Review of the language barriers to student success: A Scoping Review

The progress of human beings to discover the unknown of the world and to use acquired knowledge for personal and social development depends on communication and interaction with each other. The basis of this communication which distinguishes humans from animals is language. This study was conducted with the aim of reviewing the language barriers to students. In this scoping review study, studies with any design conducted on language barriers to students' success and published in Persian or English from 2010 to 2020 were searched in the following databases: PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest, Science Direct, Springer, Cochrane library, Google Scholar, MagIran, SID, Iran Doc, Iran Medex, and Elmnet. Overall, 2347 original articles were found, of which, 13 were included in this review. According to the results of the selected studies, language barriers create three general categories of educational, research, and communication problems. A number of supportive and advisory strategies to overcome these problems have been suggested in some studies. Given the impact of language barriers in almost all areas of student achievement, ethnic and dialect diversity in Iran and the world, and language diversity in educational settings, the results of this study provide a basis for examining students' language problems in order to better identify solutions to overcome these problems.