a speech on covid 19 for students in english

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2 Minute Speech on Covid-19 (CoronaVirus) for Students

The year, 2019, saw the discovery of a previously unknown coronavirus illness, Covid-19 . The Coronavirus has affected the way we go about our everyday lives. This pandemic has devastated millions of people, either unwell or passed away due to the sickness. The most common symptoms of this viral illness include a high temperature, a cough, bone pain, and difficulties with the respiratory system. In addition to these symptoms, patients infected with the coronavirus may also feel weariness, a sore throat, muscular discomfort, and a loss of taste or smell.

10 Lines Speech on Covid-19 for Students

The Coronavirus is a member of a family of viruses that may infect their hosts exceptionally quickly.

Humans created the Coronavirus in the city of Wuhan in China, where it first appeared.

The first confirmed case of the Coronavirus was found in India in January in the year 2020.

Protecting ourselves against the coronavirus is essential by covering our mouths and noses when we cough or sneeze to prevent the infection from spreading.

We must constantly wash our hands with antibacterial soap and face masks to protect ourselves.

To ensure our safety, the government has ordered the whole nation's closure to halt the virus's spread.

The Coronavirus forced all our classes to be taken online, as schools and institutions were shut down.

Due to the coronavirus, everyone was instructed to stay indoors throughout the lockdown.

During this period, I spent a lot of time playing games with family members.

Even though the cases of COVID-19 are a lot less now, we should still take precautions.

Short 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

The coronavirus, also known as Covid - 19 , causes a severe illness. Those who are exposed to it become sick in their lungs. A brand-new virus is having a devastating effect throughout the globe. It's being passed from person to person via social interaction.

The first instance of Covid - 19 was discovered in December 2019 in Wuhan, China . The World Health Organization proclaimed the covid - 19 pandemic in March 2020. It has now reached every country in the globe. Droplets produced by an infected person's cough or sneeze might infect those nearby.

The severity of Covid-19 symptoms varies widely. Symptoms aren't always present. The typical symptoms are high temperatures, a dry cough, and difficulty breathing. Covid - 19 individuals also exhibit other symptoms such as weakness, a sore throat, muscular soreness, and a diminished sense of smell and taste.

Vaccination has been produced by many countries but the effectiveness of them is different for every individual. The only treatment then is to avoid contracting in the first place. We can accomplish that by following these protocols—

Put on a mask to hide your face. Use soap and hand sanitiser often to keep germs at bay.

Keep a distance of 5 to 6 feet at all times.

Never put your fingers in your mouth or nose.

Long 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

As students, it's important for us to understand the gravity of the situation regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has on our communities and the world at large. In this speech, I will discuss the real-world examples of the effects of the pandemic and its impact on various aspects of our lives.

Impact on Economy | The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the global economy. We have seen how businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to widespread job loss and economic hardship. Many individuals and families have been struggling to make ends meet, and this has led to a rise in poverty and inequality.

Impact on Healthcare Systems | The pandemic has also put a strain on healthcare systems around the world. Hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients, and healthcare workers have been stretched to their limits. This has highlighted the importance of investing in healthcare systems and ensuring that they are prepared for future crises.

Impact on Education | The pandemic has also affected the education system, with schools and universities being closed around the world. This has led to a shift towards online learning and the use of technology to continue education remotely. However, it has also highlighted the digital divide, with many students from low-income backgrounds facing difficulties in accessing online learning.

Impact on Mental Health | The pandemic has not only affected our physical health but also our mental health. We have seen how the isolation and uncertainty caused by the pandemic have led to an increase in stress, anxiety, and depression. It's important that we take care of our mental health and support each other during this difficult time.

Real-life Story of a Student

John is a high school student who was determined to succeed despite the struggles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

John's school closed down in the early days of the pandemic, and he quickly found himself struggling to adjust to online learning. Without the structure and support of in-person classes, John found it difficult to stay focused and motivated. He also faced challenges at home, as his parents were both essential workers and were often not available to help him with his schoolwork.

Despite these struggles, John refused to let the pandemic defeat him. He made a schedule for himself, to stay on top of his assignments and set goals for himself. He also reached out to his teachers for additional support, and they were more than happy to help.

John also found ways to stay connected with his classmates and friends, even though they were physically apart. They formed a study group and would meet regularly over Zoom to discuss their assignments and provide each other with support.

Thanks to his hard work and determination, John was able to maintain good grades and even improved in some subjects. He graduated high school on time, and was even accepted into his first-choice college.

John's story is a testament to the resilience and determination of students everywhere. Despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic, he was able to succeed and achieve his goals. He shows us that with hard work, determination, and support, we can overcome even the toughest of obstacles.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

Construction
Entertainment
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Information Technology

Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary.

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi .

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive.

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues.

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems.

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software.

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description: A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials.

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth.

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs.

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story.

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook.

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion.

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article.

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications.

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product.

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Serious disabled woman concentrating on her work she sitting at her workplace and working on computer at office

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Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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What Students Are Saying About Living Through a Pandemic

Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation.

By The Learning Network

The rapidly-developing coronavirus crisis is dominating global headlines and altering life as we know it. Many schools worldwide have closed. In the United States alone, 55 million students are rapidly adjusting to learning and socializing remotely, spending more time with family, and sacrificing comfort and convenience for the greater good.

For this week’s roundup of student comments on our writing prompts , it was only fitting to ask teenagers to react to various dimensions of this unprecedented situation: how the coronavirus outbreak is affecting their daily lives, how we can all help one another during the crisis and what thoughts or stories the term “social distancing” conjures for them.

Every week, we shout out new schools who have commented on our writing prompts. This week, perhaps because of many districts’ move to remote online learning, we had nearly 90 new classes join us from around the world. Welcome to the conversation to students from:

Academy of St. Elizabeth; Abilene, Tex.; Alabama; Anna High School, Tex.; Arlington, Va.; Austria-Hungary; Baltimore, Md.; Bellingham, Wash.; Ben Lippen School; Bloomington, Ind.; Branham High School, San Jose, Calif.; Boston; Buffalo High School, Wyo.; Camdenton, Mo.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Collierville, Tenn.; Dawson High School, Tex.; Denmark; Desert Vista High School; Doylestown, Penn.; Dublin, Calif.; Dunkirk, N.Y. ; Eleanor Murray Fallon Middle School; Elmhurst, Ill.; Fairfax, Va.; Framingham, Mass.; Frederick, Md.; Hartford, Conn.; Jefferson, N.J.; Kantonschule Uster, Switzerland; Laconia, N.H.; Las Vegas; Lashon Academy; Lebanon, N.H.; Ledyard High School; Leuzinger High School; Livonia, Mich.; Manistee Middle School; Miami, Fla.; Melrose High School; Milton Hershey School, Hershey, Penn.; Milwaukee; Montreal; Naguabo, Puerto Rico; Nebraska; Nessacus Regional Middle School; New Rochelle, N.Y.; Newport, Ky.; Newton, Mass.; North Stanly High School; Oakland, Calif.; Papillion Middle School; Polaris Expeditionary Learning School; Pomona, Calif.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Pueblo, Colo.; Reading, Mass.; Redmond Wash.; Richland, Wash.; Richmond Hill Ontario; Ridgeley, W.Va.; Rockford, Mich.; Rovereto, Italy; Salem, Mass.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Seattle, Wash.; Sequoyah School Pasadena; Shackelford Junior High, Arlington, Tex.; South El Monte High School; Sugar Grove, Ill.; St. Louis, Mo.; Timberview High School; Topsfield, Mass.; Valley Stream North High School; Vienna, Va.; Waupun, Wis.; Wauwatosa, Wis.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Westborough Mass.; White Oak Middle School, Ohio; and Winter Park High School.

We’re so glad to have you here! Now, on to this week’s comments.

Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting Your Life?

The coronavirus has changed how we work, play and learn : Schools are closing, sports leagues have been canceled, and many people have been asked to work from home.

We asked students how their lives have changed since the onset of this pandemic. They told us about all the things they miss, what it’s like to learn online, and how they’re dealing with the uncertainty. But, they also pointed out the things that have brought them joy and peace amid the chaos.

Life as we know it, upended

Yesterday my school district announced that our school would be closed until May 5. Upon receiving the email, I immediately contacted my friends to share our responses. To most of my friends and me, this news was no surprise. Already finishing week one of quarantine, I find myself in a state of pessimism in regards to life in the midst of a pandemic. My days have blurred into Google Classroom assignments, hobby seeking, aimless searching on Netflix, and on exceptionally boring days, existential contemplation.

The dichotomy of chance freedom from school and yet the discombobulated feelings of helplessness and loneliness plague my time home alone. My parents are yet working and as an only child, I try my best to stay sane with blasting music and shows. Other times I call my friends to pass the time doing school assignments. Even then, schoolwork seems increasingly pointless.

With most of my classes being APs, the recent CollegeBoard update for the 2020 AP exams was a blow to my educational motivation. I am naturally a driven, passionate learner with intense intellectual curiosity. But in the midst of this chaos, I can’t help feeling like all the assignments from my classes are just busywork. I manage to stay afloat, keeping in mind that everyone is doing their best. Despite no ostensible end in sight, I hope this quarantine brings out the best in me, in society, and in nature.

— Brenda Kim, Valencia High School

The struggles (and joys) of distance learning

Although we do have online school now, it is not the same. Working from home is worse as I don’t care to admit, my work habits from home are not the best. I am easily able to procrastinate at home and having class in bed is not the best idea. Plus, I can no longer get the one on one help teachers provide if needed.

— larisa, california

The coronavirus affected me because now having to do school virtually is kinda hard because I don’t have much of a good wi-fi, and its nerve-racking to know about what we’re gonna do about the tests we have to take in order to pass because I do care about graduating, and going to next grade in order to keep going to finally graduate school and get my diploma I just hope this virus doesn’t affect anything else besides school.

— julien phillips, texas

I personally have to do 2-3 hours of work a day instead of the usual 8 hours (including homework), and it feels more tiring somehow. I’m in the comfort of my home all the time, but have to do this for a few hours, and it feels much more monotonous than 8 hours in a classroom, and that’s what everybody has been doing for a lot of their life.

But in that sense, it also feels a lot calmer not being around people constantly, having anxiety and autism. The people in classrooms are insane. It didn’t affect my life negatively by much, but it really makes me think. If the school system were like this in the near future, I think it would be much more sustainable, in many ways.

— Alexen, Lawrence, Massachusetts

I never understood how much social interaction I experienced at school until the end of the first week of my self quarantine. I had been trapped in my house with my family for about 5 days at that point, when my AP Language and Composition class had a Zoom conference. I had done them for other classes so I wasn’t exactly excited for the opportunity. It was just another zoom lecture.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a lecture, it was a conversation. It was a discussion about our last current events assignment that I didn’t know I desperately needed. The conversation was explosive. Differing opinions flew left and right, people brought their cats to join in the fun, family members popped in and out of the frames, and the controlled chaos felt incredible. I relished in the opportunity to argue and challenge their opinions. I didn’t even realize how isolated I was feeling until I was able to talk to them in a creative and intellectual setting once again.

— Yaffa Segal, New Rochelle High School

Finding new ways to socialize

Finding new ways to stay social has been essential, and recently, my friends and I all drove our cars to a large parking lot, parked more than 6 feet apart from each other, sat in our trunks, talked and enjoyed each other’s company for over an hour and a half. This was crucial in keeping our sanity. We missed each other and being in the presence of people other than our family; however, we were sure to maintain our distance and continue social distancing. We did not touch anything new and we stayed more than 6 feet apart from each other speaking about the adjustments we have been making and the ways we have been coping with all of the changes we are experiencing.

— Carly Rieger, New Rochelle High School

…[T]his “corona-cation” has given me a lot of time to reflect, and while I haven’t seen my friends in person for a week and half, I feel closer to them than ever. We’ve FaceTimed almost every day and we play some of our favorite group games; Psych and PhotoRoulette are two apps I highly recommend to have fun from the comfort of everyone’s homes.

Because my mom has a weak immune system, I’ve been quarantined since the moment my school closed, so social distancing has been a little more than 6 feet for me. However, my friends did make me a care package filled with my favorite candy and a puzzle which my family completed in a week.

— Jessica Griffin, Glenbard West HS Glen Ellyn, IL

Mourning canceled events

To say that this virus has completely changed my day to day living would just be an understatement. I went from having things to do from 7:20am to 8:45pm every week day to absolutely nothing. The whole month of March was going to be booked as well. I had activities such as the Wilmington Marathon that I work at and the Masters Swim meet that I was going to volunteer for. Then I had a club swim meet but everything got canceled. Everything that I was looking forward to just came to a halt and nothing is going to be postponed, just canceled.

— Ellen Phillips, Hoggard

As a High School senior, this quarantine has seemed to just chop off the fun part of our senior year. We had made it so far, and were so close to getting to experience all of the exciting events and traditions set aside for seniors. This includes our graduation, prom (which is a seniors only event at my school), senior picnic, theme weeks, and much more.

— Cesar, Los Angeles

Like many other students involved in their school theatre programs, I was severely affected by the closing of schools due the growing pandemic. My theatre company had been rehearsing our play for months and in an instant, we were no longer allowed to work on our show. The Texas UIL One-Act Play Contest was postponed because of the coronavirus, and while it is a reasonable action, it left an army of theatre students with nothing to do but vent through memes, TikTok, and other forms of social media. These coping mechanisms helped me, as well as my fellow company members, process the reality that after all the hard work we put in, we may never get to perform for an audience.

— Ryan C, Dawson High School

Living with mental, emotional and financial strain

The coronavirus is having a pretty significant impact on me. Physically, it’s reducing my daily physical activity to the point where the most exercise I get is walking around my house and dancing around my room to songs that make me feel like I’m not in the middle of a pandemic. Emotionally, it has also been very straining. My mom is a substitute teacher and she is out of work for the rest of the school year with no pay. I myself am missing my closest friends a lot right now, and feel lonely often.

— Sela Jasim, Branham High School

I struggle a lot with mental health. I have had depression and ptsd, as well as anxiety for years. Seeing people outside of my family is what keeps me sane, especially those closest to me. Having to FaceTime my therapist is weird and scary. Things are so different now, and I’m slowly losing motivation. My thoughts recently have been “don’t think about it” when I think of how long this could possibly last. I am scared for my grandparents, who live across the country. I feel like I haven’t spent enough time with them and I’m losing my chance. Everything is weird. I can’t find a better way to describe it without being negative. This is a really strange time and I don’t like it. I’m trying my hardest to stay positive but that has never been one of my strong suits.

— Caileigh Robinson, Bellingham, Washington

My mom is a nurse so she has to face the virus, in fact today she is at work, her unit is also the unit that will be taking care of coronavirus patients. My whole family is very afraid that she will get very sick.

— Maddie H., Maryland

Appreciating the good

Although we are going through a horrific time filled with all kinds of uncertainty, we are given the opportunity to spend more time with our loved family and learn more about ourselves to a broader extent while also strengthening our mental mindset. I can’t stress the amount of frustration I have to return to class and my everyday routine however, I’ve learned to become stronger mentality while also becoming creative on how I live my life without being surrounded by tons of people everyday.

— anthony naranjo, Los Angeles

Although I could list all the negatives that come with Covid-19, being a junior in high school, this quarantine has been a really nice calm break from a life that seemed to never stop. A break from 35 hour school weeks along with 15 hours worth of work, being able to sit down and do hobbies I missed is something I am really appreciating.

— Ella Fredrikson, Glenbard West, Glen Ellyn, IL

An upside to these past weeks of quarantine is being able to see my usually busy family more, especially my father. I’ve had more talks and laughs with my family the last few days than I’ve had in the past couple of months, which helped lighten such a stressful time in my opinion.

— Marlin Flores, Classical High School

Several months before the outbreak my mom randomly asked me what would I study if I could choose anything, not for a grade, not for any credit. Now, because of corona, I am learning Greek with my father! He can’t travel for work now and doesn’t attend meetings as frequently, so he is at home too.

— Lily, Seoul, Korea

How Can We Help One Another During the Coronavirus Outbreak?

In a series of recent Times articles , authors wrote about the need for solidarity and generosity in this time of fear and anxiety and the need for Americans to make sacrifices to ensure their safety and that of others in their community.

So we asked students what they and their friends, family and community could do to help and look out for one another during the coronavirus outbreak. Here is what they said:

Help your neighbors, especially the sick and elderly.

There are so many things we can do to help each other during this pandemic. Use gloves when you go shopping or are in public, masks if you think that it would be best for you, those who have more wiggle room financially can help out others who don’t have that same wiggle room financially and who are now struggling, buy groceries for those who can’t afford it or are at risk if they were to go out in public. Donate if you can, and help the elderly or those who desperately need it, and for goodness sake wash your hands and (for all that need to hear the reminder) SOCIAL DISTANCING IS A FRIEND. Social distancing is proven to help drastically, so please, social distance.

— Dakodah, Camdenton, MO

As a person, we have the ability to help our friends, families, elders, people with illnesses in our community and people with high risks of getting the virus. We can accomplish this by simply observing who may need help with shopping, for groceries or clothes, with yard work, or any kind of outside work that is done where there are rooms full of people, such as going to the bank. As a younger person and a person with a low risk of getting the virus, I have the capability to walk to places and go in and out of buildings with a smaller chance of getting the virus as compared to one of my elder neighbors. My friends and I can go around the neighborhood and see who needs help during this hard time, whether I have to give them money or food to help them out.

— Adrianna P, New York

Many elderly people in my vicinity suffer from chronic conditions and illnesses and there are others who often live alone. Going to the grocery store or the pharmacy can also be hassle for many. Due to the recent pandemic, people are stocking up necessities however, some people are not being practical and overstock, not leaving anything for others. Fights are breaking out in grocery stores and this is a dangerous situation to put the elderly in.

— Sydney, B

In our American society we tend to be very individualistic. This pandemic has truly proved that point as people do not care for other but themselves. During this time we should consider not only ourselves but the people in need, which are the elderly and young children. Instead of hoarding all the food share some with a neighbor or an old person that doesn’t quite have the ability to run around store to store grabbing what they can. Make sure when you feel ill or if a family member feels ill to stay contained in your home. If this is not an option you could always take your ideas to social media, posting ways to stay clean and making sure we support the people who need it.

— Marley Gutierrez, Pomona, CA

Stay connected.

We could help one another just by the simple ways of: texting your friends every now and then and keep them in check and give them positive reinforcements; call your far away family and report to them on how you are doing and make sure that they are doing OK as well; help elders that are not safe to go out by running errands for them.

— Xammy Yang, California

It’s really important for everyone to stay in contact with others. Be open to talking to people you don’t necessarily talk to all the time just so you can fulfill your own social requirements. It’s also important to listen to others and take into account their feelings. We are all in a time of stress and anxiety about the unknown and we have to just go with the flow and wait it out. I’m stressed about possibly missing milestones in my life, like prom and graduation, but there are others suffering. We all just need to be prepared, stay healthy, and reach out to others.

— Elysia P., Glenbard West HS, Glen Ellyn, IL

Stay apart.

The most important thing one can do during this time of uncertainty is to protect oneself, that is how one can protect others. By practicing social distancing, the risk of spreading germs or disease is reduced. From within one’s home, much can be done. Keeping in touch with close friends and family, donating money and food to those in need and not hoarding or stockpiling too much are all things one could do to support one’s community. Every little thing counts.

— Francheska M-Q, Valley Stream North

Honestly, as boring as it sounds, staying home is the best way we can help against the coronavirus. The second best in my opinion would be spreading the word and encouraging others to wash their hands often and to not go in large groups. Our number one priority should be protecting the elderly and people more vulnerable to getting the disease, or more likely for it to be fatal. If I were to get the virus, my chances of death would be very low, but I would be most worried about accidentally passing on the virus to an elderly person who might not be so lucky. Staying home, clean, and avoiding large groups is the safest and best way for us to help in efforts against the coronavirus.

— Christian Cammack, Hoggard High School In Wilmington, NC

Stay informed.

During this time of crisis, seeking accurate information should remain people’s main focus. Reading articles from trusted sources such as the CDC and New York Times rather than sensationalized media that spreads false rumors for attention will improve reactions to this scary situation because it has the potential to reduce panic and allow people to find ways proven to slow the spread of the virus.

— Argelina J., NY

Donate to those in need.

We can help one another during the virus break by doing online donations to people who need it the most, not taking supplies that you know you don’t need, and/or offering online support for those who have relatives that have the virus and want someone to talk to. We, as a community, can keep distance and update each other on the constant updating news.

— Marisa Mohan<3, NY

… donate food to food banks or homeless shelters. Food is even more of a necessity right now, so it is crucial that everyone has what they need because some people get their food from school or from work, which isn’t available at the moment. Finally, even if we feel we’re healthy and we’re not afraid to get the Coronavirus, it is very vital to participate in social distancing because it will help society overall.

— Bridget McBride, Glenbard West HS, Glen Ellyn, IL

Encourage positivity.

In my opinion, we should all do our best to help and encourage each other with healthy habits and staying positive. Too many people are worried about the coronavirus. What will happen because of this is more stress and anxiety. In turn, this leads to people stocking up on products and taking resources from other people who need them. As long as we all contribute and help one another, we will be able to keep things under control.

— Mieko, CA

Learn lessons for future preparedness.

I believe that this horrible trouble we are all put into is teaching our younger generations such as me, to be prepared when these unexpected events happen. We can help the elders and take care of them because if we don’t prepare next time then we will struggle to survive if the coronavirus becomes a long term thing. This situation is also bringing our communities together, or at least teaching us to. We can learn to share resources that maybe we have to much of. Just a couple days ago, my grandma had ran out of cleaning supplies and she didn’t have a working car at the time. My family and I decided to give her some of our extra supplies since we stocked up on so much. I believe that we can definitely use this time to help our minds grow and learn new things.

— Becky Alonso, CA

Things we shouldn’t do

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” -Hippocrates This quote describes my opinion of the COVID-19 crisis. Our communities must make sacrifices in order to overcome the trials we are facing. Instead of describing what we should do, I am going to shortly convey examples of what our local communities shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t panic. Panic causes the nervous system to spark and will create unsettling emotions that will produce nothing helpful for the situation at hand. We shouldn’t buy abundant amounts of resources unless instructed to. Please be considerate towards these people because they probably are struggling a lot more than you at the moment. We should be mindful of others. I am not saying we have to interact with everyone (DO NOT DO THAT), but I am saying we should be kind when we do interact.

— Adrianna Waterford, Bloomington, IN

What Story Could This Image Tell?

In our Picture Prompt, “ Social Distancing, ” we asked students to write memoirs and poems inspired by the illustration above, or tell a short story from the perspective of one of the people pictured. In prose and poetry, they expressed a range of responses to the pandemic , from fear, panic and anxiety to resilience and hope.

Creative short stories

From the perspective of the Binocular guy:

I thought social distancing would be great, no one would bother me or interrupt my work. But actually doing it makes me realize that those things, those pains in my neck that would annoy me, are the things I miss the most. I miss the smell of Phyllis’s choking perfume. I miss Michael pacing around the office. I miss the way that Pam would bite her pen when she was focusing. I miss people. Now that I’m alone in my apartment, I hunger for human interaction. I have taken to staring out the window at people walking past and imagining the conversations they have. Oh how I wish to be a part of them, but I can’t risk going outside. I thought my window would cure my loneliness, but it has only made it worse. Social distancing has hurt me more than any virus could.

— Andrew B., Abilene

It’s another day in the city. Car horns honking, people scurrying over town, and there I am. No, not that person or the other. In the upper left corner. Do you see me? Yes, you found me! The only creature not on a screen. I have never understood why they sit there and look at their own devices. I enjoy sitting on the roof and looking at others. People watching is my favorite, but the only thing that most people are watching is a tiny screen. Everyone is wrapped up in their circumstances. Sick in bed with their computer, walking down the stairs with a device. But I’ll be here, waiting for someone to notice me — just the dog on the rooftop.

— Hope Heinrichs, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Opening to short story for the homeless man:

It’s so cold out today. My blanket is the only that is keeping me partially warm. Before today, my HELP sign got me a few dimes. That way I could buy some food. But today, the streets are empty. The only people passing by either have masks covering their face or run past me with their hands full of food and supplies. I wonder what’s going on?

— Ariel S., Los Angeles

Cold: That’s all he feels as he’s reclining on a random door.

Scared: That’s what he wants to avoid feeling as he sees people coughing around him.

Alone: That’s what he is as he wanders from place to place, looking for somewhere to spend the night.

Worried: That the door’s owner might make him leave his only sanctuary.

Pity: That’s the emotion he evokes on the few that are brave enough to wander the streets.

Remorse: That’s the emotion that the passersby show when they refuse to stop to help.

Cold: That’s all he feels as he realizes that he has no one.

— Laura Arbona, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Memoirs in the time of coronavirus

Trapped. The walls are closing in. Someone coughs from outside, I immediately close the blinds and clorox the window. The television is on loud. The person on the other end of the line of dad’s phone is obviously deaf because dad is yelling into our end. In line for the computer, I have been waiting for two hours.

— Allison Coble, Hoggard High School

It all began with just one human. After days there where more and more infected people and everything started to be different. We all thought it isn’t that bad and China is the only one who suffers but we were absolutely wrong … Now there are too much cities which are in quarantine and there are about 16 thousand deaths. I’m scared. And I can#t do anything than staying at home and pray. I often watch videos and try to distract myself. When people ask me what has changed I can say: Everything. The human has changed. The human attitude has changed. Just everything. It’s not surprising for me if you can’t find toilet paper or water. The people are going crazy because of this virus. They know that they can be in danger fast if they just make one false decision. In this time we all have our anxiety. Either we are scared of being infected or we are scared that a loved one is infected.

— jana.hhg, Germany

This pic remind to me that we live in this period. Under from the outbreak of pandemic’s coronavirus, we stop to go out in order to avoid each social contact. So, we stay our home every day, all day. Most of the people stop working regularly and they work from home. The schools and other utilities are closed down and remain still open grocery stores and services for essential products. The whole world is in quarantine. Our effort to be uninfected is captured from this pic.

— Joanna, Greece

This photo shows that even in a time where socializing is not advising, humans are naturally social and are still coexisting in this time of distancing. The way the artist drew this made me feel a sense of separation but also togetherness at the same time, which is similar to the way I feel now. We’re all living our different lives with different situations and yet, we’re all somewhat connected.

— Ella Shynett, Hoggard High School in Wilmington, NC

Its Day 3 of quarantine and its starting to hit. This picture shows us how people are pretty much keeping as much distance away from people as possible. They’re still living their lives normally, just alone. But at my house it’s anything but normal. Every time I touch a light switch, my mom swoops in and wipes it down with a Clorox wipe. When I have to itch my nose, my mom screams at me. But I know deep down she’s just trying to keep me and my sister safe from the virus. She mainly wants to protect my grandma, who is very vulnerable at this time. Its gonna take some time to adjust to this type of living, not seeing friends in person for weeks, or just going to starbucks. But I know that it will all pass in no time and we can go back to living our normal lives. I actually can’t wait for school to start for once.

— Dean, Glenbard West Highschool

Stuck inside with nothing to do I’m really bored can’t think of anything at all :/. All I can do is homework woohoo Cant see my friends all I can do is call Trying to get it all done before its due With this virus I sadly can’t even go to the mall Thinking of you and you and you Can’t wait to go back to school and walk the fourth grade hall!

— Isabella V Grade 4, Jefferson Township, NJ

Poem by The Lady Running With Toilet Paper:

TP TP Why do people have to hoard it It’s the coronavirus, not diarrhea Don’t’ jack up the prices, I can’t afford it One pack, that’s it It’s all I could find To those hoarding the toilet paper You make me lose my hope in mankind

As I rush down the vacant street I pass by some stores Some open, some closed As I scramble past the doors No one seems to be coughing But I can feel it in the air A dull creeping paranoia Assembling into a scare

Up the stairs I make sure to not touch anything Don’t forget to use your elbows Don’t touch the key ring In through the door, drop the TP, wash my hands Wipe down the counter, wipe down the door Make sure to cancel any plans

Sit in solitude Turn on the TV and watch the news All I’m able to think is, “Oh god we’re screwed!”

— Ellinor Jonasson, Minnesota

Is social distancing impractical, when we live at such close proximity, drink tea with the neighbors, or buy food from the Deli,

You could choose to be stubborn, and get frustrated from being indoors, or you could be compliant, And watch the birds soar,

In the end it’s our choice where we decide to look, The dirty wall to the left, or the canvas on the right,

— Saharsh Satheesh, Collierville High School, Tennessee

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How covid-19 changed lives - voices of children.

UNICEF Georgia asked children and young people around the country how they are coping with the new normal, and how their lives have been affected.

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Being a school student can sometimes be challenging, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made getting an education, and life in general, even more difficult for young people in Georgia.

With schools closed, lessons are being held remotely. All sports, school activities, and events have been cancelled. Friendships and relationships have been transported to live chats and video calls.

Mate Dvalishvili, 15 years old, Kutaisi

The COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed my life. When I used to go to school, by the end of the day I would be exhausted – mentally as well as physically – and as a result, I did not have trouble falling asleep. Now, I don’t get tired enough during the day, so I can’t sleep at night, and I wake up late in the morning. That’s why I am sometimes late for, or even miss, video classes.

Before, I used to wake up at 8 a.m., and by 9 a.m. I was already at school. After classes I went to a tutor, then to play sports. When I came home, I did homework and hung out with my friends, if we had free time. I went to bed sometime between 11 p.m. and midnight. Now, I get up at noon, or even as late as 1 or 2 p.m. When the weather is good, I may go out to ride my bicycle with my family members, but the rest of the time I’m at home playing online games and watching films. I go to bed at 1 or 2 a.m., and at times, I am video-chatting with my friends until 3 or 4 a.m., sometimes until morning.

The teachers are trying to teach our classes like they did in school, but still, I can’t say that online classes are as interesting as they were in person. At least now, I have a bit less homework to do. I was more active during classes while in school, there was more interaction. The programmes that we use for online classes cannot replace school. In order to make online learning effective, they should develop a special online programme that could be adapted to school teaching. At the same time, teachers should be familiar with using the programme.

For me, the hardest thing in the new reality is the new reality itself: doing nothing (for almost 2 months), and the immense lack of communication with my friends in real life. It is not unbearable, but it is very difficult.

Keta Tkhilaishvili, 10 years old, Batumi

My life has changed completely since my school was closed. Before, I spent most of the day at school with my classmates. Now, this is my free time.

When I went to school, my schedule was really full. I got up early, prepared for school, and I also had extra classes like German, chess, circle dancing, and so on.

Now my schedule is organized according to the self-isolation rules. I wake up at 10 a.m., I have breakfast, and then I have my online classes. I spend my free time as I wish, then I prepare my lessons. Sometimes I watch classes on TV. I am at home all the time. Since I have plenty of time now, I try to balance out working and free time on my own.

Interaction with my classmates in school is what I miss the most from before. When I went to school, I had more homework, but the lessons were way more engaging and interesting, I could concentrate better. Online schooling is something very new. At times, I struggle with online group studying because I don’t understand what the teacher is saying because of the Internet connection and other technical problems. But it’s interesting too. I learned how to do homework electronically and search for information on the Internet. Before, I thought that the Internet was only for playing and entertainment.

I want to go back to school soon, and before that happens, I want to be able to communicate on the Internet without interruptions.

Sandro Turabelidze, 11 years old, Village Jimastaro, Imereti

During the pandemic I had to switch to distance or online school. I don’t find learning online difficult, it is easy. Before the class is over, teachers give us an assignment, we do the homework, take a photo of the exercise book, and send it to the teacher. During the next lesson the teacher tests our knowledge. When I have free time, I play with my sister at home. I no longer visit my neighbors. I play by myself in the yard, I try to stay isolated. To spend time with my friends, I call them, we talk to each other, and play online. I go out to the yard for 5-10 minutes only, to play something by myself, like ride the bicycle, or play ball by myself, and then I go back inside as I try to avoid contact with neighbors.

Elene Iashvili, 11 years old, Kvitiri

I live in the village of Kvitiri and I go to the Kutaisi Chess school. I had great plans this year. I was so excited to participate in the Georgia, Poti, Racha, and Tkibuli chess tournaments. Traveling around the country during tournaments is so much fun. We would go to the sea to relax after the game in Poti, and we would cozy up and enjoy the fresh air in the evening in Racha. In Tkibuli, we got to go to the swimming pool. Now, I play online chess games with a computer. Online chess tournaments are held for adults only. They are very rarely held for children my age. I also play with my grandfather, but it is very difficult for a child chess player to develop during quarantine.

I was very sad at the beginning, but my friends and I found a solution together. We created a chat and communicate via that chat very often. We named the chat “girls” but later we added boys to the group as well. These relationships are very helpful.

We became tied to our computers after the schools closed. Online classes can’t replace in-school classes. At school they explain the content in more detail. And also, many of my classmates can’t attend online classes. They may have the Internet, but don’t have a personal telephone or laptop. It would be unfair if they have problems because of this.

During self-isolation, I got interested in taking photos. I go out to the yard, take photos of the flowers. Now the strawberries have ripened. I try to take joyful photos to cheer up people who are locked inside. Having a relationship with nature is one way to keep spirits up.

Luka Turabelidze, 10 years old

I am in the fourth grade and have been studying online for 2 months now. Online learning is not hard at all.

I spend my free time riding my bicycle, and playing with my ball. I am lucky to have a yard, we don’t have to stay inside the house all the time. But, we don’t visit others and no one comes to visit us. That is why I am a bit bored. Also, I miss my classmates. I do talk to them on the phone, but meeting them and playing is a totally different thing. My mother and father are saying that the pandemic will go away soon and we will be able to live our lives like before. I hope that we will be able to go to the river and have a good time this summer.

Nana Samkharadze, mother of Tekla and Lile Machavariani

Tekla and Lile are having a good a time as possible during the pandemic. We try to keep up with their education – they are 4 and 5 years old – and we are teaching their age-specific skills as much as we can. We learn letters, numbers, addition and subtraction, and most of the time we play. We come up with different things. The girls have even made a small flower alley. The entire house is filled with their toys. So, we are having fun together and trying to make sure that the children do not feel the pandemic and its effects. It’s good that they have each other, they would probably be much more bored if they were alone.

Giorgi Kapchelashvili, 17 years old, Kutaisi

The recent changes have affected me very deeply. Staying at home for such a long time is bad for one’s health. Most of the time I am on the computer. I miss real life communication with others a lot.

Before, I woke up at 8 a.m., now I wake up in the afternoon. I play on my phone while still in bed. Next, I have “breakfast” and again – telephone. The exception is the three days a week when online classes start at 10 a.m., and I have to wake up early.

I think one can receive a good education through distance learning, if willing. But real school was more interesting, because discussions with friends helped me to better understand the content. I love mathematics very much, and I miss going to the math teacher.

Although, I have found one upside – I’m in a band, I play an electric guitar. During this quarantine I have improved my playing technique considerably. I have also improved my English language skills. My sister is an English teacher and has helped me with my English.

Amiko Turabelidze, 12 years old

I love TV school programmes, and I watch them often. I personally like distance learning very much, because I have more free time. Now, I can spend more time riding my bike, drawing, and listening to music. I also help my grandfather in the vineyard. I communicate with friends on the Internet, but we cannot see one another and talk. I hope everything will be alright and we will see each other soon.

Nika Khelaia, 13 years old

Initially, I was afraid that online classes would be difficult, but it doesn’t seem as hard as I expected. In a way, it’s even easy. Currently, anatomy is the most interesting subject for me, because I am going to become a doctor, specifically, a surgeon. I usually take part in a lot of competitions, and I hope to be able to participate again starting in September.

I spend my free time with my brother, I ride my bicycle, and spend time outside. I have a younger brother – he’s 2 years old – and I try to keep him entertained. I give my parents a hand so that they have time for household chores.

On a World Youth Skills Day, a new youth led public health campaign launched with support from UNICEF and USAID

The impact of COVID-19 on student voice: Testimonies from students and teachers

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the schooling of more than 1.6 billion students and youth, with the most vulnerable learners being hit hardest.

Maintaining student voice and participation during the pandemic has been particularly challenging, exacerbating the pre-COVID-19 feeling of many students that their voices were not being listened to, inside and outside of school.

UNESCO asked students and their teachers from around the world to share their testimonies and stories via the Associated Schools Network (ASPnet) . The videos illustrate the impact of the pandemic on students, the lessons learned from this experience, as well as recommendations for the future.

Marita, student, Lebanon

Vanilda, student, Angola

Buta, teacher, Angola

Leonardo, teacher, Mexico

Filipa, teacher, Portugal

Seyun, student, Republic of Korea

Jatziry, student, Mexico

Ander, student, Costa Rica

Mary, Teacher, Lebanon

More on this subject

Award ceremony for the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network laureates of "When sounds creates image" competition and screening of the 20 nominated short films

Introduction

It’s difficult to find any aspect of our lives that has not been impacted by COVID‑19. Travel, holidays, business, entertainment, and much more look completely different today than they did a year ago. As K–12 and college students, faculty, teachers, and administrators know all too well, education has been deeply changed — perhaps permanently — by travel restrictions, school closures, and the switch to online education.But COVID‑19’s consequences for education have not been limited to location, access, or, in the University of California, Berkeley’s case, temporary bans on outdoor exercise. On campuses across the country, speech and due process rights have been challenged, too, as administrators struggle to respond to the pandemic. At the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), we have been paying careful attention to how these trends have impacted vital student and faculty rights in higher education.

In an August 2020 incident that drew national attention, North Paulding High School in Georgia suspended two students for tweeting photos of their school hallways crowded with students, many without masks. Administrators at the school reportedly warned via the public address system that students publicly criticizing the school’s COVID‑19 response would be punished.

FIRE wrote at the time, “While last week’s situation occurred at a high school, it bears an important lesson about campus censorship in a time of crisis, equally applicable to colleges and universities.” Unfortunately, over the past year, FIRE has needed to remind universities time and again that, despite the challenges and difficulties of COVID‑19, their obligations to the First Amendment cannot simply be cast aside.

In a September 2020 statement, FIRE addressed the various measures and restrictions undertaken in response to the spread of COVID‑19 and offered three principles to guide universities during the pandemic:

Viewpoint discrimination and compelled speech are prohibited;
Public health practices may be mandated, but must be clear, published, and consistently enforced; and
Medical necessity must guide enforcement decisions, and cannot supersede procedural protections.

FIRE also offered this reminder: “Institutional COVID restrictions must be temporary and tied only to the threat to public health. Restrictions or disciplinary actions substantially unrelated to protecting public health should be rejected and reconsidered.”

With vaccine distribution now underway, the worst of COVID‑19 will hopefully be behind us soon. But going forward, it’s vital that we understand how campuses have handled the challenges surrounding the pandemic and student and faculty rights, so that we can better plan for similar challenges in the future while fulfilling moral and legal obligations to student and faculty rights. In this report, COVID on Campus: The Pandemic’s Impact on Student and Faculty Speech Rights , FIRE gives readers a clearer picture of what institutions have done wrong, how they can do better, and the broader challenges to education posed by the past year. If your rights have been violated, please contact FIRE.

Challenges to Student and Faculty Rights

Over the past year, FIRE has received more requests for help than ever before — and a significant part of the jump was due to universities’ handling of the pandemic. In some cases, university violations of student rights were exacerbated because of COVID‑19. At Haskell Indian Nations University, for example, a student was kicked out of his campus housing and forced to sleep in his car — during a pandemic and under a statewide stay-at-home order — after administrators suspended him without a hearing for telling a campus facilities employee he was on “some kind of power trip” and “being an asshole.”Three predominant themes emerged from the cases FIRE took on since the spread of the pandemic: (1) censorship of speech related to academic institutions, (2) censorship of speech related to COVID‑19, and (3) troubling measures applied to campus communities during COVID‑19. Below is a collection of cases highlighting these themes and their effects on student and faculty rights across the country.

Censorship of Speech Related to Academic Institutions

In general, it’s not uncommon for universities and their administrations to react poorly to criticism. This trend did not disappear during COVID‑19. At some universities, campus community members, especially resident assistants, were warned against speaking publicly or critically about their universities’ handling of the pandemic.

As the following cases show, universities cracking down on critics are wrong in at least two ways. First, it’s immoral and, in some cases, unconstitutional to censor speech simply because it portrays institutions in a poor light, especially when the subject matter relates to public health. And second, it’s ineffective. Attempted censorship often does nothing more than bring more attention to the speech in question, a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect .

University of California, Santa Barbara : It didn’t take long after COVID‑19 shutdowns began for a campus censorship threat to emerge. At UCSB, though, it wasn’t administrators who threatened faculty for speaking out — it was online testing service ProctorU. On March 13, the UCSB Faculty Association Board expressed “serious concern” about the use of ProctorU, alleging that the service’s privacy policy “potentially implicates the university into becoming a surveillance tool.” Less than a week later, ProctorU’s attorney responded with a blustering letter making a number of claims, including defamation, copyright, and trademark, against the Faculty Association for its criticism — and this letter was sent to state and federal prosecutors, too.

Wayne State University Law School : FIRE wrote to Wayne State University Law School in July over concerns about retaliation against students pressing for bar exam accommodations during COVID‑19. Earlier that month, a law school administrator emailed the graduating class in response to students advocating for the option of a “diploma privilege,” which would allow qualifying graduates to pursue admission to the State Bar of Michigan without sitting for the Michigan Bar exam. The email warned , “[W]hile you have every right to criticize the bar exam, the Board of Law Examiners, or the State Bar of Michigan online, it may not be a smart strategy for passing Character & Fitness with ease.”

As FIRE’s letter explained, the email was troubling on two fronts: First, administrative warnings like this chill student speech about how institutions handle the pandemic, an unacceptable result. Second, the warning raises questions about the state of law students’ First Amendment rights in Michigan. Fortunately, Dean Richard Bierschbach responded to FIRE to assert that the law school “ardently supports and will actively defend our students’ First Amendment expressive rights.”

University of Missouri : As students at some campuses began to return to in-person studies and dorms last summer, student employees hoped to sound the alarm about their safety concerns. But at the University of Missouri, they were stymied by administrative warnings or policies limiting their ability to speak out. Speaking to the Columbia Missourian , residential assistants anonymously accused university practices of “needlessly put[ting] them and others at risk” amidst the pandemic. According to the Missourian , the RAs required anonymity because they were not “authorized” to speak about the issue to the media, and a “strict media policy for Residential Life employees” had been “laid out” to them in a meeting.

On August 14, FIRE wrote to the university for clarification on student employees’ ability to speak to the media, including the student press. Shortly thereafter, Mizzou replied to FIRE to convey that the university does not impose a “blanket prohibition against speaking to the media” and promised to inform staff of this information. As FIRE explained , Mizzou’s commitments go a long way to clear up confusion about student employees’ speech rights, a concern that could be fully ameliorated by revisions to Mizzou’s “ Residential Life media protocol .”

Louisiana State University : On the same day FIRE wrote to Mizzou about restrictions on student employee speech, FIRE sent a letter to Louisiana State University over similar concerns. On August 11, The Advocate reported that three LSU RAs quit “largely because . . . officials couldn’t answer real-world questions about its extensive pandemic housing plan” and that “RAs are specifically forbidden from speaking to the media, including the on-campus newspaper, The Reveille.” FIRE’s letter called on LSU to rescind any blanket prohibitions on student employees’ speech. LSU didn’t bother to acknowledge FIRE’s concerns, but responded — because, by law, it had to — to a public records request seeking the university’s Residential Life Media Policy . Unsurprisingly, the policy is troubling. It warns RAs who intend to speak to the media: “Even though you may be discussing your own experiences, you will be identified as an LSU staff member, so you are representing the university. This is not an appropriate time to air your disagreements with Residential Life.”

Juniata College : It’s not just students who feared repercussions for speaking critically of their colleges’ handling of COVID‑19. At Juniata College, a professor felt similar pressure . In August, tenured professor Douglas A. Stiffler posted a Facebook comment regarding a National Public Radio segment about campuses and COVID‑19. Stiffler wrote , “As the result of Juniata’s decision to hold classes in person, it is quite possible that people who come on to Juniata’s campus will die, as will people in town. That is what is at stake.” According to The Chronicle of Higher Education , “Stiffler had largely forgotten about the comment when his chair called him about it a few days later. Someone had complained about it, she told him, and he might want to be more careful about his posts in the future.” Stiffler believed that would be the end of the discussion. It wasn’t.

Provost Lauren Bowen contacted Stiffler and told him in a meeting that the college would be placing a letter of reprimand in his file. In the letter, Bowen wrote: “[W]hen you state publically [sic] that Juniata’s decision could cause people who come to campus to die, you have gone beyond offering feedback on policy and are not exercising the restraint and respect expected of faculty.” While institutions can encourage civil discourse, “restraint” and “respect” are too subjective to enforce — and the subjects of criticism are often likely to perceive their critics as uncivil. That naturally means that administrators empowered to enforce civility norms will be inclined to use them against their critics.

University of Virginia : Living up to its “green light” rating for speech-protective policies , the University of Virginia committed to reworking its resident advisor agreement to ensure that its RAs would be free to speak with reporters. On September 11, FIRE asked UVA to address its limits on student employee speech after student paper The Cavalier Daily reported on a policy that “restricts resident staffers from speaking to the press,” which inspired RAs to anonymously voice their concerns about their safety issues for residence hall workers. In response to FIRE’s request, UVA committed to revising its RA agreement to clarify, “Individual Resident Staff members may speak to the media or public in their individual capacities, making clear they are not speaking on behalf of or for the program.”

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : In October, concerns about student employee speech that had been raised at Mizzou, UVA, and LSU reemerged at UNC Chapel Hill after an investigation from The Daily Tar Heel . The student newspaper’s article asserted that, due to a media relations policy, “[a]s the public raised questions for months about Carolina Housing’s operations in the face of COVID‑19, student staff had been hesitant to answer them to the media — many citing their fear of getting fired or losing their chance to be rehired.” FIRE wrote to the university asking that, in keeping with its status as a “green light” university, UNC Chapel Hill review student concerns about the media relations policy and acknowledge students’ speech rights. In response, UNC Chapel Hill confirmed to FIRE that it “takes seriously” its speech commitments and had updated its media relations policy in light of its First Amendment obligations.

Frostburg State University : As at other schools, FSU student journalists were vital in shining a light on restrictions on student employees’ speech about COVID‑19 safety. In November, student paper The Bottom Line reported that multiple RAs alleged that “the Office of Residence Life would now require Hall Directors to indicate ‘attitude’ issues on employment evaluations if RAs spoke to media outlets about the university’s handling of the virus.” The paper sought more information and filed public records requests for administrators’ emails. It found that, though it was never sent, the university’s housing director wrote a draft statement in response to The Bottom Line ’s questions about RAs. That draft read: “In the real world, if you bad mouth your employer you could lose your job. With the Resident Assistants, who are employed by Frostburg State University, speaking out against their employer may be noted in their evaluation forms and used as a teaching tool.”

FIRE wrote to FSU to ask the university to commit to not punishing RAs for speaking out about pandemic-related fears. The university responded on November 20, promising that “FSU has no policy restricting the free speech of its resident assistants.” But that wasn’t the end of the story. On November 23, administrators summoned student journalist Cassie Conklin to discuss her alleged harassment of a faculty member a month prior. The university claimed it had video evidence of Conklin’s harassment. In reality, the video was evidence of her innocence and showed her simply sticking a note back on the faculty member’s door after it had fallen. Curiously, though, Conklin’s meeting occurred the next business day after her reporting about a student’s COVID experience caught wider media attention . FSU’s administration not only warned Conklin that it was investigating her for harassment but also demanded The Bottom Line do the same and investigate her too. After a press release and letter from FIRE and the Student Press Law Center, FSU backed down on its investigation, but the state of freedom of the press at Frostburg State remains chilly.

Collin College : On top of dealing with the COVID‑19 pandemic, Collin College has its own censorship epidemic. Since October, FIRE has battled Collin College over its mistreatment of professor Lora Burnett, who caught attention for her tweets critical of Vice President Mike Pence during a 2020 vice presidential debate, and its stonewalling of public records requests about Burnett.

In February 2021, Collin’s administration escalated its reputation for rights violations when it directed that two professors, Audra Heaslip and Suzanne Jones, be dismissed when their contracts expire — against recommendations from Collin faculty and staff. The basis for the nonrenewal? The professors’ criticism of the college’s handling of COVID‑19. In response, FIRE wrote another letter to Collin’s administration stating — yet again — that the First Amendment protects the rights of faculty members at public institutions to speak as private citizens about matters of public concern.

Censorship of Speech Related to COVID‑19

While the challenges posed by COVID‑19 require innovative and, in some cases, unprecedented solutions, censorship shouldn’t be one of them. FIRE was compelled to remind a number of universities of that fact over the past year in response to efforts to crack down on speech, from the clinical to the controversial, related to COVID‑19.

University at Albany : “Corona virus isn’t gonna stop anyone from partying.” Well, that would soon prove to be untrue, but it was nevertheless the caption added to a @BarstoolAlbany Instagram video about a “coronavirus”-themed party held at University at Albany in mid-February last year. The video, which was shortly taken down, reportedly showed “a bucket filled with ice and bottled Corona beer and a student wearing a surgical mask over his face” as well as a white sheet with a biohazard symbol and “two faces,” one with an X over each eye and the other a “frown, with what looks like straight lines for eyes.” In response to the event, student organization Asian American Alliance shared a message on Instagram calling on SUNY Albany to “investigate this illegal student group” and “requir[e] them to delete this video and to apologize on their Instagram homepage.”

In a statement , SUNY Albany announced that it was “aware of a coronavirus-themed party that was recently held off-campus and not sanctioned by the University at Albany,” and that the “theme of this party was distasteful and hurtful and is not representative” of the campus. The statement went on to assert that “any allegations of conduct violations will be investigated and addressed through the University’s disciplinary process.” In response, FIRE reminded SUNY Albany of its First Amendment obligations as a public university. While the party’s theme may have been deeply offensive to other members of the campus community, that has no bearing on the expression’s protection under the First Amendment.

New York University Grossman School of Medicine : On March 31, FIRE wrote a letter to NYU after learning that the Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health prohibited faculty from speaking with the media about COVID‑19 without prior approval from the Office of Communications and Marketing. FIRE’s letter explained that while NYU is not bound by the First Amendment as a private university, its muzzle on faculty doctors’ speech should be considered unacceptable at any institution that seeks to uphold the values of a free society. The restrictions at NYU mirrored a broader push to silence medical workers during a fraught period in hospitals.

FIRE’s letter concluded: “Let your faculty and the press talk to each other. The public they both serve will benefit.” The following months would confirm time and again how right this message was, and how vital it is for the public to have access to current medical information during a health crisis.

University of California System : In late March, the University of California System published a “guidance document” for “campus decision makers, faculty, administrators, students and staff” titled “Equity and Inclusion during COVID‑19.” The document contained a series of statements, but two specifically caught public attention: 1) “Do not use terms such as ‘Chinese Virus’ or other terms which cast either intentional or unintentional projections of hatred toward Asian communities, and do not allow the use of these terms by others. Refer to the virus as either ‘COVID‑19’ or ‘coronavirus’ in both oral and written communications”; and 2) “Do not resort or revert to unkind discussions about people, individuals or groups who may not be in your immediate social circle.” As FIRE explained at the time, while the document is framed as “guidance,” its use of language like “Do not . . . ” suggests these provisions are mandatory. And as a public university system bound by the First Amendment, UC may not prohibit protected speech. Directives like these may encourage students and faculty to self-censor, even if the guidance is intended to be only aspirational. FIRE encouraged the UC System to revise this guidance to ensure that it is intended as a “more speech” solution, rather than unclear “guidance.”

Columbia University : As we all know, conversations on social media can quickly turn hot-tempered. That is even more true when the discussion turns to topics like politics and the pandemic. In April, Columbia professor Jeffrey Lax argued on Facebook with Gabriel Montalvo, a student at a different university, about then-President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Montalvo commented about what he called the “constant bash” of Trump and, after a back and forth, Lax eventually wrote, “[W]hy don’t you just drop dead, you neo-nazi murderer-lover.” Although Montalvo was a student at the City University of New York, not Columbia, he filed a “ formal complaint ” with the university the following month. In May, FIRE warned Columbia against punishing Lax, writing: “Lax’s testy Facebook back-and-forth fails to run afoul of any Columbia policy. In fact, First Amendment-style speech protections — like those Columbia has enshrined as essential to its campus — are actually at their apex in cases such as this, where the speech is political in nature and centers on a matter of great public concern. A discussion about a sitting president’s management of a global pandemic certainly fits the bill, even if that exchange is intemperate.”

Troubling Measures Applied to Campus Communities During COVID‑19

Questions about student and faculty rights on campus amidst the pandemic are not just cabined to specific faculty members or student newspapers facing threats for speaking about COVID‑19 or their institutions’ handling of it. In some cases, universities’ campus-wide measures, and their application of those measures, presented threats to individual rights as well.

Whitman College : When students left their campuses for spring break last March, it was the last time many of them would be on campus for the academic year. This was true for students at Whitman College, who quickly found themselves under a policy of prior review for student listservs after a campus controversy. In early April, Instagram campus confession account @WhitmanConfessional2 posted a submission that stated: “Petition to change the name of Coronavirus to Kung Flu.” The post spurred debates among students and complaints to administrators and the Whitman student listserv, where the @WhitmanConfessional2 account manager argued with other students about his moderation decisions. The next day, Whitman’s administration notified students that the college had “taken the necessary steps” to report the confession account to Instagram. Administrators also announced that they would begin practicing prior review of messages sent on the student listserv. FIRE wrote to Whitman on May 1 to explain why the college’s heavy-handed treatment of the student listserv could limit important student discussion — especially during a pandemic when student discussion has to take place on the internet.

The Ohio State University : In advance of the 2020–21 academic year, The Ohio State University was requiring all members of the OSU community to sign the “Together As Buckeyes Pledge” as a condition of their return to campus in August. The pledge included statements about public health but also asked signatories to confirm their agreement with this message: “I believe in excellence in all that we do and that it is important to embrace diversity in people and ideas; foster the inclusion of all Buckeyes; allow for access and affordability of an Ohio State education; subscribe to innovation around keeping the Buckeye community safe; and rely on collaboration and multidisciplinary endeavors to guide best practices. Last, I believe in the importance of transparency, integrity and trust.” As FIRE explained in a letter to OSU, this section of the statement amounted to compelled speech because it purported to commit the speaker to holding a particular view, a result unacceptable at a public university bound by the First Amendment. Fortunately, OSU understood FIRE’s concerns and promised to revise the pledge “to clarify that while the pledge states that Ohio State’s values are fundamental guiding principles of the institution, there is no requirement for individual affirmation of those values in the pledge.”

Montana State University : In an effort to enforce contract tracing, a Montana State University administrator informed student organization leaders on July 29 that all student clubs and organizations would be “required to track attendance at events, including closed meetings” in accordance with MSU’s COVID‑19 protocol. The mandatory attendance record would be taken via two apps maintained by the university. MSU had not explained the limits on which administrators had access to the attendee lists or the length of time lists would be stored. In an August 26 letter , FIRE explained to MSU that the policy posed a threat to students’ right to speak anonymously and that the university must seek the least restrictive methods to achieve its public health goals. After all, such a policy could inhibit students interested in privately attending groups focused on mental health, faith, sexuality, or other sensitive issues. In response, MSU quickly confirmed to FIRE that the Office of Student Engagement would be “crafting and disseminating new language regarding attendance guidelines to make it clear there is no requirement that student clubs record attendance and then provide those records to the university.”

Northeastern University : A student’s Instagram survey from August asked incoming Northeastern freshmen, “WHOS PLANNING ON GOING TO/HAVING PARTIES,” adding that the poll was “anonymous ofc,” and offered “HELL YEAH” AND “NAH” as answer options. Northeastern officials reached out to the pollster, who gave the university the names of students who had responded “HELL YEAH,” and the university then went on to contact the students, 115 in total, and their parents. In a letter , Northeastern threatened to rescind the students’ admissions and demanded they immediately provide a written affirmation that they will not violate the student conduct code or other COVID-related rules upon entering campus. The letter also required students to “demonstrate appropriate model behavior by actively participating in our Protect the Pack campaign.” However, the letter did not make clear what “active” participation in its campaign would look like. In response, FIRE asked Northeastern to clarify that students would not be forced to engage in compelled speech to maintain their acceptance status and make clear that students accused of violating school regulations will be afforded due process during disciplinary proceedings.

Muscatine Community College : A months-long battle over a theater production at MCC offers a striking example of how campus public health measures can be used as a pretext to silence controversial expression. Theater director and MCC faculty member Alyssa Oltmanns chose “Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead,” a modern take on the Peanuts comic strip characters that includes themes of drug use, sexuality, LGBT+ issues, and suicide, for the college’s fall 2020 play. After raising concerns about the content of the play, the college canceled it, citing the pandemic as a reason for the decision — even though the play was set to take place virtually.

On September 25, FIRE wrote to MCC, explaining that “[w]hile the college may take reasonable steps to prevent the spread of disease on campus in light of the COVID‑19 pandemic, citing public health in cancelling a virtual theatre production after the dean of instruction raised concerns about the script’s content is naked pretext to censorship.” Finally, after receiving two letters from FIRE, MCC agreed to offer students free tickets to the show, which a broader community coalition stepped in to co-sponsor, and MCC said it would allow Oltmanns to select the script for a play this spring.

Broader Challenges to Online Education

While the rights of individual students and professors have been challenged by COVID-related restrictions and censorship, broader questions about the role of online education have also emerged over the past year. Online education offers plenty of benefits and opens up access to students and faculty who may have barriers for attending in-person classes. But when education can only take place online, students and faculty may encounter challenges to free expression to which they may be unaccustomed during more typical years.

For Zoom the Bell Tolls

As readers can likely confirm, Zoom has been central to continuing communication between friends, families, and colleagues during the pandemic. The same is true at many universities, which have relied on Zoom to ensure classes and academic events can go on from home. But its utilization has not come without setbacks, as targets of Zoombombing — where users intentionally “bomb” meetings with graphic and disruptive content — can attest. And Zoom’s widespread use comes with questions about how safe, transparent, and speech-protective the platform is in academia.

In June, FIRE joined the National Coalition Against Censorship and PEN America in writing to Zoom to ask the company to explain how its compliance with China’s censorship demands would impact academic institutions using Zoom. The civil liberties coalition was prompted to write to Zoom after reports surfaced accusing the company of closing accounts located outside of China after they hosted events commemorating victims of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

On June 11, Zoom issued a statement addressing its removal of the accounts and confirmed that going forward it would not remove accounts outside China based on demands from the Chinese government. But, as our letter explained , too many questions still remained about the platform and free expression. For example, will Zoom provide detailed reports of why users are removed from meetings so that educators can know what would disrupt student access to class? And will Zoom actively monitor events that seemingly have the potential to violate local censorship laws?

Zoom did not respond to these questions. And in December, a complaint unsealed by federal prosecutors shed more light on the company’s deeply troubling dealings with China. Prosecutors accused China-based Zoom executive Xinjiang Jin of working at the direction of Chinese officials to shut down the accounts of at least four users outside China responsible for Tiananmen-related activism. Jin also “worked with others to create fake email accounts to falsify evidence that meeting participants were supporting terrorism and distributing child pornography.”

Although Zoom confirmed that it was fully cooperating with the investigation, the incident reaffirmed the concerns that academics and advocates have expressed about the potential danger of using Zoom or similar services to hold sensitive online discussions.

Alongside fears about Zoom users’ security, another pressing question emerged: What happens if Zoom decides it doesn’t want to host some viewpoints?

The concern became a reality in September, when Zoom refused to allow two San Francisco State University faculty members to host a discussion with Leila Khaled on its service after the event faced demands for cancellation. Leila Khaled was the first woman to hijack an airplane and did so in support of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group deemed a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State.

For her part, SFSU president Lynn Mahoney rightly refused demands to cancel the event, instead writing : “[T]he university will not enforce silence — even when speech is abhorrent. What sets a university apart from primary or secondary education is that the views of our faculty are not prescribed, curtailed or made to conform to content standards.”

Zoom’s cancellation of Khaled at SFSU would not be its last. The following month, Zoom also reportedly canceled events planned in response to the SFSU discussion at New York University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, citing anti-terrorism laws. But, as FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh explained in September, the claims that hosting an online discussion with Khaled is material support of terrorism, unlawful under federal law, are suspect at best.

Ultimately, the controversy over Khaled should encourage academic communities to ask broader questions about their use of Zoom and similar tools, especially when communities can only congregate virtually. Some faculty bodies, like Georgetown University’s Main Campus Executive Faculty, are already investigating the issue.

To be clear, Zoom is not bound by the First Amendment and is free to decide which content it will not host. But Zoom markets itself to universities as an online educational tool, and many universities use it now and may continue to do so after in-person classes become more frequent. Having offered itself as a facilitator of academic functions, Zoom should be expected to be a steadfast partner in defending academic freedom — and academic institutions should insist that it do so. If it continues to falter, administrators, students, and faculty should be careful to understand when, how, and why Zoom may shut down discussions, whether they feature Leila Khaled or Chinese dissidents.

Censorship Across Borders

In the United States, students and faculty enjoy the speech protections provided by the First Amendment. But those protections can only go so far when students at American universities are taking online classes from outside of the U.S. and are subject to internet and speech restrictions. This issue became even more apparent last summer after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced in July that international students would be required to leave the country if their classes were held entirely online in the fall.

On July 13, FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuit brought by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE over the policy’s implementation. As FIRE’s brief explained, that policy would force students to return to countries that drastically suppress speech, potentially making class participation difficult or impossible:

Some 1.1 million international students attend American universities and colleges. Of these, approximately 502,470 students originate from—and will presumably return to—repressive states where the government blocks or filters online communication, forces the removal of certain online content, or punishes online expression by banning “fake news,” blasphemy, or insults to state institutions or officials. The lion’s share of these students—some 370,000—hail from the People’s Republic of China, the nation rated by Freedom House as “the world’s worst abuser of internet freedom” for four consecutive years. An additional 6,917 students originate from—and would presumably attend virtual classes from—Hong Kong, where expressive rights are rapidly deteriorating as the Chinese Communist Party imposes the “Great Firewall” to suppress its critics. ICE’s policy requires those students to study under the watchful eye of the Chinese government’s sophisticated regime of internet censorship and surveillance. This system denies internet users access to material required for basic academic discussions. Students studying remotely from China will, for example, be barred from discussing historical accounts of the Tiananmen Square massacre or China’s current use of concentration camps. While China represents the most dramatic threat—in both size and sophistication—to students’ expressive rights, it is not the only such actor. Some 10,000 students could return to Turkey, where political speech, including criticism of President Erdogan, can lead to prison, and where universities have been purged of dissenting academics. Others—like nearly 8,000 students from Pakistan—may return to states where “blasphemous” speech may be met with state-sanctioned or extrajudicial death. FIRE went on to explain that faculty could be affected too, and might reasonably avoid controversial discussions to ensure students are kept in class and out of legal trouble, a result that would impact students in the U.S., as well.

In a welcome reversal, ICE announced one day later that it would not enforce this policy. But the change to ICE’s policy did not eliminate concerns about repercussions for students’ online class contributions.

In late June, China foisted the National Security Law upon Hong Kong, dealing a massive blow to its vibrant protest movement. The law threatens severe penalties for violations of its vague bans on separatism and subversion and has since been systematically applied to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists. While the legislation is troubling enough for its effect on Hong Kong, its impact has gone far beyond its borders — by design. The legislation applies “even to those who are not residents of Hong Kong, with Article 38 suggesting that foreigners who support independence for Hong Kong or call for imposing sanctions on the Chinese government could be prosecuted upon entering Hong Kong or mainland China.”

The global nature of the National Security Law is evident in classrooms around the world. Late last summer, faculty at universities in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and other countries began to adjust their teaching methods to respond to the threats from the new law and other censorship challenges posed by China. Professors feared that, between the National Security Law and widespread internet surveillance, students could be implicated in expression that could land them in legal peril, especially if they are residents studying online in China during COVID‑19 campus shutdowns.

Since August, faculty at a number of institutions including Yale University , Harvard University , and Amherst College have decided to offer anonymity in class discussions and include syllabi warnings that class material may be illegal in some countries. Just last month, Princeton University Professor of Politics Rory Truex announced to students in his Chinese politics course that he would “recommend that students who are currently residing in China should not take the course this year.”

FIRE is tracking these accommodations to study how faculty can protect students’ safety and their own academic freedom rights, and to spread awareness that repression overseas can find its way to American campuses.

Colleges and universities are far from the only institutions facing questions about individual rights and public health measures. In courts across the country, First Amendment challenges to COVID‑19-related measures have taken center stage since restrictions first took effect in March.FIRE legal fellow and assistant professor of law at Belmont University David L. Hudson, Jr. tackled this issue in an essay late last year, “COVID‑19 Emergency Measures and the First Amendment.” Hudson notes that in recent months, federal district courts have been split on whether to take a pro-government approach or an individual rights approach in determining if limitations on gatherings unconstitutionally impede religious practices and freedom of assembly. Even the Supreme Court of the United States has reached different conclusions in different cases concerning this issue. In his essay, Hudson discusses the factors that influenced these varying outcomes and warns that even when facing a pandemic, it is essential to preserve First Amendment rights.

“COVID‑19 Emergency Measures and the First Amendment” can be found in FIRE’s First Amendment Library , which also includes a timeline chronicling FIRE’s coverage of campus censorship related to medical and scientific fields.

If you’re spending a lot more time online lately, you might as well use it to better understand your rights and how to protect them. To learn more about the history, impact, and meaning of free speech in the United States and on college campuses, check out FIRE’s First Amendment Library and our resources for students and faculty.

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Teaching secondary
Lesson plans
Secondary lesson plans - Intermediate B1

Life after Covid-19

Use this lesson plan in face-to-face, online or hybrid teaching to help your students consider the impact of Covid-19 on the environment.

Introduction

During this lesson, students will consider the impact that the pandemic had on the environment and ask themselves if they want to go back to ‘normal’, to life as it was before the pandemic.

They begin by watching a clever animated cartoon showing how the planet healed while humans were in lockdown. Next, they will study some useful compound nouns and apply these to examples of life before and during the pandemic. The focus from here on is about the future, including a discussion and a video from Friends of the Earth. Finally, students will send some ideas to the United Nations in the form of a simple manifesto, with photos and hopes for the future.

Students will:

learn vocabulary (compound nouns) associated with the environment
improve listening, speaking and writing skills
develop more awareness of the environment, in the past and future

Age and level

Secondary students at CEFR level B1.2 and above

45–55 minutes

The lesson plan and student worksheet can be downloaded below in PDF format

In addition, you will need the following video links:

Steve Cutt’s animated cartoon 'Man 2020': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaFRheiGED0
Friends of the Earth video: https://www.facebook.com/110861655604080/posts/3449272885096257/

Excellent sources for optional reading:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-06-25/the-new-normal-after-the-coronavirus-pandemic
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52488134

Important: Please read

Included in the teachers' notes for each lesson, you will find:

Guidance and advice on managing group and pair work activities in face-to-face classrooms with physical distancing protocols.
Guidance and advice for what teachers need to know and do before and at the beginning of an online class. Please read the lesson instructions carefully before using them. They are for guidance only, and designed to be used with the most common online platforms. You may need to adapt the lesson to the format and online platform you are working with.

A combination of the lesson plan for online teaching and the lesson plan for face-to-face teaching can be used in 'hybrid' situations, where some students in the class are studying from home and others are physically in the classroom. Classroom material for the online lesson is provided as a PDF.

See our other lesson plans in this series

Pros and cons of lockdown
Secondary student wellbeing
Positives and negatives of remote learning

A marvellous lesson

Thank you for this Lesson Plan. It's interesting.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight

Students Deserve a Voice in Our Pandemic Response. Here’s How to Give It to Them

As the country began to shut down because of COVID-19 this spring, our staff at Mikva Challenge, which seeks to close the civic-opportunity gap for students from underresourced schools and communities, knew that this was the moment to expand, not retract, our work. Young people were abruptly facing a sudden and drastic reduction in their social connections and crucial services, including school meals, school-based mental-health counseling, after-school jobs, and an important safety net for identifying child abuse.

With that in mind, Mikva Challenge formed its first-ever National Youth Response Movement to elevate and promote youth voices and solutions during this national crisis. This group of 22 high school students from 15 cities across the country met twice a week with dedicated adult facilitators from early April to August. In doing so, they are learning leadership skills—specifically, civic-leadership skills—to organize themselves and their peers to respond to COVID-19 with youth-focused policy suggestions.

About This Project

With the rise of the pandemic this spring and the national fight for racial justice, many young people are displaying inner reserve, resiliency, self-regulation, leadership, service, and citizenship in ways that no one could have anticipated.

In this special Opinion project, educators and students explore how young people are carving their own paths.

Read the full package.

Build community and relationships to ensure students can grow, participate, and engage.

This is a cornerstone of our work, both in and outside the classroom. An interactive, youth-led, project-based education in democracy—also known as “action civics"—can only be successful when adult facilitators invest significant time in community building and storytelling to make young people feel safe enough to lead, engage with each other, and be vulnerable. To reach students in online learning spaces, those adult facilitators must be dynamic, outgoing, and persistent.

We learned that students need ample time to express their thoughts, either in the group setting or in smaller breakout discussions—both of which must be virtual now. But here’s the difficult part: Beyond the logistics of scheduling students across three time zones in the midst of the pandemic, NYRM adult facilitators needed to take into account the issues students were managing while they sheltered at home, including their mental health. Twice-weekly meetings gave students a much-needed outlet and a connection with their peers. But those who struggle with mental-health challenges had more difficulty re-engaging during their hard times, instead withdrawing from the virtual setting. We found that consistent contact with all participants beyond Zoom calls, including through supportive emails and texts, kept them engaged in the project.

Provide your students with the opportunity to exercise and mature leadership skills they may not even realize they possess."

Provide the space and opportunities for students to lead the way—and then step aside.

With students already receiving more than eight hours a day of virtual instruction in school, we knew that the NYRM virtual workshops needed to distinguish themselves. Mikva facilitators guided the process, but the students decided the focus and the projects. Students steered discussions, did the research, and made the calls on policy recommendations. Following the brutal killing of George Floyd, students went from addressing their peers’ social-emotional needs related to the pandemic to a more holistic vision focused on racially just and equitable schools. They wrote a series of policy recommendations for school and district leaders to dismantle the cradle-to-prison pipeline, build inclusive curriculum, and provide mental-health support in schools.

Invite students to “do” democracy, not just learn about it.

The pandemic has underscored the necessity for students to be in leadership rather than just learn about leadership skills. The pandemic gave students a purpose and a cause for their work. And it created an opportunity to reach lawmakers, researchers, and activists who were also working remotely.

Students recorded persuasive “soapbox” speeches on their phones about the impact of COVID-19 and then called on their peers to do the same. NYRM student leaders developed five policy recommendations for districts to create equitable schools by centering students’ voices, experiences, and needs. And last month, they shared these policy recommendations with members of Congress and education policy and philanthropic leaders during a National Youth Policy & Elections Roundtable.

What does all of this mean for schools?

Provide your students with the opportunity to exercise and mature leadership skills they may not even realize they possess. They have important ideas to share for how we can adapt and respond to this moment.

Coverage of character education and development is supported in part by a grant from The Kern Family Foundation, at www.kffdn.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the September 09, 2020 edition of Education Week as Empowering Youth Voice

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Free Speech on Campus: COVID-19 and Beyond

February 11 & February 25, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Free speech is central to democracies and part of the lifeblood of college and university communities. Knight Foundation research shows that student attitudes about and experiences of free speech were changing even before the disruptions of COVID-19, the racial justice movement, and the 2020 presidential election. These two webinars explore how these changes are shaping free speech on campus and how leaders should respond in relationship to efforts to increase inclusion and the growing role of communications technologies.

February 11, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Amid political turmoil, hyperpolarization, and social distancing, supporting students’ free speech rights while also cultivating an inclusive campus culture is more difficult than ever. In a survey from Knight Foundation and Gallup, 81 percent of students say they want to be exposed to all kinds of speech on campus, but 69 percent also believe inclusion is essential. Women and minority students have far less faith that the First Amendment protects them, even as they embrace their free speech rights to lead a new generation of civil right activism.

In this webinar, leaders promoting and supporting free speech and civic engagement on campuses will discuss how to make sense of these tensions to embrace both free speech and inclusion in the present environment.

View the webinar recording below.

Evette Alexander - Director, Learning and Impact, Knight Foundation -

February 25, 2021 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM ET

Already a central channel for speech within campus communities, social media and other forms of digital communications have become the primary means through which students and faculty seek information, debate issues, and organize for action during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students, particularly those who are BIPOC or LGBTQ, are increasingly the target of online bullying and misinformation campaigns. But these same students are embracing technology to advance social justice on an unprecedented scale. This webinar will explore how colleges and universities can safeguard students’ free speech in digital forums while also combatting deception and extreme polarization, encouraging inclusion and democratic deliberation.

View the webinar recording below.

Jonathan Alexander - Associate Dean, Division of Undergraduate Education, and Chancellor's Professor of English and Informatics, University of California, Irvine -

This event is generously sponsored by the Knight Foundation .

View the Recordings

Free speech and inclusion in higher education, campus free speech and technology, learn more.

Prepare for the events by reading these documents.

The First Amendment on Campus 2020 Report: College Students’ Views of Free Expression

To the Point: Campus Inclusion and Freedom of Expression: Managing Social Media (PDF)

Inclusion and Free Speech: Strategic for Managing Tensions

Inclusion and Free Speech: The Right to be Heard

Free Speech in the US and on College Campuses Today

Conversations: Free Speech and Expression

College Admissions in 2024: "A Year Like No Other"

Home > Andrew Young School of Policy Studies > Georgia Policy Labs > Reports > 65

Georgia Policy Labs Reports

The Academic Outcomes of English Learners Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic

K. Juree Capers , Georgia State University Follow Camila Morales , University of Texas at Dallas Follow

Author ORCID Identifier

K. Juree Capers: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5903-9941

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Publication date.

While the COVID-19 pandemic had adverse effects on all students’ learning, English Learners (EL) faced heightened challenges due to access to virtual learning, lack of digitally adaptable teaching strategies most useful for developing English language skills, and familial language and digital literacy barriers that hampered family-school district engagement. In this report, K. Jurée Capers and Camila Morales use student-level achievement data to investigate the learning impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the EL student population. We compare EL students’ actual individual test scores in math and reading with predictions of their scores had the pandemic never occurred to observe the learning impact of the pandemic.

Our analysis reveals that the pandemic had a larger effect on EL students’ achievement than English-proficient students, particularly in math. However, not all EL students were equally impacted. The pandemic had a larger effect on refugee EL students’ math and reading achievement than U.S.-born and economic-migrant EL students and a larger effect on Asian EL students compared to Black and Hispanic EL students. There were, however, minimal gender differences in achievement among EL students. Communication in students’ home language was somewhat helpful in minimizing the reading achievement loss during the initial year of the pandemic, but this did not meaningfully impact EL achievement overall.

Although most policy and programs treat ELs as a monolith, our results show unequal impacts of the pandemic that vary across students’ immigrant backgrounds, length of stay in the U.S., and race/ethnicity. Therefore, funding and policy responses aimed at boosting academic outcomes for EL students should consider the diversity of this group and equip educators to meet their varied learning needs. Our findings on math achievement underscore the need to provide effective access to core content instruction for EL students alongside English language development.

https://doi.org/10.57709/j7d6-cf68

Report, brief, and appendix posted at link.

Recommended Citation

Capers, K. Juree and Morales, Camila, "The Academic Outcomes of English Learners Impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic" (2024). Georgia Policy Labs Reports . 65. doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/j7d6-cf68

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Research Article

Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on language processing

Contributed equally to this work with: Daniel Kleinman, Adam M. Morgan, Rachel Ostrand, Eva Wittenberg

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Resources, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, NY, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria

Daniel Kleinman,
Adam M. Morgan,
Rachel Ostrand,
Eva Wittenberg

Published: June 15, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242
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A central question in understanding human language is how people store, access, and comprehend words. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presented a natural experiment to investigate whether language comprehension can be changed in a lasting way by external experiences. We leveraged the sudden increase in the frequency of certain words ( mask , isolation , lockdown ) to investigate the effects of rapid contextual changes on word comprehension, measured over 10 months within the first year of the pandemic. Using the phonemic restoration paradigm, in which listeners are presented with ambiguous auditory input and report which word they hear, we conducted four online experiments with adult participants across the United States (combined N = 899). We find that the pandemic has reshaped language processing for the long term, changing how listeners process speech and what they expect from ambiguous input. These results show that abrupt changes in linguistic exposure can cause enduring changes to the language system.

Citation: Kleinman D, Morgan AM, Ostrand R, Wittenberg E (2022) Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on language processing. PLoS ONE 17(6): e0269242. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242

Editor: Stephanie Ries-Cornou, San Diego State University, UNITED STATES

Received: April 4, 2022; Accepted: May 17, 2022; Published: June 15, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Kleinman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The stimuli, materials, deidentified trial-level data, and analysis code for all experiments are publicly accessible on the Open Science Framework repository at https://osf.io/dxc97/ (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/DXC97 ).

Funding: This research was funded by a UC San Diego Innovation Grant of Inclusive Research Excellence (to EW; https://diversity.ucsd.edu/centers-resources/funding.html ) and an IBM Global University Award Faculty Grant (to EW; https://research.ibm.com/university/awards/shared_university.html ). RO is an employee of, and receives salary from, IBM. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Most cognitive research on language processing relies on laboratory-based experiments. While this has proven a fruitful avenue for theory-building, it is critical to validate these theories in ecologically valid settings. However, the opportunities for this are few and far between: Capturing and experimentally measuring cognitive effects in real-time situations, particularly across a large sample of participants, presents unique challenges.

Some researchers have found creative ways of achieving this. For instance, Brown and Kulik pioneered research into flashbulb memories by asking people when and how they learned about a major, emotionally charged event shortly after the event occurred (e.g., the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the 9/11 terrorist attacks) [ 1 ]. In other flashbulb memory experiments, participants were retested months or years later to investigate the reliability and consistency of their memories [ 2 , 3 ]. Studies that leverage the unique properties of these events to shed light on underlying cognitive phenomena can make valuable contributions to the field. However, major events such as these occur only rarely and unpredictably, so opportunities to address cognitive questions in a real-world situation are few and far between.

One such major event is the COVID-19 global pandemic, which has altered society on an unprecedented scale. Among the many changes it has wrought is a shift in public discourse, and consequent changes to people’s daily vocabulary: Words like mask , isolation , and lockdown became much more common practically overnight [ 4 ]. This presented (what we hope is) a once-in-a-generation opportunity to study rapid changes in language processing in situ . In the present research, we leveraged the sudden, massive increase in the frequency of these words to investigate the effects of rapid contextual changes on language processing, their dynamic development over time, and whether linguistic access is mediated by non-linguistic external factors.

Effects of the pandemic on language processing

The cognitive representation of words is characterized by two main features. First, words are stored and accessed depending on how often and in what contexts they appear. The sensitivity of language users to the statistics of their linguistic input makes them faster both to produce and to comprehend common words compared to uncommon ones [ 5 , 6 ]; such frequency effects are among the most well-documented in cognitive science. Second, lexical knowledge is bound to semantic knowledge. This semantic linkage gives rise to a well-attested effect in psycholinguistics, semantic priming , in which comprehending an initial word ( dog ) speeds recognition of an associatively-related, subsequently presented word [ cat ; 7 ]. Remarkably, such priming effects also hold for non-linguistic sounds with strong semantic associations: The sound of a cat’s meow also speeds recognition of the word cat [ 8 , 9 ].

From the very first days of the pandemic, people’s daily vocabulary underwent a drastic shift, affecting lexical processing on both of these dimensions–statistical and semantic. Formerly uncommon words like mask and lockdown (and their translation equivalents in languages around the world) experienced a sudden, substantial increase in frequency for billions of people, as the social discourse abruptly shifted for entire nations practically simultaneously [ 4 ]. At the same time, concepts like coughing and isolation , which had previously shared at best a minimal association, became tightly linked nodes in a novel semantic network.

These changes presented a unique opportunity to measure how the language processing system adapts to and learns from novel input in an entirely natural way. By measuring changes caused by the societal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to the language processing system, we traced a naturally-induced, population-wide shift in how humans store and access words.

Effects of experience on lexical knowledge

It has long been known that lexical knowledge can be altered by recent experience. For instance, exposure to an uncommon word (e.g., a low-frequency word such as anvil ) or the non-dominant meaning of a homonym (e.g., ball , meaning a fancy party rather than sports equipment) facilitates subsequent comprehension of that word or meaning by increasing its accessibility [ 10 , 11 ]. However, these effects are transient, returning to pre-exposure levels in a matter of minutes, hours or days. For instance, in collaboration with the BBC, Rodd and colleagues ran a large-scale experiment in which they aired a radio program which used ambiguous homophonous words in disambiguating contexts, such as “The princess wore a beautiful gown to the ball .” [ 12 ]. After the radio program, listeners participated in a survey and provided associations to the ambiguous homophones they had heard on the program. Participants were more likely to generate words related to the primed, subordinate meaning, compared to participants who had not heard the program. However, this effect lasted for only a few hours after the program aired. This transience suggests that such demonstrations result from paradigm- or context-specific adaptations, rather than reflecting lasting changes to the language system more globally.

One limitation of prior research in this area is that it has generally measured short-term adaptations induced by a circumscribed or unnaturally constrained linguistic context, such as a single experimental session. In contrast, the pandemic, by precipitating global changes to both the statistical and semantic properties of words, allowed us to test for corresponding changes to word knowledge resulting from an ecologically valid manipulation, and to do so over the long term.

The present study

A crucial component which differentiates the present experiments from prior work [e.g., 12 ] is that we do not manipulate listeners’ recent linguistic input in order to measure the cognitive outcome; instead, our experiments measure the real-world cognitive effects of an external shift that profoundly affected people’s lives. That is, the present experiments use the external world as a prime and measure how our brains have learned and stored words as a result of lived experience, investigating changes to the language system that are the result of natural changes in the linguistic environment.

With these experiments, we address three questions: (a) Did the sudden increase in frequency of certain words alter the statistical aspect of lexical representation? Specifically, did newly frequent words like mask become more readily comprehensible and accessible? (b) Did the pandemic create a novel semantic network, altering the semantic aspect of lexical representation? Specifically, is the non-linguistic sound of coughing now semantically linked to pandemic-related words like mask , so that the sound facilitates lexical comprehension of such words? (c) Can naturally-induced changes in lexical representation persist beyond the duration observed in the lab? Specifically, did these cognitive changes persist over 10 months?

Open practices statement

The stimuli, materials, deidentified trial-level data, and analysis code for all experiments are publicly accessible at https://osf.io/dxc97/ . The study design, stimuli list, participant recruitment criteria, sample size, data exclusion criteria, and statistical analysis plan for all experiments after the first were preregistered ( Exp . 2a : https://osf.io/kp6ac/ ; 1b : https://osf.io/n6e8g/ ; 2b : https://osf.io/3rwsx/ ). Preregistrations specified the model-pruning approach, one-tailed hypothesis tests and exclusion criteria for participants and items, and were followed precisely in all respects except that sample sizes for two experiments differed by 1–2% from planned N s due to a technical error (see S1 Text section Method : Deviations from Preregistrations for details). Analyses for Experiment 2a were preregistered prior to data collection, and analyses for Experiments 1b and 2b were preregistered after data collection but prior to analysis (though condition-blinded data was used to determine exclusion criteria, as described in detail in the preregistrations and in S1 Text section Changes in recruitment and criterion-setting to improve data retention ).

Materials and methods

We conducted four experiments over ten months (April 2020 –February 2021) during the first, second, and third waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States ( Exp . 1a : April 2020; Exp . 2a : July 2020, Exp . 1b [replication of 1a ]: February 2021, Exp . 2b [replication of 2a ]: February 2021). As many methodological details were shared between experiments, we report them jointly below.

Participants

Participants were recruited and tested via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Individuals were eligible to participate only if they were a (self-reported) native English speaker with an IP address located in the United States, and had an approved HIT (task) rate of at least 98% (Experiments 1a and 2a) or 90% (Experiments 1b and 2b). Participants in Experiments 1b and 2b were further screened using CloudResearch based on the participants’ study completion history to improve data quality: They were on the CloudResearch Approved List and had previously completed between 500 and 5000 HITs on the platform (vs. no minimum number of HITs required for Experiments 1a and 2a, an oversight that yielded a large number of participants with no prior HITs and thus poor data quality). Participants gave written informed consent; ethical approval was provided by the University of California, San Diego Institutional Review Board. The experiment took approximately 10 minutes to complete and participants were compensated with $2.50.

The total number of participants recruited for each experiment, as well as the number who contributed data that were ultimately included in analyses, are shown in the in Table A in S1 Text . Across experiments, 899 participants contributed usable data.

In the first experiment (Exp. 1a), we set an a priori target N of 240 participants–nearly an order of magnitude more than in prior phonemic restoration experiments. We chose this high number because several features of our experimental design made it difficult to estimate effect size (e.g., our use of novel stimuli, a relatively low trial count, running the paradigm in people’s homes instead of a carefully-controlled auditory environment and equipment in the lab). Two of the three effects that we expected to observe in Experiment 1a reached statistical significance with that sample size. To increase statistical power in the next experiment (Exp. 2a), we doubled the number of participants and increased the number of stimuli from 16 to 20. Poor data quality in Experiment 2a led us to improve our participant screening measures for Experiments 1b and 2b, for which we returned to our originally-targeted sample size of 240 participants. (Note that the sample sizes for all experiments after Experiment 1a were preregistered.)

Experimental paradigm

Experiments used the phonemic restoration experimental paradigm [ 13 ], in which an audio recording of a spoken word is altered by removing a short segment and replacing it with noise. Listeners report “hearing” sounds that are not actually present in the acoustic signal. This cognitive “restoration” process allows listeners to understand speech even when the acoustic signal is noisy, as often occurs in real-world environments. Phonemic restoration combines the bottom-up information of the raw acoustic signal with top-down lexical expectations, so that when hearing “abra#adabra” ( # indicates a non-speech noise), listeners restore the missing /k/ sound and report hearing abracadabra , but not nonexistent words like abra-ta-dabra . The phonemic restoration induced by a recording is a function of the listener’s linguistic expectations formed from the immediate lexical or semantic context. When multiple real words are consistent with the acoustic input (e.g., /#æsk/ can be restored to mask or task , among others), top-down knowledge–which can take the form of semantic context, or expectations drawn from linguistic experience–biases the restoration toward a relevant word. Stronger context–for example, as induced by higher frequency (and thus more globally expected) words, or longer words which have more phonetic information–induces greater lexical expectations in listeners and thus greater phonemic restoration [ 14 ].

Materials and design

Experimental stimuli were 16 (Exps. 1a & 1b) or 20 (Exps. 2a & 2b) audio recordings of words which had 1–2 phonemes removed and replaced by noise. (The only experimental design difference between Experiments 1 and 2 was the specific stimuli used.) On each trial, participants heard a recording and typed the word they thought they heard. Each ambiguous stimulus could be restored to (at least) two real words; for example, /#æsk/ could be restored to either mask (whose frequency increased due to COVID: TARGET response) or task (frequency unaffected by COVID: COMPETITOR response). We measured how often listeners reported hearing the TARGET as compared to the COMPETITOR word: If the sudden increase in frequency of pandemic-related words impacted how easily these words are accessed, then listeners presented with an ambiguous auditory stimulus should perceive the TARGET word more often than the COMPETITOR word.

The stimuli were designed in quadruplets: a COVID vs. CONTROL manipulation, each with a TARGET and a COMPETITOR response option (see Fig 1A ). The COVID-TARGET response option was pandemic-related ( mask ); the COVID-COMPETITOR response option was not ( task ). The CONTROL-TARGET ( map ) and CONTROL-COMPETITOR ( tap ) were both pandemic-unrelated, and included the same phonological contrast in the same position as the COVID item ( m/t ); this ensured that any differences between phonemes that might affect restoration (e.g., the presence of noise components in fricatives and voiceless stops) would affect the COVID and CONTROL conditions equally. A native speaker of American English (author D.K.) recorded the COMPETITOR words for both COVID and CONTROL items; thus, any coarticulation would bias listeners toward the COMPETITOR response and, critically, away from the TARGET response. Then, the relevant phonemes were removed from the recording (e.g., t in task and tap ) and replaced with a pre-recorded COUGH or grey NOISE of the same duration. Each participant was presented with one of four experimental lists; in each list, stimuli were divided equally across the four experimental conditions (COVID/COUGH, COVID/NOISE, CONTROL/COUGH, CONTROL/NOISE), with each stimulus having two response options (TARGET and COMPETITOR). See Table 1 for the complete list of stimuli.

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(A) Example stimulus quadruplet. For each COVID/CONTROL pair, the COMPETITOR word was recorded, and the critical sound was removed and replaced with a COUGH or NOISE. Participants’ responses were coded as TARGET or COMPETITOR if they were one of the two pre-defined response options for each stimulus, or otherwise excluded. (B) Changes in stimulus (log) word frequency from 2019 to 2020 by response category. COVID-TARGET words’ frequency increased substantially after the onset of the pandemic ( t (96) = 11.96, p < .001), while the frequencies of other response options remained relatively stable (all | t | < 1.45, all p > .15).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.t001

The process for selecting items was as follows. The COVID-TARGET items were chosen first, as words which suddenly increased in frequency in the national discourse due to the pandemic. Then, the COVID-COMPETITOR items were created as minimal pair words for their respective COVID-TARGET items, by finding words which were one phoneme different, balancing the constraints of matched pre-COVID frequency between the TARGET and COMPETITOR words, and attempting to minimize the size of the phonological neighborhood around the minimal pair phoneme which would ultimately be blocked out by the noise. This matching was done using the phoneme-based dictionary Sylvia [ 15 ], which queries the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary [ 16 ] using regular expressions. Subsequently, CONTROL-TARGET and CONTROL-COMPETITOR words were chosen (using Sylvia ) to have the same minimal pair distinction as the COVID-TARGET and COVID-COMPETITOR pair, in the same location (initial, medial, final) in the word.

Crucial to our experiment was the assumption that, pre-pandemic, the COVID-TARGET words were equally cognitively accessible as the COVID-COMPETITOR and CONTROL-TARGET words, so that any observed differences in lexical processing at the time of data collection (post-pandemic onset) could be attributed to pandemic-induced changes in frequency. To verify this assumption, lexical frequency was calculated for each word over two time periods using the News on the Web (NOW) corpus, which consists of time-stamped, web-based newspapers and magazines, capturing shifting lexical trends in real time [ 17 ]. Two subsets of the corpus were created: all documents in the NOW corpus from January–December 2019 (the “pre-pandemic” period) and all documents in the NOW corpus from January–December 2020 (the “post-pandemic” period). Frequency was calculated per million words, and log-transformed for computations. For each time period, a one-way ANOVA was conducted to compare word frequencies between items in each of the four groups.

Comparisons confirmed that stimulus items were matched on pre-pandemic lexical frequency ( F (3,32) = 0.88, p = .455), but significantly differed on post-pandemic frequency ( F (3,32) = 5.68, p = .001). Specifically, COVID-TARGET words were significantly more frequent than the others after pandemic onset: Contrasts (corrected for multiple comparisons via the Tukey method) revealed that, post-pandemic onset, COVID-TARGET words ( mask ) were significantly higher frequency than COVID-COMPETITOR words ( task ; p = .011), CONTROL-TARGET words ( map ; p = .004), and CONTROL-COMPETITOR words ( tap ; p = .005); no other comparisons were significant (see Fig 1B ). We also observed that word frequencies in 2019 vs. 2020 were almost perfectly correlated for COVID-COMPETITOR, CONTROL-TARGET, and CONTROL-COMPETITOR words (all R 2 > .97), but were less tightly linked for COVID-TARGET words ( R 2 = .73) due to the latter’s frequency increase. This is consistent with the idea that changes in COVID-TARGET word frequency from 2019 to 2020 were sudden and could not have been predicted from pre-pandemic corpus statistics alone.

To test the hypothesis that the pandemic affected the semantic aspect of lexical representation, the sound which replaced the deleted phonemes was either a COUGH (pandemic-related) or grey NOISE (pandemic-unrelated). We expected that the coughing sound would associatively prime pandemic-related semantic networks, biasing participants to hear the TARGET word in the COVID condition, but less so in the CONTROL condition.

As described above, on each trial, participants heard a single recording and then typed the word they thought they heard. After they submitted their response, the next trial started. Recordings could not be replayed, and there was no response deadline. After completing all trials, participants completed a post-experiment questionnaire that collected information about participant demographics; what they thought the experiment was about (Exps. 1b and 2b only); and the extent to which they thought about COVID and took COVID-related preventative measures (masking, isolation, etc.) in their lives.

Response coding and exclusions

The dependent variable was what kind of word participants reported hearing: the TARGET vs. the COMPETITOR. Accordingly, responses were coded as matching the TARGET ( mask or map ) or COMPETITOR ( task or tap ) (37.9%); non-matching responses (62.1%) were discarded. Non-matching responses consisted of other competitors that were consistent with the auditory input (e.g., ask or flask , which were consistent with substituting 0+ phonemes for the noise in the stimulus /#æsk/; 16.0%), input-inconsistent responses (e.g., mast , which included conflicting phonemes; 39.2%), and non-words and blank responses (7.0%). These percentages were computed based on all data collected, prior to other exclusions. For more details on how and why we excluded participants and items from analysis, and for data exclusion rates for each experiment, see S1 Text section Method : Data Exclusion . Note that including input-consistent competitors ( ask , flask ) in the analyses did not change the statistical significance of any results in the cross-experiment analysis (see S1 Text section Analyses that included acceptable alternative responses ).

Analyses and hypothesis testing

For each individual experiment and for the cross-experiment analysis, data were analyzed in R [ version 4 . 1 . 2 , 18 ] with a binomial generalized linear mixed effects model using the lme4 package [ version 1 . 1–27 . 1 , 19 ]. The dependent variable was whether the participant produced the TARGET response (coded as a “success”) or the COMPETITOR response (coded as a “failure”). Fixed effects comprised the COVID/CONTROL manipulation, the COUGH/NOISE manipulation, and their interaction; all effects were sum-coded, with factor weights set to +/- 0.5. For all models, we started with a maximal random effects structure and followed a preregistered procedure in which random effects were pared to facilitate convergence (see S1 Text section Method : Model-Fitting Strategy for details). To test hypotheses, contrasts were computed on the fitted model using the emmeans package [ version 1 . 6 . 0 , 20 ].

We made two predictions. First, we predicted higher restoration rates to the target word in the COVID vs. CONTROL condition [p( mask | #æsk ) > p( map | #æp )], indicating increased availability of pandemic-related words compared to pandemic-unrelated words. We tested this hypothesis among trials on which phonemes were replaced by grey NOISE, as this captured increased frequency of pandemic-related words without confound from potentially pandemic-priming coughs. Second, we predicted that restoration of COVID targets (but not CONTROL targets) would increase when replaced by a COUGH relative to grey NOISE, indicating that a coughing sound primed an associative network of pandemic-related words. As all hypotheses were directional, one-tailed hypothesis tests were used as described in the preregistrations, with an alpha level of .05.

Effect sizes, confidence intervals, and significance tests for each hypothesis test are depicted graphically in Fig 2 and reported numerically in Table 2 for each experiment individually and for all four experiments together. In the text below, all descriptions of results refer to the cross-experiment analysis.

(A) Cross-experiment (pooled) condition means and standard errors. (B) Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals for the four comparisons of interest for each experiment (grey circles) and data from all experiments combined (pink diamonds). Colored bars below refer to (A) and show which conditions are involved in each comparison. Asterisks denote significance (*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05, and “.” p < .10).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.g002

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.t002

Preregistered analyses

We found that the pandemic has indeed reorganized lexical knowledge. Across experiments, participants heard ambiguous input as COVID-TARGET words ( mask ) 3.68 times as often as CONTROL-TARGET words ( map ) ( p < .001; see Fig 2 panel B1). In addition, listeners restored ambiguous input to TARGET words 1.44 times as often in the presence of an interfering COUGH compared to NOISE for COVID word pairs ( p < .001; panel B2), versus 0.98 times as often for CONTROL word pairs ( p = .539; panel B3). That is, listeners restored to mask more often in the presence of a COUGH compared to NOISE, but listeners restored to map equally often in the presence of a COUGH and NOISE, a significant interaction ( p = .002; panel B4). An identical pattern of statistical significance was obtained when analysis was restricted to the three experiments that were preregistered (Exps. 1b, 2a, 2b; see S1 Text section Cross-experiment analysis for preregistered experiments only for details).

Exploratory analyses

Alternate explanations..

To determine whether these results were driven by awareness of the purpose of the study rather than unconscious reorganization of the lexicon, we administered a questionnaire after Experiments 1b and 2b asking participants if they thought the experiment was about the pandemic (among other topics). We then analyzed the “unaware” ( n = 290) and “aware” ( n = 178) sub-groups separately. Each sub-group’s pattern of results and statistical significance was identical to that of the overall analysis, suggesting that task demands did not artificially induce the linguistic effects that were observed (see S1 Text section Awareness for details).

We also considered whether the results could be attributable to semantic self-priming. Under this account, after restoring to a COVID-related word, a participant might have been more likely to restore additional COVID-related words on subsequent trials due to (either conscious or unconscious) semantic priming between trials. However, statistical analyses provided no evidence for a self-priming account (see S1 Text section Self-priming for details).

Word frequency effects.

In the analyses reported above, we created groups of words to use in an experiment with a factorial design. Although we confirmed that the only group of stimuli that significantly increased in word frequency from pre-pandemic (2019) to post-pandemic onset (2020) were the COVID-TARGET words (e.g., mask ), there was substantial variability within each group. Accordingly, we conducted an analysis across COVID and CONTROL word pairs to determine whether target response rates were related to the relative change in TARGET vs. COMPETITOR word frequency from 2019 to 2020, using the computed real-world word frequencies of the stimuli [ 17 ]. As shown in Fig 3 , target response rates were significantly higher for word pairs in which the TARGET increased in frequency more than the COMPETITOR did. That is, words which suddenly became more prevalent in societal discourse as a result of the pandemic were concomitantly more likely to be heard from ambiguous input compared to their minimal pair competitors.

Each dot represents one stimulus: Green dots represent COVID word pairs and blue dots represent CONTROL word pairs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.g003

In four experiments, we demonstrated that lexical expectations and comprehension can shift due to rapid changes in a listener’s real-life linguistic environment, and that such changes can persist over time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, words such as mask and isolation suddenly became much more frequent in the global discourse. We postulated that this marked increase in frequency led to an increase in lexical accessibility. This was measured in the current experiments by increased perceptions of pandemic-related words, as compared to pre-pandemic frequency-matched competitors, when faced with an ambiguous auditory input signal.

These results demonstrate that repeated exposure to certain words over a relatively short time span–in comparison to a lifetime’s worth of language exposure–leads to dramatic and persistent changes to the language comprehension system. These effects include changes in words’ accessibility, as well as the creation of novel conceptual networks (new semantic associations between pandemic-related words and non-linguistic sounds). In addition, we have shown that these effects persist over at least ten months.

Participants were not simply more likely to perceive pandemic-related words overall; the likelihood was linked to each word’s individual increase in frequency during the pandemic. This sheds light on an important aspect of the mechanism underlying linguistic adaptation: It indicates that language users weight recent experiences more heavily than older experiences, not only over the short term–the process which underlies standard semantic and repetition priming effects–but over the long term as well. Furthermore, the only reason we were able to isolate the effects of recent linguistic experience was because of how abruptly the language input changed: The sudden increase in frequency for COVID-TARGET words (e.g., mask ) in early 2020 made it possible to mathematically dissociate recent and prior linguistic experience.

Experimental novelty

The present work goes beyond prior research on the effects of lexical exposure in three ways. First, as far as we are aware, this is the first study to use naturally occurring events as the exposure manipulation. Previous research into the effects of word frequency [ 10 , 12 ] and concept formation [ 21 ] has largely relied on artificial manipulations and laboratory settings to induce priming and to provide linguistic exposure to participants. Here, we demonstrate that comprehenders can quickly and flexibly adapt their expectations to accommodate changes in the statistical properties of their linguistic environment. By bringing this finding from the laboratory into the real world, our work follows in the footsteps of recent research using world events to study other psycholinguistic phenomena [ 22 ].

Second, the results of these experiments demonstrate the presence of long-lasting changes in lexical accessibility induced by rapid changes in the linguistic input. Prior work has demonstrated that such accessibility changes can be induced rapidly, after just a few minutes or exposure tokens [e.g., 11], but demonstrations of so-called “long-term” effects have been confined to periods of less than one day. In contrast, the present work demonstrates lasting effects on language comprehension over the course of nearly a year, at least insofar as the stimulus (i.e., the heightened frequency of pandemic-related words) remains present. This observation has important consequences for understanding how language users weigh their recent linguistic experience against statistical expectations built up over a lifetime of language exposure, suggesting that the former can outweigh the latter.

Finally, our experiment removes both the homogenous experimental context and the temporal proximity between prime and target presentation. Most prior research on priming and lexical access occurs within a single experimental context: The participant is in the lab, sitting in a testing room, hearing primes and targets from the same computer speakers, and so forth. Memory tends to be enhanced by such contextual consistency [ 23 ], as demonstrated by extreme manipulations such as divers learning a word list either on land or underwater, and then demonstrating better recall in the same environment [ 24 ]. Our experiments, however, had no such contextual overlap: The priming “phase” occurred wherever–and whenever–participants interacted with COVID-19-related words when going about their lives. In spite of these inconsistencies between prime and target experience, we nonetheless observed strong and consistent effects across experiments, indicating that the linguistic adaptation we report here is robust to real-world situations.

Future directions

Several factors may limit the generalizability of our results. First, we tested only a very restricted set of words, a tiny fraction of those that the average adult speaker knows. It remains an open question whether and how the full lexicon is affected by changes in frequency of a small number of words. Second, the demonstrated effects occurred as the result of a sudden and enormous shift in frequency of the critical items. Most real-world lexical experience consists of substantially more modest and gradual changes in a word’s usage. It is possible that the learning and access processes which underlie these more gradual effects are governed by different mechanisms than those captured in the present work. Both of these limitations were by design, taking advantage of the exigencies of the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate an extreme case of change in lexical frequency, accessibility, and changes to semantic networks. An important question for future research will be whether such effects can be demonstrated on a smaller scale when the concomitant lexical changes are milder as well.

Another question for future research, if discussion of the pandemic ever recedes and the frequency of words like mask returns to 2019 levels, is whether the increased accessibility observed in the present experiments remains high for these words, and for how long after their frequency decreases. This is an important open question which would elucidate the time course of changes to the comprehension system on the basis of changing input.

Conclusions

The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated a massive change in the frequency of certain words. By leveraging this change in a natural experiment, we have demonstrated that sudden changes in recent linguistic input can have measurable and lasting impacts on how listeners process speech, suggesting that lexical comprehension can be affected for the long-term by abrupt and short-term changes.

Supporting information

S1 text. supplemental method and results..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269242.s001

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Riley Adachi and Mohit Gurumukhani for assistance with stimulus creation, data collection, and response coding.

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A wealth of literature clearly supports the presence of speech anxiety in the communication classroom, especially in those classes with a focus on public speaking and/or presentations. Over the years, much work has been done on intentional approaches to empowering students to effectively manage their speech anxiety in face-to-face, hybrid, and online communication courses. These research-based findings have led to best practices and strong pedagogical approaches that create a supportive classroom culture and foster engaged learning. Then COVID-19 appeared, and things changed. In an effort to keep campuses safe and save the spring semester, everyone jumped online. Many instructors and students were experiencing online education for the first time and, understandably, anxiety exploded. Between the uncertainty of a global pandemic, the unchartered territory of a midterm pivot to fully online education, and the unknown effects of the situation on our educational system, our stress levels grew. Public speaking and presentations took on new meaning with Zoom sessions and webcams and our speech anxiety, undoubtedly, grew, as well. Reflecting upon the scholarship of the past with an appreciation of our present situation and looking toward the future, we will curate a list of best practices to prepare students to effectively manage their speech anxiety with agency, ability, and confidence.

Introduction

It is impossible for Isabella to catch her breath. Her pulse is racing, she is flushed, and her thoughts are a jumbled mess. She is desperately trying to remember her plan, slow her breathing and visualize success but it is impossible to do anything but panic. She is convinced she will embarrass herself and fail her assignment. Why had she postponed taking her public speaking class? Yes, it would have been bad in a “normal” term but now, amidst the coronavirus pandemic, she had to take the class online. Though it seems unimaginable that the class could be more terrifying, add Zoom sessions, internet connection issues, and little engagement with her teacher or classmate and Isabella’s out of control speech anxiety is completely understandable . If you have been in a college classroom, most likely, you have had to deliver a presentation, lead a discussion, or share a poster presentation. If so, you know what speech anxiety is like. Most of us have experienced the racing heart rate, difficulty concentrating and sensory overload characteristic of speech anxiety ( Dwyer, 2012 ). For some of us, like Isabella, the speech anxiety is almost debilitating. Even if you are one of the rare people who does not experience speech anxiety, you probably witnessed your classmates struggle with the stress, worry and insecurity caused by speech anxiety. It was prevalent before the arrival of COVID-19 and now with the stressors associated with the pandemic, virtual learning, and social distancing it will most likely increase. Fortunately, we have the research, resources, and resolve to intentionally craft classroom culture that will support communication success.

Meeting the Challenges of COVID-19

In the early spring of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the United States, and required an unprecedented mid-term pivot. Classes rapidly moved from face-to-face instruction to online platforms in days. Teachers who had never taught online were learning while teaching, managing that additional workload while trying to stay connected with students who were worried and often overwhelmed. In addition to the public and personal health concerns of the virus, there were worries about online learning, the economy, and mental health. The bright spot was that in so many classes, the connections had been established before the pivot and so teachers and students were able to engage with familiar people in new ways. It was not an ideal situation but there was a sense that we were all in this together.

The fall of 2020 found many institutions of higher education and their faculty, staff, and students once again engaged in online instruction and it looks like it will be that way for the near future. We were faced with the new challenge of creating supportive and engaging class spaces completely virtual (in many cases) or in hybrid form with some classes combining online coursework with limited in-person instruction. Experience taught us that our students were speech anxious and that we needed to intentionally design safe and engaging spaces to support their success even before the arrival of COVID-19. Our challenge was to adopt a new skillset and look to the online learning community for resources, suggestions, and best practices.

Pandemic Pedagogy

Articles and emerging research on the response to the pandemic at the institutional, classroom, and individual level provide a glimpse into how we can craft virtual classroom spaces that support learning while meeting the needs created by COVID-19. Common themes for solid pandemic pedagogy include a focus on student mental health and well-being ( Gigliotti, 2020 ; Burke, 2021 ), an appreciation of technology challenges and access issues ( Turner et al., 2020 ; Burke, 2021 ; Singh, 2021 ), and a commitment to engaged teaching and learning ( Turner et al., 2020 ; Jenkins, 2021 ; Lederman, 2021 ). The fundamentals of good teaching are the same regardless of the modality and the foundational pedagogical practices are also similar, yet the primary difference is that solid online education has been designed for a virtual modality, not adapted to fit it (Kelly and Westerman, 2016 ). How can we craft safe and supportive online and virtual spaces for students to find, develop, and then actively share? A good place to start is with wayfinding which can “reinforce ways of knowing and problem solving,” ( Petroski and Rogers, 2020 , p. 125). Wayfinding supports efficacy and empowerment while meeting the challenges of pandemic pedagogy and can be incorporated into online communication classes to reduce speech anxiety and build classroom culture.

Speech Anxiety

The fear of public speaking, known as glossophobia, is a common and real form of anxiety ( Sawchuk, 2017 ) affecting as much as 75% of the population ( Black, 2019 ). In the scholarly literature, it is usually referred to as communication anxiety, communication apprehension, or communication avoidance ( Richmond and McCroskey, 1998 ). In more popular sources, such as Harvard Management Communication Letter, it has been called stage fright ( Daly and Engleberg, 1999 ) and speech anxiety ( Getting over speech anxiety, 2001 ). In this work, we will refer to it as speech anxiety as that term most closely targets the experience we are exploring.

Regardless of the label, it is our innate survival mode of flight, fight, or flee in the face of imminent (real or perceived) danger ( Thomas, 1997 ; Dwyer, 1998 ). Our mind feels a threat from a public speaking situation and our body responds accordingly. Common symptoms can include increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing; excessive perspiration, skin flush or blush; shaky voice; trembling hands and feet; or dry mouth and nausea ( Thomas, 1997 ; Dwyer, 1998 ; Black, 2019 ).

There are many tips and techniques that can help those with speech anxiety manage their symptoms and communicate effectively across a variety of modalities. Some common strategies include relaxation, visualization, cognitive restructuring, and skills training ( Motley, 1997 ; Thomas, 1997 ; Richmond and McCroskey, 1998 ; Dwyer, 2012 ).

(1) Typical relaxation tips can include mindfulness, deep breathing, yoga, listening to music, and taking long walks,

(2) Visualization involves inviting the speaker to imagine positive outcomes like connecting with their audience, making an impact, and sharing their presentation effectively ( Thomas, 1997 ; Dwyer, 1998 ). It replaces much of the negative self-talk that tends to occur before a speech opportunity and increases our anxiety.

(3) Cognitive restructuring is a more advanced technique with the goal “to help you modify or change your thinking in order to change your nervous feelings,” ( Dwyer, 2012 , p. 93). In essence, it involves replacing negative expectations and anxious feelings about public speaking opportunities with more positive and self-affirming statements and outlooks.

(4) Skills training is what we do in our classrooms and during professional workshops and trainings. It can include exploring speech anxiety and discussing how common it is as well as ways to effectively manage it ( Dwyer, 2012 ). It also involves analysis of the component parts, such as delivery and content ( Motley, 1997 ) practicing and delivering speeches in low stakes assignments, collaborating with classmates, and engaging in active listening ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 ).

Ideally, solid skills training introduces the other techniques and encourages individuals to experiment and discover what works best for them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to speech anxiety.

Classroom Culture

According to the Point to Point Education website, “Classroom culture involves creating an environment where students feel safe and free to be involved. It’s a space where everyone should feel accepted and included in everything. Students should be comfortable with sharing how they feel, and teachers should be willing to take it in to help improve learning,” ( Point to Point Education, 2018 , paragraph 2). Regardless of subject matter, class size, format, or modality, all college classes need a supportive and engaging climate to succeed ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 ). Yet having a classroom culture that is supportive and conducive to lowering anxiety is especially critical in public speaking courses ( Stewart and Tassie, 2011 ; Hunter et al., 2014 ). Faculty are expected to engage and connect with students and do so in intentional, innovative, and impactful ways. These can be simple practices, like getting to know students quickly and referring to them by their preferred name, such as a middle name or shortened first name ( Dannels, 2015 ), or more elaborate practices like incorporating active learning activities and GIFTS (Great Ideas for Teaching Students) throughout the curriculum ( Seiter et al., 2018 ). We want to create a positive and empowering classroom climate that offers equitable opportunities for all students to succeed. As educators, we can infuse empathy, spontaneity, and equality into our pedagogy while being mindful of different learning styles and committed to supporting diversity and inclusion ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 ; Dannels, 2015 ). Furthermore, our communication classrooms need to be intentional spaces where challenges, such as anxiety disorders, mental health issues, learning disabilities and processing issues, are supported and accommodated ( Simonds and Hooker, 2018 ).

Ideally, we want to cultivate a classroom culture of inquiry, success, and connection. We also want to foster immediacy, the “verbal and nonverbal communication behaviors that enhance physical and psychological closeness,” ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 , p. 32). Multiple studies support that teachers who demonstrate immediate behaviors are regarded as more positive, receptive to students, and friendly ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 ). As teachers and scholars, we want to make a positive impact. Dannels (2015) writes that “teaching is heart work,” (p. 197) and she is right. It demands an investment of our authentic selves to craft a climate of safety and support where comfort zones are expanded, challenges are met, and goals are reached.

Educators need to be mindful of and responsive to the challenges COVID-19 presents to the health and well-being of our students, colleagues, and communities. In May of 2020, the National Communication Association (NCA) devoted an entire issue of its magazine to “Communication and Mental Health on campus 2020,” ( Communication and mental health on campus, 2020 ) highlighting the importance of this issue in our communication education spaces. Suggestions included learning more about mental health issues, engaging in thoughtful conversations, listening intentionally and actively, promoting well-being, and serving as an advocate and ally ( Communication and mental health on campus, 2020 ).

Scholarship about instructional communication, computer mediated communication and online education ( Kelly and Fall, 2011 ) offers valuable insights into effective practices and adaptations as we intentionally craft engaging and supportive spaces, so our students feel empowered to use their voice and share their story, even those with high speech anxiety. Instructional communication scholars focus on the effective communication skills and strategies that promote and support student success and an engaged learning environment ( Simonds and Cooper, 2011 ).

General strategies to teach effectively during the pandemic can be helpful and easily adaptable to our public speaking classrooms. Being flexible with assignments, deadlines and attendance can support student success and well-being as can creativity, engagement activities, and appealing to different learning styles and strengths ( Mahmood, 2020 ; Singh, 2021 ). It seems everyone is presenting virtually now, not just in our communication classrooms and that can take some getting used to. Educators can model and promote effective communication by being conversational and engaging and empathizing with the many challenges everyone is facing ( Gersham, 2020 ; Gigliotti, 2020 ; Jenkins, 2021 ; Singh, 2021 ).

This is also a great opportunity to innovate and cultivate a new classroom climate looking at communication in a new way for a new, digital age. During this time of change we can harness opportunities and encourage our students to develop the skillsets needed to communicate effectively during COVID-19 and after. Preparing them as digital communicators with a focus on transferable and applicable skills would help them in other classes and the job market ( Ward, 2016 ). Innovations to our courses, assessment tools, and learning outcomes can all happen now, too ( Ward, 2016 ). This is the time to innovate our course experiences across all modalities, reinvent what public speaking means in the modern, digital age and intentionally craft learning spaces for all students in which speech anxiety is intentionally addressed and effectively managed.

Best Practices

(1) Be flexible, as a matter of practice not exception. Speech anxiety was experienced by most students to some degree and was debilitating for some pre-pandemic and adds another layer of stress for students who are capable and resilient yet dealing with a lot. Podcasts are a common communication medium and may ease the anxiety of some students while highlighting the importance of word choice, rate, and tone. They also involve less bandwidth and technology and may be easier for many students to create.

(2) Reframe communication as a skill of the many, not just the few. Highly speech anxious students tend to believe they are the only ones who have a fear of presenting and only certain, confident individuals can present well. Neither of these are true. If we reframe presentations as conversations, demystify speech anxiety by discussing how common it is, and empower our students with the knowledge that they can effectively communicate, we can reduce anxiety, build confidence, and develop important skills that transcend disciplines and promote self-efficacy.

(3) Build a community of support and success. When we see our students as individuals, celebrate connection and collaboration, and actively engage to learn and grow, we co-create an impactful and empowering space that supports success not by being rigid and demanding but by being innovative, intentional, and inspiring.

Author Contributions

I am thrilled to contribute to this project and explore ways we can empower our students to effectively manage their speech anxiety and share their stories.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: speech anxiety, public speaking anxiety, instructional communication, communication pedagogy, Best Practices

Citation: Prentiss S (2021) Speech Anxiety in the Communication Classroom During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Supporting Student Success. Front. Commun. 6:642109. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.642109

Received: 15 December 2020; Accepted: 08 February 2021; Published: 12 April 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Prentiss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Suzy Prentiss, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Cultural Changes in Instructional Practices Due to Covid-19

2 Minute Speech On Covid-19 In English

Good morning everyone present, today I am going to talk about Coronavirus, often referred to as COVID-19, which is an infectious infection that affects the human respiratory system. Covid 19 refers to a novel coronavirus disease that was discovered in 2019. Our daily lives have been impacted by the Coronavirus. Millions of individuals have been impacted by this pandemic, and are either sick or dead due to the disease.

Fever, cold, cough, bone pain, and respiratory issues are the most typical signs of this viral infection. Patients with the coronavirus may also experience symptoms like fatigue, a sore throat, muscle soreness, and a loss of taste or smell in addition to these ones.

Around the world, the pandemic has caused significant social and economic disruption, including the biggest global recession since the Great Depression. Supply chain instability led to widespread shortages of supplies, particularly food supplies. Pollution fell by an unprecedented amount as human activity decreased. Throughout 2020 and 2021, many jurisdictions closed all or part of their educational institutions and public spaces, and numerous events were postponed or canceled. Political tensions have increased as a result of false information spreading through social media and the media. The pandemic has brought up questions of racial and geographic discrimination, health fairness, and how to strike a balance between the needs of public health and the rights of individuals. Thank you.

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Int J Environ Res Public Health

How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use?

Francesca pisano.

1 Department of Humanities Studies, University Federico II, 80133 Naples, Italy

Alessio Manfredini

Daniela brachi, luana landi, lucia sorrentino, marianna bottone, chiara incoccia.

2 IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, 00179 Rome, Italy

Paola Marangolo

Associated data.

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to ethical and privacy restrictions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to severe consequences for people’s mental health. The pandemic has also influenced our language use, shaping our word formation habits. The overuse of new metaphorical meanings has received particular attention from the media. Here, we wanted to investigate whether these metaphors have led to the formation of new semantic associations in memory. A sample of 120 university students was asked to decide whether a target word was or was not related to a prime stimulus. Responses for pandemic pairs in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., “trench”—“hospital”) were compared to pre-existing semantically related pairs (i.e., “trench”—“soldier”) and neutral pairs (i.e., “trench”—“response”). Results revealed greater accuracy and faster response times for pandemic pairs than for semantic pairs and for semantic pairs compared to neutral ones. These findings suggest that the newly learned pandemic associations have created stronger semantic links in our memory compared to the pre-existing ones. Thus, this work confirms the adaptive nature of human language, and it underlines how the overuse of metaphors evoking dramatic images has been, in part, responsible for many psychological disorders still reported among people nowadays.

1. Introduction

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been a global epidemic that poses a serious threat to public health throughout the world [ 1 , 2 ]. It has changed the fabric of society worldwide through social distancing measures, travel bans, self-quarantine, and business closures, leading to severe physical and psychological consequences for people’s health [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Indeed, higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress have been recorded during the pandemic compared to the pre-COVID-19 emergency disrupting the balance of daily activities and the perception of well-being in healthy [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ] and neurological populations [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Since the beginning of the pandemic, social media have been primarily used to disseminate crucial information to the public, influencing people’s risk perceptions, decision-making capacity, and behaviors (for a review, see [ 16 ]). Several studies have described the COVID-19 times as “an era of fake news” in which misinformation has spread rapidly, in some cases threatening the individual’s mental health and well-being [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Thus, during this period, social media have played a major role in everyday communication; new words and figurative expressions, as well as shifts in the use and meaning of typically sociological, psychological, or even medical terms, have been adopted [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Indeed, human language is not a static concept but a dynamic, creative, and adaptive entity with words changing over time due to the actual social context in which interpersonal and social phenomena are incorporated [ 23 , 24 , 27 ]. Among the figurative expressions, the usage of metaphors has received special attention [ 25 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ]. As reported in the literature, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea (i.e., trench) is used in place of another (i.e., hospital) to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. Thus, its usage might result in pervasive influencing on the way in which people think and act [ 32 ].

Since the beginning of the pandemic, different metaphors have been mostly used to get the public’s attention to the dangers of the virus. Among these expressions, for an emergency, military metaphors such as “war”, “battle”, “fight”, “invasion”, “heroes”, and “warriors” have been employed; while to evoke mortality, “peak”, “wave”, and “spiral” were the most frequent designed metaphors [ 33 ]. Thus, following this social media propaganda, these metaphors have become familiar, and they are still widely used in everyday language around the world [ 24 ].

Given the emergence of this new vocabulary, in the present study, we wanted to investigate whether the overuse of these metaphors has led to the formation of new semantic associations in memory between a word and its newly acquired metaphorical meaning (e.g., the word “trench”, classically associated with the line of defense during the war, has turned into “hospital”, the place where the “war” against COVID-19 took place). Indeed, semantic memory is seen by many researchers as a network in which word concepts are nodes more or less interconnected to each other [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. More specifically, word concepts can entertain taxonomic relationships within the network by sharing common semantic features (i.e., chair and bed), or they can be associated because they resort together or in the same context (i.e., car, petrol) [ 39 ]. Particularly, words that frequently co-occur in any language modality (spoken and/or written) become associated and, consequently, more interconnected in the semantic network [ 40 , 41 ]. Indeed, social context can influence our language use by making familiar words not previously frequently used [ 23 , 24 ]. Thus, given these premises, the hypothesis might be advanced that the overuse of newly acquired metaphors during the pandemic has reshaped our semantic memory, thus, establishing new semantic associations.

Since the pioneering study of Meyer and Schvaneveldt [ 42 ], theorists have used semantic priming tasks to investigate lexical access and semantic memory organization. The semantic priming effect has been mostly explored in lexical decision tasks in which participants are asked to decide whether prime-target pairs are or are not semantically related [ 43 , 44 ]. For instance, Meyer and Schvaneveldt [ 42 ] have shown that people are faster and more accurate in responding when the target name, such as “ nurse ”, is preceded by a semantically related prime, such as “ doctor ”, compared to an unrelated word such as “ butter ”. This facilitation has been consistently observed in several experiments and it occurs for word pairs that are semantically associated [ 36 , 45 ] (for a review, see [ 46 ]). The most common explanation related to this priming effect lies on the above hypothesis that semantically related words are represented closest to each other within the network. Thus, when a prime word is visually or auditorily presented, it automatically activates not only its own meaning but also the meaning of its semantically related targets decreasing the time to judge their appropriateness [ 34 , 35 , 47 , 48 ]. Many studies have shown that automatic effects predominate when the interval between the prime and the target is less than 400 msec (short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) [ 35 ], and that at longer SOAs strategic processes take over [ 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ].

However, despite the huge amount of literature on semantic priming, to date, little attention has been given to explaining what conditions favor the formation of new associative links among words and, thus, consider these links as stored in semantic memory. A reasonable criterion is that the newly learned word pairs should exert the same priming effects as words already associated in semantic memory. Dagenbach and colleagues [ 54 ] investigated which learning conditions are essential to exert priming effects among pre-experimentally unrelated word pairs. They found that the frequent co-occurrence of these unrelated pairs during a study phase led to semantic priming effects approximately equal to those observed for pre-experimentally related word pairs. Based on these results, the authors concluded that these newly learned associations were added to semantic memory. Similar findings were reported in Schrijnemakers and Raaijmakers’s study [ 55 ], in which the presentation, for several trials, of newly learned word pairs led to faster reaction time in a lexical decision task compared to non-repeated word pairs associations.

Given these assumptions, in the present work, we wanted to investigate whether the presentation of word pairs acquired during the pandemic in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., “ondata” [wave]—“contagio” [infection]) would exert the same semantic priming effect as word pairs with pre-consolidated semantic links (i.e., “ondata” [wave]—"maltempo” [bad weather]). We would expect that the overuse of these newly acquired word pairs has reshaped our semantic memory, thus, leading to the formation of new semantic associations.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. participants.

One hundred and twenty bachelor’s degree students (60 female and 60 male) aged between 18 and 26 years old (mean = 21.4 years, SD = 2.40) were recruited for this study. Inclusion criteria were: Italian language as mother tongue; right-handed [ 56 ]; normal vision; and no history of chronic or acute neurologic, psychiatric, or medical disease. Among the study sample, no one was infected by COVID-19.

2.2. Ethics Statement

The data analyzed in the current study were collected in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and the Institutional Review Board of the IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy. Prior to participation, all participants signed an online informed consent form.

2.3. Materials

In order to be sure that the relationship entertained between the prime and the target corresponded to a pre-existing semantic association (semantic pairs, i.e., “trincea” [trench]—“soldato” [soldier]), to a newly acquired association (pandemic pairs, i.e., “trincea” [trench]—“ospedale” [hospital]) or it did not correspond to any association (neutral pairs, i.e., “trincea” [trench]—“risposta” [response]), we first selected a sample of one-hundred-word pairs. Each pair of words belonging to the three categories had the same prime stimulus, while the target varied according to the type of relationship entertained with the prime. Sixty participants, matched for age and educational level to the experimental group (age mean = 21.73, SD = 2.35), who did not take part in the experiment, were asked to judge whether or not the relationship between the different word pairs corresponded to one of the three selected categories (semantic, pandemic, and neutral).

A final sample of sixty-word pairs, whose pairs were uniquely judged by all participants as belonging to the three categories, was finally selected. The sixty-word pairs were distributed into three lists, a list called “Semantic”, a “Pandemic” list, and a list called “Neutral”, each list was made of twenty-word pairs.

All targets belonging to the three lists were matched for frequency (list pandemic : mean = 39.25, SD = 63.94; list semantic : mean = 39.50, SD = 58.33; list neutral : mean = 37.75, SD = 56.52, unpaired t -test, p > 0.05 for each comparison) and length (list pandemic : mean = 7.1, SD = 1.65; list semantic : mean = 7.4, SD = 1.85; list neutral : mean = 7.2, SD = 1.96, unpaired t-test, p > 0.05 for each comparison) [ 57 ]. The targets were also matched for age of acquisition (list pandemic : mean = 8.76, SD = 3.14; list semantic : mean = 7.07, SD = 3.02; list neutral : mean = 7.57, SD = 3.02, unpaired t -test, p > 0.05 for each comparison) and imageability (list pandemic : mean = 5.07, SD = 0.94; list semantic : mean = 5.29, SD = 1.01; list neutral : mean = 5.58, SD = 1.22, unpaired t -test, p > 0.05 for each comparison) estimated on a sample of fifty participants (age mean = 21.65, SD = 2.58) along a 7-point Likert scale, respectively, for age of acquisition (from 1 = 0–2 years to 7 = 13+ years) and imageability (from 1 = no imageability to 7 = clear imageability) (adapted from [ 58 ]).

2.4. Procedure

The experiment was performed between 1st December 2021 and 15th February 2022. The lexical decision task was administered online through Psytoolkit software [ 59 , 60 ]. After reading the instructions and filling in a socio-demographic form, each participant was asked to digitally sign the consent form and then start the experiment. Each trial began with the presentation of a fixation cross in the center of the computer screen, which lasted 500 msec. After the extinction of the cross, the prime stimulus appeared for 800 msec in the same position as the cross. Then, the screen went blank for 1000 msec, and the target stimulus appeared for 800 msec. The screen went blank again for 1000 msec, and the next trial began. For each pair of stimuli, subjects had to decide whether the target was not related to the prime by pressing the L or the A button, respectively, on the computer’s keyboard as quickly as possible. Before starting the experiment, subjects were asked to train themselves by responding to ten related or unrelated word pairs. These pairs were used only for training purposes; thus, they did not appear in the experimental lists. The sixty pairs of stimuli belonging to the three lists were randomly presented across the experiment.

2.5. Data Analysis

The participant’s performance was evaluated by considering the mean percentage of response accuracy and the mean reaction times in milliseconds for each list of stimuli (pandemic vs. semantic vs. neutral). Data were analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics 22 software. To verify the applicability of the parametric analysis, a Shapiro–Wilk normality test was used, which is the most powerful statistical instrument to measure the normality of the data [ 61 ]. The test revealed a normal distribution of the data. Statistical analyses were performed through two separate repeated measures ANOVAs, respectively, for response accuracy and reaction times (RTs). For each analysis, CONDITION (pandemic vs. semantic vs. neutral) was considered as the only “within” factor. If the ANOVAs showed significant effects, respective post-hoc Bonferroni tests were conducted. We used the Bonferroni multiple comparisons method because it is the most conservative test to investigate statistical significance among the different comparisons [ 62 ].

3.1. Accuracy

The analysis showed a significant effect of CONDITION (pandemic vs. semantic vs. neutral, F (2,238) = 21.07, p < 0 .001). The Bonferroni’s post-hoc test revealed that the mean percentage of accuracy was significantly greater for the pandemic than for the semantic (pandemic 94% vs. semantic 93%, p = 0.001) and the neutral pairs (pandemic 94% vs. neutral 92%, p < 0.001). The mean percentage of accuracy was also greater for the semantic than the neutral pairs (semantic 93% vs. neutral 92%, p = 0.02) (see Figure 1 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is ijerph-19-13836-g001.jpg

Mean percentage of response accuracy for pandemic, semantic, and neutral stimuli (*** p ≤ 0.001, * p ≤ 0.05).

3.2. Reaction Times (RTs)

The analysis showed a significant effect of CONDITION (pandemic vs. semantic vs. neutral, F (2,238) = 161.43, p < 0.001). The Bonferroni’s post-hoc test revealed faster RTs in the pandemic compared to the semantic pairs (pandemic 1065.14 msec vs. semantic 1216.76 msec, p < 0.001) and in the semantic compared to the neutral pairs (semantic 1216.76 msec vs. neutral 1299.60 msec, p < 0.001). RTs were also significantly faster between the pandemic and the neutral pairs (pandemic 1065.14 msec vs. neutral 1299.60 msec, p < 0.001) (see Figure 2 ).

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is ijerph-19-13836-g002.jpg

Mean percentage of reaction times (RTs) for pandemic, semantic, and neutral stimuli (*** p ≤ 0.001).

4. Discussion

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the frequent co-occurrence of word pairs during the pandemic would lead to the formation of new semantic associations in memory. To verify this, in a lexical decision task, participants’ performance on pandemic word pairs, in which the target referred to the newly acquired metaphorical meaning of the prime (i.e., “trench”—“hospital”), as compared to their responses to word pairs with pre-established semantic links (i.e., “trench”—“soldier”) and to neutral pairs (i.e., “trench”—“response”). Results revealed greater accuracy and faster response times for pandemic pairs than for semantic ones. Thus, the repeated co-occurrence of newly learned words has led to semantic priming effects stronger than those observed for words with pre-consolidated semantic links suggesting the formation of the new semantic association in memory. More accurate and faster responses were also present for the pandemic pairs with respect to the neutral pairs. This result, thus, validates the hypothesis that these newly acquired associations depended on the co-occurrence of those word pairs during the pandemic and not on possible occasional associations between different words. The results also revealed significant differences in accuracy and in response times between the semantic pairs compared to the neutral ones. This latter result confirms previous findings in semantic priming studies using lexical decision tasks, which suggested that semantically associated word pairs are more likely to exert faster responses than neutral pairs [ 42 ]. Indeed, the cognitive representation of words is characterized by two dimensions. Their frequency effect depends on how often and in what contexts they appear and their semantic characteristics. This latter gives rise to the well-known semantic priming effect in which the presentation of a word (i.e., dog) facilitates the recognition of an associatively related, subsequently presented word (i.e., cat) [ 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 42 ]. From the beginning of the pandemic, the people’s mental lexicon underwent a drastic change, influencing both dimensions. Uncommon words such as “trench” increased in their frequency of use for millions of people, while, in parallel, words with minimal pre-existing associations, such as “wave” and “infection”, became closely linked nodes stored in semantic memory. Thus, we believe that the continuous and persistent exposure to pandemic pairs has somehow reshaped our semantic memory making the recognition of these word pairs easier than the semantic and neutral ones.

Our results are in line with other evidence showing that repeated exposure to new words facilitates the learning and merging of these words in the adult lexicon [ 55 , 63 ]. Indeed, Coane and Balota [ 64 ] have suggested that semantic priming effects might be supported by two general classes of semantic models. Feature-overlap models assume that shared semantic features between primes and targets are critical (e.g., cat-DOG), and associative models affirm that contextual co-occurrence is critical and that the system is organized along associations independent of featural overlap (e.g., leash-DOG). Thus, if previously unrelated concepts become related as a result of their contextual co-occurrence, as during the pandemic, this would create new associative links among them, which, in turn, result in semantic priming effects.

In line with our data, recent literature has suggested that, as a consequence of the pandemic, specialized domain elements have been transferred to the common language. Indeed, very recently, Birò et al. [ 65 ] pointed out that while, during the pandemic, some words have assumed a more restricted meaning, a grammatical principle known as “specialization” [ 66 ], others were referred to a more general meaning, the opposite phenomenon known as “de-categorization” [ 66 ]. An illustration of the first principle can be found in the use of the word “quarantine” or “positive”; the latter principle, which was more diffused, has influenced terms such as “super-spreader” or “FFP2 mask”. Thus, during the pandemic, the repetitive association of a word with a newly acquired metaphorical meaning has weakened its original meaning, making its figurative meaning predominant (e.g., the word “trench”, classically associated with the line of defense during the war, has turned into its figurative meaning of “hospital”, the place where the “war” against COVID-19 took place). Indeed, the peculiarity of this health crisis was the overuse of military metaphors evoking images of conflict, enemies, and death which dramatically increased the levels of anxiety, depression, and stress among people worldwide [ 67 , 68 ]. Accordingly, very recently, Georgiu [ 69 ] investigated whether exposure to media expressions containing alarming and militaristic language (i.e., war) affected people’s feelings with respect to the pandemic. Results showed that individuals who were exposed to these expressions were more pessimistic in judging the impact of the virus on their health than those who were exposed to more neutral language [ 69 ]. Similarly, in Panchuelo et al.’s work [ 70 ], significant changes were reported in emotional arousal for recurrent COVID-19-related words (i.e., hospital) with respect to unrelated words (i.e., whale), thus, suggesting that the pandemic context has modified the affective representation of its related words [ 70 ]. Indeed, since emotional processes are an active function of social events [ 71 ], these findings support, in line with our results, the flexibility of emotional representations and the malleability and dynamicity of our mental lexicon as a function of contextual factors.

5. Conclusions

We believe that our work highlights two important findings with opposite connotations. On one side, for the first time, it shows that the frequent co-occurrence of words during the pandemic has created new associative links in our semantic memory. Thus, our results confirm the dynamic property of human language and how it can be influenced by the social context to which it belongs. On the other, it underlines how these changes in language use could negatively impact the social context itself. Indeed, during the pandemic, the overuse of metaphors evoking dramatic images has contributed to the increase of several psychological disorders which are still reported worldwide nowadays. In this context, further research is urgently needed, first of all, to investigate whether the results obtained can be generalized to other populations and to establish whether these newly learned associations will still be consolidated in our memory as the pandemic is definitively defeated.

Funding Statement

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, P.M.; methodology, F.P., A.M. and D.B.; software, D.B.; data curation, C.I., L.L., L.S. and M.B.; writing—original draft preparation, F.P. and A.M.; writing—review and editing, P.M.; supervision, P.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board of IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy (CE/PROG.930, 26 July 2021).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Student Success

Publications

About the Research

The COVID-19 pandemic changed all aspects of our everyday lives, including teaching and learning. TERA's research in this area focuses on understanding teacher and student experiences during and after the pandemic, including the long-term impacts on teacher and student outcomes in the post-pandemic years.

Featured Research

English Learners in Tennessee: A Case Study of Four Districts

This brief presents findings across four districts about the characteristics of EL students, how they perform in school compared to their native English-speaking peers (non-ELs), and the distribution of English as a Second Language (ESL)-endorsed teachers across these districts.

Summer Learning Camp Enrollment, Attendance, and Achievement: Trends in Ten Tennessee Districts

TERA partnered with ten Tennessee districts to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of their 2022 summer learning camps. In this brief, we present aggregate findings from analysis of student enrollment rosters, attendance records, staff surveys, and student benchmark assessments. Eight of the ten districts administered staff surveys, and nine had complete enrollment and attendance data. The achievement analysis includes data from four districts who had similarly scaled pre- and post-test benchmark assessments that could be combined for aggregate analysis.

Pandemic Effects on Student Attendance and Achievement during the 2020-21 School Year: Trends from Six Tennessee Districts

To help inform and support district decision-making and future planning throughout the 2020-21 school year, the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) worked with six school districts in Tennessee by monitoring, analyzing, and reporting on key trends in their data. As part of a continued effort to understand the ways the pandemic may have impacted student outcomes, this final report from our work with these partner districts presents trends in student attendance and achievement during the 2020-21 school year. Specifically, we describe key patterns in attendance data from six districts and state assessment data from five districts.

Educator Insights from a Year of Pandemic Schooling: Trends from the 2021 Tennessee Educator Survey

This brief analyzes results from the 2021 Tennessee Educator Survey and discusses educator perspectives and insights into COVID-related concerns during the 2020-21 school year. Several concerns, including growing educational inequities and challenges with technology, continued into and throughout the 2020-2021 school year.

COVID-19 Student Survey Reports

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of schooling in Tennessee and nationwide since the initial school closures took place in March 2020. To learn more about the student experience during the pandemic, we worked with nine school districts in Tennessee to administer a student survey in the fall and spring of the 2020-21 school year. This report series discusses the results of these surveys, giving voice to thousands of Tennessee students who had their lives turned upside down by the pandemic.

Analyzing Student Engagement during the COVID-19 Pandemic: What We Have Learned about Data Use

This report highlights key takeaways from TERA's work with six partner districts during the 2020-21 school year that demonstrate both the limitations of the data collected during a difficult year, and how we adapted our approach to make use of available data to learn more about student engagement in a year of immense change. We discuss three key recommendations for districts as they reflect on data use from the 2020-21 school year and make plans for future years.

Schooling during COVID-19: Fall Semester Trends from Six Tennessee Districts

TERA worked with six school districts in Tennessee during the 2020-21 school year to inform evidence-based decision making as they seek to best support their students during and after the pandemic. As part of this effort, we analyzed data typically collected by schools-such as enrollment, attendance, and teacher retention data-and supported districts in conducting surveys to better understand the experiences of students and teachers. In this report, we summarize key patterns within and across these sources of data from the six districts that capture the experiences of students and educators during the first half of this school year.

Teaching through a Global Pandemic: COVID-19 Insights from the Tennessee Educator Survey

2020 - With the unprecedented school closures due to COVID-19, Tennessee educators had to fundamentally alter how they do their jobs. To understand ore about how educators across the state have addressed the challenges related to the closures, TERA asked teachers and school leaders to report on their experiences as part of the 2020 Tennessee Educator Survey. This brief analyzes educator responses to the questions specific to COVID-19, and provides insights on how teachers and principals worked to support their students while school buildings were closed in the spring of 2020.

Biden administration announces new partnership with 50 countries to stifle future pandemics

President Joe Biden's administration is launching a program that will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden's administration will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak that suddenly halted normal life around the globe in 2020.

U.S. government officials will offer support in the countries, most of them located in Africa and Asia, to develop better testing, surveillance, communication and preparedness for such outbreaks in those countries.

The strategy will help “prevent, detect and effectively respond to biological threats wherever they emerge,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday.

The Global Health Security Strategy, the president said, aims to protect people worldwide and "will make the United States stronger, safer, and healthier than ever before at this critical moment.”

The announcement about the strategy comes as countries have struggled to meet a worldwide accord on responses to future pandemics. Four years after the coronavirus pandemic, prospects of a pandemic treaty signed by all 194 of the World Health Organization’s members are flailing.

Talks for the treaty are ongoing, with a final text expected to be agreed upon next month in Geneva. It’s meant to be a legally binding treaty that obliges countries to monitor pandemic threats and share scientific findings. But major disputes have emerged over vaccine equity and transferring the technology used to make vaccines .

Even if a deal is hammered out, there would be few consequences for countries that choose not to abide by the treaty.

The U.S. will push on with its global health strategy to prevent future pandemics, regardless of a pandemic treaty or not, a senior administration official told reporters on Monday.

Several U.S. government agencies — including the State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Health and Human Services and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID — will help countries refine their infectious disease response.

Health systems around the globe have been overwhelmed with COVID-19 and other health emergencies such as Ebola, malaria and mpox, the CDC said in a statement. The new strategy will help countries rebuild their agencies, the U.S. agency explained.

“Global health security is national security, and CDC is proud to contribute its expertise, investments and rapid response to protect the health and safety of the American people and the world,” Mandy Cohen, the CDC's director, said in a statement.

Congo is one country where work has already begun. The U.S. government is helping Congo with its response to an mpox virus outbreak, including with immunizations. Mpox, a virus that's in the same family as the one that causes smallpox, creates painful skin lesions. The World Health Organization declared mpox a global emergency in 2022, and there have been more than 91,000 cases spanning across 100 countries to date.

The White House on Tuesday released a website with the names of the countries that are participating in the program. Biden officials are seeking to get 100 countries signed onto the program by the end of the year.

The U.S. has devoted billions of dollars, including money raised from private donations, to the effort. Biden, a Democrat, is asking for $1.2 billion for global health safety efforts in his yearly budget proposal to Congress.

Associated Press writer Maria Cheng in London contributed.

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Earth Day 2024: 3 Short Speech Ideas For Students To Champion Environmental Action

As Earth Day approaches, it's essential to prepare students with impactful speech ideas that resonate with them and inspire action.

Itisha Arya
Updated - 2024-04-17, 17:57 IST

Speech On Climate Change Awareness:

Speech On Plastic Pollution:

Speech On Biodiversity Conservation:

Your skin and body like you are unique. While we have taken all measures to ensure that the information provided in this article and on our social media channels is credible and expert verified, we recommend you consult a doctor or your dermatologist before trying a home remedy, quick hack or exercise regime. For any feedback or complaint, reach out to us at [email protected]

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Speech Writing /

Speech on Ram Navami in 2-Minute in English for School Students

Updated on
Apr 17, 2024

Ram Navami is an important Hindu festival. It is celebrated as the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. According to the Hindu calendar, Ram Navami is celebrated on the ninth day of Chaitra month, which usually falls in late March or early April. This year, Ram Navami will be celebrated on April 17, 2024. This popular festival is particularly significant in Ayodhya, the birthplace of Lord Rama. Today, we will be discussing a speech on Ram Navami for school students.

Quick Read: Corruption in India Speech

2-Minute Speech on Ram Navami

‘Good morning, respected teacher and fellow students. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on Ram Navami. We are connected to our cultural and traditional values and there is nothing more significant than our festivals. Our festivals are like our identity; they describe who we are and where we belong. Ram Navami is one such festival.’

‘Ram Navami is a popular Hindu festival celebrated in the month of Chaitra. Hindus all over the world celebrate Ram Navami as the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. Lord Rama was believed to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who was the Preserver within the Trimurti; the triple deity of supreme divinity that includes Brahma and Shiva.’

‘This year, Ram Navami will be celebrated on April 17, and the Muhrat will commence at 11:11 AM onwards. On this auspicious occasion of Lord Rama’s birthday, devotees will offer their prayers to Lord Rama by visiting temples, performing rituals, and distributing alms to the poor.’

‘The recitation of the Rayamana is the most popular celebration of Ram Navami. In Ramayana, Valmiki Ji mentioned the birthplace and timing of Lord Rama. In North India, the folk play Ram Lila is quite popular, where scenes from Ramayana are portrayed.’

‘A lot of people chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’, meaning ‘Victory to Lord Rama’ on Ram Navami. Ram Navami teaches us the importance of dealing with the complexities of life. Lord Rama’s kind and generous actions were a principle of universal love and compassion. In Ramayana, there was a scene where Lord Rama eats berries offered by Shabari, who was an ascetic woman. When Lakshmana, Lord Rama’s younger brother, told him that Shabari had already tasted the berries and that they were unworthy of eating, Rama explained; ‘these berries taste better than any delicacies I have ever eaten.’

‘Such was the character of Lord Rama. He found a friend even in his enemies. So on this auspicious occasion of Ram Navami, let us all learn and worship Lord Rama and his ideals.

Jai Shri Ram!’

Quick Read: Media and Corruption Speech

Short Paragraph on Ram Navami

Ans: ‘Good morning, respected teacher and fellow students. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on Ram Navami. We are connected to our cultural and traditional values and there is nothing more significant than our festivals. Our festivals are like our identity; they describe who we are and where we belong. Ram Navami is one such festival.’ ‘Ram Navami is a popular Hindu festival celebrated in the month of Chaitra. Hindus all over the world celebrate Ram Navami as the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. Lord Rama was believed to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who was the Preserver within the Trimurti; the triple deity of supreme divinity that includes Brahma and Shiva.’

Ans: On Ram Navami devotees offer their prayers to Lord Rama by visiting temples, performing rituals, and distributing alms to the poor. The recitation of the Rayamana is the most popular celebration of Ram Navami. In Ramayana, Valmiki Ji mentioned the birthplace and timing of Lord Rama.

Ans: Ram Navami is a popular Hindu festival celebrated in the month of Chaitra. Hindus all over the world celebrate Ram Navami as the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. Lord Rama was believed to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who was the Preserver within the Trimurti; the triple deity of supreme divinity that includes Brahma and Shiva.’ This year, Ram Navami will be celebrated on April 17, and the Muhrat will commence at 11:11 AM onwards.

Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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2 Minute Speech On Covid-19 In English
2 Minute Speech On Covid-19 In English. Good morning everyone present, today I am going to talk about Coronavirus, often referred to as COVID-19, which is an infectious infection that affects the human respiratory system. Covid 19 refers to a novel coronavirus disease that was discovered in 2019. Our daily lives have been impacted by the ...
Impacts of the COVID-19 disruption on the language and literacy
Introduction. The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread school closures across the globe. In the state of Michigan, U.S.A., where the current study took place, half of the students across different school districts started their 2020 fall semester remotely, and one-third of students spent their whole academic year online (Hopkins et al., 2021; Kilbride et al., 2021a).
COVID forced one international student to go hungry
FILE - Masked students walk to the COVID-19 vaccination site at the Rose E. McCoy Auditorium on the Jackson State University campus in Jackson, Miss., July 27, 2021. When Samantha (not her real ...
How Has COVID-19 Impacted Our Language Use?
1. Introduction. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been a global epidemic that poses a serious threat to public health throughout the world [1,2].It has changed the fabric of society worldwide through social distancing measures, travel bans, self-quarantine, and business closures, leading to severe physical ...
Student Success
About the Research The COVID-19 pandemic changed all aspects of our everyday lives, including teaching and learning. TERA's research in this area focuses on understanding teacher and student experiences during and after the pandemic, including the long-term impacts on teacher and student outcomes in the post-pandemic years. Featured Research English Learners in Tennessee: A Case […]
Biden administration announces new partnership with 50 countries to
President Joe Biden's administration is launching a program that will help 50 countries identify and respond to infectious diseases, with the goal of preventing pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak
Earth Day 2024: 3 Short Speech Ideas For Students To Champion
Updated - 2024-04-17, 17:57 IST. Each year on April 22nd, Earth Day serves as a reminder of the crucial need to safeguard and conserve our environment. It's a time to reflect on our ecological footprint and actively engage in efforts to foster a sustainable future. For students, delivering an Earth Day speech presents an opportunity to inspire ...
Speech on Ram Navami in 2-Minute in English for School Students
2-Minute Speech on Ram Navami. 'Good morning, respected teacher and fellow students. Today, I stand before you to present my speech on Ram Navami. We are connected to our cultural and traditional values and there is nothing more significant than our festivals.
Free Speech Is Alive and Well at Vanderbilt University
Students, including BDS advocates, are free to engage in protests and required to follow the rules and respect civil discourse.

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2 Minute Speech on Covid-19 (CoronaVirus) for Students

10 Lines Speech on Covid-19 for Students

Short 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

Long 2-Minute Speech on Covid 19 for Students

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