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[darkside1]

Does anybody have experience in teaching esl to special needs students?

By 'special needs' I mean students who experience physical, visual or cognitive impairment. (I'll leave social, emotional and behavioural difficulties aside- that is not my field, although it has been in the past).

I am involved in a project at the moment working with pupils who use communication aids ( the scientist Stephen Hawking uses one) and I wonder if anyone has had experience in teaching someone English as a second language (not from zero but from a basic level) at the same time as they started to use an AAC device. Pretty specific query, I know.

[Teacher in Rome]

In reply to darkside1, I've been observing a teacher who teaches ESL to a deaf student. The thing that struck me is that visual communication is really important - in the sense that use of colour, diagrams and so on are particularly useful.

Deaf students have particular problems with their L1 language: their vocabulary range appears to be more limited (especially if they don't sign) and they tend to read words in a "linear" way. I'm not sure what you'd call this technically, but rather than using the whole phrase to find meaning, they tend to isolate words and extract meaning from each one. For example, instead of reading "Well done" as one entire phrase meaning "Congratulations", they translate first "well", then "done". Help me out on this, linguists!

What this teacher has been doing is to use visual communication as much as possible, and also to teach reading skills and strategies to help the student understand chunks of English, rather than individual words.

Are there any similarities with your experiences?

[Apsara]

In my & years teaching ESL I taught 2 blind students and a deaf student- all adults, at conversation schools in Japan. In the case of the blind students I was chosen for those students because apparently I have a particularly clear voice and easy-to-understand accent/ way of speaking (that's what the staff told me anyway). Both students had only become blind a few years before and had a basic conversational level of English, I had to teach them (separately) in an area with minimal noise distraction and write things down for them to go over with a sighted helper at home after class. Lessons mostly consisted of free conversation or questions from the students regarding specific grammar points or vocab. Neither was interested in using a text although it could have been possible using readings and comprehension questions I suppose. Both had an amazing attitude towards life and I enjoyed teaching them.

As for the deaf student, she wore what looked like a hearing aid, but my impression was that she didn't hear anything of what I was saying, she was able to read lips to some extent and we wrote most things down for clarification. She could speak but it was very indistinct- this must be really hard when it's not your native language- and I often had to have her write things down to clarify. Sometimes we were actually able to improve her pronunciation however, for example when she pronounced the word as it was written rather than the real pronunciation- I would either write the word phonetically or really exaggerate the pronunciation so she could see it. She was very bright and picked up new grammar very quickly. The hardest thing was the 5 minutes or so free conversation at the beginning of the lesson, as her speech was so indistinct. With textbook exercises and text related q and a it was easier to piece together what she was saying. Her vocabulary was stronger than most students at her textbook level and it's possible she was placed in too low a level because it was a bit more difficult than usual to measure her on things like comprehension and pronunciation. As far as I could see she learned in much the same way as other Japanese students do apart from perhaps more than the usual tendency to pronounce words based on the spelling, but there could have been something I missed.

[darkside1]

Deaf students- at the moment they are taught in a separate project, but the points made are useful. I actually try to use an interactive smart board as much as possible and produce worksheets with Clip Art pictures and minimum size 18 Comic Sans or Verdana fonts.

Tasks are reduced in complexity and take the form of yes/no, true/false, multiple choice, tick box, matching or give a word/ short phrase. This certainly makes the material accesible for visually impaired students (resources are brailled for registered blind pupils). Other points include using 'low tech' communication (right hand/left hand, gestures, sitting down and making eye contact with wheelchair users).

Communication Aids (AAC devices or talkers) can't replace cognition but they can provide a student with a 'voice'. I'm tracking pupils from age 11 in English and Humanities and comparing/ contrasting the experience of esl pupils with and without AAC devices and also 'native speakers' who use AAC devices.

One to one esl support is available, as is support in programming the devices, I'm looking more at how classroom teachers can involve students in their lessons and how students can progress through levels of the curriculum by eventually extending their answers and becoming more autonomous in the use of their devices and the language options they provide.

I have observed some pupils who use talkers become so confident they have achieved exam success and real social intraction by 'customising' their devices with phrases such as "talk to the hand 'cos the face ain't listening."

[Apsara]

You are really well set up for teaching these students and know a lot more about it than I do! I was working at mainstream conversation schools for the general public and had no training for this situation so just had to make use of the resources available. Sounds like what you are doing is having success, that's great.

[darkside1]

While lots of good things are happening where I work, I feel I could learn from efl/esl teachers who have taught special needs pupils as there seems to be relatively little expertise in dealing with pupils with speech impediments who are also beginners or near beginners in English.

[hlamb]

I worked in an informal way with a blind ESL student when I was in England. He was part of the radio journalism course where I was an assistant teacher and I helped him outside of class with his English.

He was advanced so there was no need to find substitutes for pictures of basic words. He wanted to learn abstract concepts and vocabulary, as well as pronunciation for radio work. We had access to a brailler and screen readers for the computers, so technology was not a problem. I think it would be harder working at a lower level with a blind student.

There is a big difference between someone who's had the disability from birth and one who develops it, such as blindness, later in life. We learn a lot about our world through vision and those who have never been able to that have a different concept of what the world is like. For example, someone who's never had vision will have trouble understanding the ideas of colour or body language. But with a good teacher and hard work they can become as fluent as any other ESL student.

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Hello darkside1 et al


Just in case you haven't found them already,

the webpages below contain a good variety

of on-topic information & AAC resources:


http://www.aacintervention.com/

http://www.speakingofspeech.com/

http://aac.unl.edu/