Inclusion - excellence for all
Specific learning difficulties
Papers & recommended reading | Editorial reviews | Task for traineesTeaching modern languages
to visually impaired children (pdf document)
Couper, H. (1996) Language Learning Journal, 13, pp 6-9
The author explores issues related to the teaching of Modern Languages to visually impaired pupils.
Thanks to the introduction of the National Curriculum, all pupils are entitled to learn a Modern Language, including pupils who are blind or visually impaired.
In her study the author shows that such pupils tend to do well orally and aurally in Modern Languages lessons thanks to their highly developed listening skills and well-trained memory. She considers the difficulties associated with teaching reading and writing and using visual aids and mixed-skills activities, and explores ways to address them.
Leaning a Modern Language is ‘not only appropriate but desirable for visually impaired pupils’. It is the methodology that can be a barrier to learning rather than the subject itself. Using appropriate resources and providing extra support can make the curriculum more accessible for pupils with a visual impairment.
Listening skills and the
hearing-impaired child (pdf document)
McColl, H. (1992) Language Learning Journal, 6, pp 41-42
In the article the author gives a wealth of practical ‘tips’ to help Modern Languages teachers give the best support possible to hearing-impaired children in their classes.
‘Languages for all’ means that teachers have to make the Modern Languages curriculum accessible for all pupils, including those with a hearing impairment.
The article helps raise teachers’ awareness of the difficulties the hearing-impaired child may encounter in the modern languages classroom and provides teachers with steps which can easily be taken to make learning a modern language more accessible. These range from the location of the teacher when s/he talks to the whole group to experimenting with tuning controls when using a cassette player for whole class listening.
There is a wide range of elements to consider when teaching a child with hearing difficulties and consulting with the child is very important in making sure their specific needs are met.
Autistic
Spectrum Disorders and learning foreign languages
Wire, V. (2005) Support for Learning, 20 (3), pp 123-128
This article provides general background to Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and offers very helpful, practical advice to MFL teachers in the secondary sector. This advice is based on the author’s secure knowledge of the traits of ASD, and how these interact with the affected pupils’ view of their experience of school. The three particular areas of challenge that disorders on the spectrum have in common are identified; these are impairments in: social interaction, social communication, and in imaginative and flexible thinking. Under each of these headings, examples of observed behaviours of pupils with ASDs are articulated, the nature of the challenge to the pupil explored within the very specific context of the secondary MFL classroom and school organisation, and strategies for the teacher to adopt or adapt are proposed.
The outcome is a convincing argument that pupils with ASD can succeed in the foreign languages classroom environment - provided they are helped to cope with transitions, changes and self-organisation and have some scaffolding put in place by the teacher particularly in the form of established and predictable routines. The teacher needs to model good social communication whilst showing tolerance in instances where pupils do not do likewise, and also actively seek distinctive positive attributes in these pupils, for example a common enhanced capacity for memorising.
The article can be accessed and downloaded via a particular page of Hilary
McColl’s website hosted by the article’s author Vivienne Wire, called AUTISM
& foreign language learning. The website hosts a discussion informed
by research on the inclusion of ALL children in foreign language learning.
The principles are of the highest pedagogical order: via the study of other
cultures and other languages enabled by appropriate content and methodologies,
we will be recognising our own, and the pupils’, responsibilities to global
citizenship, and while engaged on this journey we might enhance the pupils’
literacy across the curriculum, and their social and learning skills.
A
bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs
(word document)
Wilson, D. (work in progress)
Periodically updated, David Wilson’s A bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs, on his excellent website Diversity and inclusion in modern foreign languages, currently contains over 1400 international print and online references on MFL and SEN. This constantly refreshed and comprehensive resource constitutes an essential map of current thinking on every aspect of MFL and SEN you could possibly imagine.
