Shapochka K.A.
Adapting Foreign Language
Teaching for Children with Learning Disabilities.
In every
society, whether it is a wealthy country with powerful economy or just a
developing one there are people who need special attention. They are people
with some kind of physical, psychiatric or social disabilities. Such people
have always been grouped separately. As a result, there has been a wide variety
of attitudes and perceptions toward them (Beire-Smith, Patton, Ittenbach,
LeLoup, Ganschow, Javorsky, Sparks, Pohlman, Vygotsky).
The conception of integration of
people with special needs is quite completely realized in the contemporary USA
and European countries. According to it all people are common and equal members
of the society, but with some problems and limited potential. From a Vygotskian
view point, a child with special needs who is integrated into a regular class
would be able, through co-operation and interaction with classmates, to develop
their knowledge, language and thinking. Nowadays, the
problem of people with special needs is getting more serious in Ukraine too. There are specialized classes which
are more appropriate to meet such children’s needs and they are integrated
within the framework of the regular school. It is
teachers’ job to help less fortunate people to become full members of the
society.
While it has long been recognized in
the learning disabilities field that foreign language study would be a terrific
challenge to learning disabled students, somehow this fact has been ignored in
the field of foreign language instruction and in schools in general until very
recently. As more research is being done and more teachers are recognizing the
problem, more solutions are being created for the student facing the challenge
of learning a foreign or second language and the teachers who teach them
(Richard Sparks, Leonore Ganschow,
Betty Myer and Barbara Freed). Children
with learning disabilities are referred to as those who can be educated and
trained. Thus, we have to realize that all students can learn other languages
and they should learn foreign languages in order to be fully functional in the
global society that is their future. In Ukraine due to
different environmental, political, economical and social situation there is a
great number of children with special needs. But the problem of teaching them
in the whole and teaching them English language in particular, has not been
solved in Ukraine yet. Due to the government’s policy all
children including those with special needs and learning disabilities should
study foreign language from the second form. Perhaps the most important
influence on early foreign language study came from the national initiative,
Goals 2000 (in Ukrainian policy, the law “About Education”). In this law foreign
languages are designated as part of the curriculum, together with traditional
subject areas such as math, science and social studies in schools and classes
for children with learning disabilities. For the student unencumbered by a
learning disability, foreign language study is indeed an enriching and
rewarding experience. For the learning disabled student, however, it can be an
unbelievably stressful and humiliating experience, the opposite of what is
intended.
The purpose of this article is to
show that foreign language programs for children with learning disabilities
should be adopted according to the principles of instruction known to be
effective for leaning disabled students. Their human right is to get
appropriate education, but unfortunately, there is no special programs for them
in Ukraine today, and the old ones are not adopted yet. Teachers of English in
regular schools are not ready and not trained to work with children with
special needs in mainstreamed or inclusive classes. Today they are put in
situation when they need to find their own ways to teach children with learning
disabilities in elementary school as there is no standard program for these
children.
Children with additional educational
needs or learning disabled students may have physical and conceptual
difficulties, mild and moderate learning difficulties, severe learning
difficulties and emotional and behavioral ones. This article will address the
needs of children with mild and moderate
learning difficulties which can include short attention spans and lack of
concentration, memory problems- both short and long term, poor general skills,
a lack of imaginative thinking. Their needs are diverse and when deciding what
to teach and how to teach, foreign language programs should start with the
needs of each individual child. As we can see some of the special needs are not
so very different from those of regular class students, and many of the
familiar principles which underlie good educational practice, as used by
foreign language teachers of young learners, are appropriate (Gail Ellis). This
include effective teaching strategies and techniques, selection of materials,
task design, including differentiation, and classroom management skills.
Good teaching strategies and
techniques include the planning and stating of carefully balanced, varied
learning sequences with clear achievable objectives, so children know what is
expected from them. They will also include using the mother tongue, as
appropriate, to contextualise and support learning,
providing clear, meaningful, concrete contexts in which to present language,
providing plenty of repetition, recycling and reviewing, using mime, signs,
expressions to convey and support meaning, involving children actively in the
learning process as much as possible through rhymes and songs, stories, colouring, making things, dancing, drawing, games,
stimulating children’s senses as much as possible through multisensory aids.
Tasks should provide a reasonable degree of effort or challenge within the linguistic
and cognitive abilities of each child, and have short-term goals and clearly
identified steps leading to successful completion, as well as purposeful
outcomes allowing immediate feedback and positive reinforcement. In order to
design tasks, teachers need to be able to judge weather the level of demands
made on each child is appropriate and also to identify the types of demand
made. Teachers also need to be aware of the kinds of concepts which their
students can cope with at specific stages of their development. Differentiation
of tasks is also central to successful methodology and needs to be done in a
way that the areas of experience, for example, a topic or theme, will be the
same for each student, but the depth in which it will be covered will be
different. For example, Leonore Ganschow
and Richard Sparks in their research on foreign language acquisition in which
language is described as having component parts or linguistic codes,
(phonological, semantic and syntactic), Ganschow and
Sparks’ Linguistic Coding Deficit Hypothesis (LCDH), states that difficulties
with foreign language acquisition stem from deficiencies in one or more of
these linguistic codes in the student’s native language system. (1) These
deficiencies result in mild to extreme problems with specific oral and written
aspects of language. Most learners experiencing difficulty with foreign
language learning have problems with “phonological awareness”. That is, they have trouble with the basic sound
units of language, phonemes, and do not recognize or otherwise manipulate these
basic units of sound efficiently. As a
result, the student may have difficulty with the actual perception and
production of language necessary for basic comprehension, speaking and
spelling, or with language comprehension, which may affect understanding and/or
production of language on a broader
scale.
Thus, the foreign language courses should be adapted according to
principles of instruction known to be effective for learning disabled students.
This means making such changes as reducing the syllabus to the essential
elements, slowing the pace of instruction quite considerably, reducing the
vocabulary demand, providing constant review and incorporating as much
visual/tactile/kinesthetic (i.e. multisensory) stimulation and support as
possible.
While
it is good news that the underlying cause of problems with foreign language
learning has been tentatively identified and that ways have been found to teach
learning disabled students foreign languages, two major problems remain. The
first is that it is relatively rare that a school can, more importantly, is
willing to, devote an entire foreign language section or class to learning
disabled students. The second is that finding teachers trained to teach foreign
language to learning disabled students is even rarer.
Once
again, as with all things associated with learning disabilities, the answers
are often complex and long-term, and everyone student’s problem and solution is
likely to be different. What is more important is that the problem of foreign
language learning for the learning disabled be recognized for what it is and
that the student be fairly and reasonably accommodated. Hopefully, as learning
disabilities personnel, foreign language professionals and others become more
aware of the research and literature, the path for the learning disabled
student facing foreign language requirements will become smoother.
Sources for this article:
1. Çèêååâ À.Ã. Ðàçâèòèå ðå÷è ó÷àùèõñÿ ñïåöèàëüíûõ
(êîððåêöèîííûõ) îáðàçîâàòåëüíûõ ó÷ðåæäåíèé. – Ì., 2000
2. Êîëîäè÷ Î.Á.
Ïñèõîëîãî-ïåäàãîã³÷í³ óìîâè ôîðìóâàííÿ ìîâëåííºâî¿ êîìïåòåíòíîñò³ ó ä³òåé ³ç
ÇÏÐ â ïðîöåñ³ âèâ÷åííÿ àíãë³éñüêî¿ ìîâè. Àâòîðåô.äèñ…êàíä.ïñèõ.íàóê.- Ê.,
2004.-20ñ.
3. Êðåìåíü Â. ÕÕ² ñòîð³÷÷ÿ:
íîâà îñâ³òíÿ ïîë³òèêà // Äîøê³ëüíå
âèõîâàííÿ ¹1.- Ê., Ñâ³òè÷, 2003.- ñ.3-5
4. Ðåäüêî Â.Ã., Áàñàé Í.Ï., Òèì÷åíêî Î.Ò., Ìàëºíüêèõ ².Â.
Êîíöåïö³ÿ íàâ÷àííÿ ³íîçåìíèõ ìîâ ó ñåðåäí³é çàãàëüíîîñâ³òí³é 12-ð³÷í³é øêîë³
//Øê³ëüíèé ñâ³ò ¹6 (198), - 2004ð.- ñ.3-6
5. Robin L. Schwarz, A Painful Collision, Learning disabilities
and foreign language learning., 1997
6. Gail Ellis, Teaching children with
additional educational needs., Bitish Council
teaching English, 2003.