertoire with creativity and intentionality."

There isn't much research on home-language feedback specifically. But the reasoning follows straight from what we know about formative feedback in general. Feedback works when students understand it, believe they can act on it, and have a chance to use it. For a new English learner, language is often the one thing standing in the way of all three.

Will it slow down their English?

This is the worry most teachers have, and it's a fair one. If students always get feedback in their home language, won't they rely on it and stop pushing their English?

The honest answer: it depends on how you use it.

The New York State Education Department makes this point clearly. It calls the home language "a steppingstone," not the enemy. But it also warns that students at higher levels "should not be encouraged to rely on translation," because it can become a habit that slows their English.

So the goal isn't to translate everything forever. The goal is to use the home language where it helps most, and to step it back as English grows. Think of it like training wheels. You don't take them off on day one, and you don't leave them on until high school.

In practice, that means three things:

1. Use the home language for the hard thinking. Feedback about ideas, reasoning and next steps is where understanding matters most.
2. Keep some English in every piece of feedback. Even for a brand-new student, one short English sentence or a few key terms keeps English moving.
3. Shift toward English over time. As a student's English grows, move more of the feedback into English, until the home language is only there for the tricky bits.

Home language, English, or both?

There's no single rule for every student. But a student's English level is the best guide. Many schools use the WIDA levels to describe English development, from Level 1 (Entering) to Level 6 (Reaching). Here's a simple way to match feedback to where a student is:

A few other things should shape your choice too:

• The task. A math explanation or a science conclusion is about the ideas, so home-language feedback makes a lot of sense. An English essay is partly about English, so more of the feedback should be in English, even for newer learners.
• The student's literacy in their home language. Some students speak their home language but haven't learned to read it well, often because their schooling was interrupted. For them, written home-language feedback won't help much. Short, simple English with pictures or examples may work better, or a quick spoken conversation.
• What the student prefers. Ask them. Some students feel proud to get feedback in their home language. Others, especially older students, want it in English because they're working hard to fit in. Both are fine. Respect it.

Separate the ideas from the English

This is the most useful habit you can build, whatever language you give feedback in.

Every piece of work from an English learner shows two different things. It shows what they understand about the subject. And it shows how well they can say it in English. These are two different skills, and they need two different kinds of assessment feedback.

Go back to Sofia's sentence: "The plant grow more because it have more light."

• The science is right. She found the pattern. More light, more growth.
• The English has two small slips. "Grow" should be "grows", and "have" should be "has".

If you mix these together, you get feedback like "Good idea, but watch your grammar and add data", which tells her very little. If you separate them, you can give her two clear messages:

1. On the science (in the language she reads best): "You found the right pattern. Now add the numbers from your data."
2. On the English (short, in English): "English tip: The plant grows. It has. Add -s for one plant."

This also protects her grade. If your rubric is about science, a student shouldn't lose science points for English grammar. Keep language targets in your language rubric, where they belong. The science score should reflect the science.

How to write feedback that works in any language

Whether you write in English, Spanish or anything else, the same habits make student feedback easier to understand. They help every student, not just English learners.

1. Keep sentences short. One idea per sentence. "Add your data" beats "You could strengthen this by incorporating quantitative evidence."
2. Pick one or two things. A list of eight fixes is overwhelming in any language. Choose the one that will make the biggest difference.
3. Start with something specific that worked. Not "Good job", but "You found the right pattern." It tells them what to keep doing.
4. Make the next step an action. Start it with a verb: add, find, check, explain, try.
5. Point at their own work. Quote their words or point to a line or step. Keep the quote in the language they wrote it in. It's their evidence, so don't translate it.
6. Give a small example. Show what better looks like. "Like this: the plant by the window grew 8 cm."
7. Teach the key words. Put important subject words in English, with the home-language word next to it the first time: evidence (evidencia). Many science and math words look alike in English and Spanish, like conclusion / conclusión and variable / variable. Point those out. They're free vocabulary.
8. Skip idioms and slang. "You're on the right track" or "Nail down your thesis" are confusing even in translation.
9. Check it landed. Ask the student to tell you, in any language, what they're going to change. If they can't, the feedback needs another try.

Feedback examples for teachers

Here are three before-and-after examples of feedback for students from teachers, in math, English and a quick set of sentence starters you can reuse.

Example 1: Math (Level 2 student, feedback mostly in Spanish)

The problem: Solve 3x + 5 = 20. The student wrote: 3x = 25, x = 25/3.

("Your plan is right: get x by itself. Look at step 1. To undo the +5, subtract 5 from both sides: 3x = 15. Then try again.")

The "before" is correct but useless to this student. The "after" tells her what she did right, points to the exact step, shows the fix, and teaches two English math words along the way.

Example 2: Feedback on essays (Level 3–4 student, both languages)

The student wrote: "I think Jonas is brave because he leave the community."

("Find a sentence from the book that shows Jonas was scared but left anyway. Put it in quotation marks.")

The main point is in English, because this is an English class and the student is ready for it. The harder explanation, how to find the right quote, is in Spanish, so it isn't lost. And there's exactly one grammar target, not five.

Example 3: Sentence starters you can reuse

Keep a list like this on your desk, or share it with colleagues. Starters make it much faster to give clear feedback in two languages, even if you only speak one. If Spanish isn't the language you need, ask a bilingual colleague or family volunteer to help you build the same list in another language once, then reuse it all year.

Don't forget families

Feedback in a student's home language has a quiet bonus: their family can read it too. A parent who doesn't read English can sit with their child, see what the teacher said, and help. That's a big deal for families who often feel shut out of what's happening at school.

One important line to keep clear, though. Schools have legal duties when they communicate with parents who don't speak English well. Guidance from the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice says schools must share key information, including report cards and parent-teacher conferences, in a language parents understand. It also says schools must use appropriate and competent translators or interpreters, and may not rely on students or siblings to interpret for their parents.

So home-language feedback on a lab report is a great extra. But it doesn't replace your school's official translation for report cards, meetings and notices. Check with your district's EL or family engagement team about what's available.

Six mistakes to avoid

1. Translating everything forever. Use the home language as a bridge, and move more feedback into English as the student grows.
2. Taking away all English. Even brand-new students should see a little English in every piece of feedback, like a key word or one short sentence.
3. Grading the English inside a science score. If the rubric is about science, score the science. Put language goals somewhere they belong.
4. Writing long, fancy feedback, then translating it. Translating a confusing paragraph gives you a confusing paragraph in another language. Write it short and clear first.
5. Assuming a student reads their home language. Speaking a language and reading it well are different. Ask.
6. Asking a student to translate for their parents. It puts the child in an unfair spot, and schools shouldn't rely on it. Use your school's interpreters.

Doing this in GradingPal

If you'd like to give feedback in more than one language without writing everything twice, GradingPal's grading controls handle language on every assignment with two simple settings.

The language the work is judged in. This sets the standard the writing is held to, including whether it's US or UK English. For a mixed class, auto-detect reads each submission in the language it was written in.

The language feedback comes back in. You have three choices:

• Same as the student's work. A newcomer who writes her answer in Spanish gets feedback in Spanish. This is the default.
• One language you choose. If most of a class reads Spanish best, you can have their English work judged to English standards and the feedback written in Spanish.
• Matched to each student. In a mixed class, every student gets feedback in the language they wrote in. Your view of why each score was given stays in English, so you never need a translator to read your own gradebook.

A few details that matter for English learners:

• Quotes are never translated. When feedback quotes a student's own words as evidence, it keeps them exactly as they wrote them.
• Grammar check never changes a score. You can turn it on to underline spelling and grammar slips in the student's own writing, while your rubric decides the grade. That's the "separate the ideas from the English" habit, built in.
• You can tell it how to write. Add your own feedback instructions in plain words, like "Use short sentences" or "End with one English tip and two key words", and they apply to that assignment. Save them to reuse.
• You approve every comment. Nothing reaches a student until you've read it, edited it if you want, and shared it.

The supported languages are English (US and UK), Spanish (Spain and Latin America), French (France and Canada), German and Brazilian Portuguese. Matching beyond those works on a best-effort basis.

The bottom line

Feedback only works if a student can read it. For an English learner, that sometimes means the home language, sometimes English, and most often a bit of both.

Write it short. Separate the ideas from the English. Keep some English in every note, and let the home language fade as their English grows. Do that, and students like Sofia stop looking only at the score, and start acting on what you wrote.

Want to try it with your own class? Start free with GradingPal, open an assignment's settings, and choose the feedback language your students read best.