Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences (MM Textbooks) - Hardcover

Kormos, Judit; Smith, Anne Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847696201 ISBN 13: 9781847696205

Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

This book is intended to help language teachers to work effectively and successfully with students who have specific learning differences (SpLD) such as dyslexia. The book takes an inclusive and practical approach to language teaching and encourages teachers to consider the effects that an SpLD could have on a language learner. It suggests strategies that can be implemented to enable learners to succeed both in the classroom and in formal assessment. The book places issues of language teaching for learners with an SpLD in a broad educational context and, in addition to practical advice on methodologies and classroom management, also discusses discourses of the field, the identification of SpLDs and facilitating progression.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Judit Kormos is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, UK. She is the author of The Second Language Acquisition Process of Students with Specific Learning Difficulties (Routledge, 2017). She was a key partner in the ELTon award-winning DysTEFL and Comics for Inclusive Language Learning Erasmus+ projects and is the lead educator of the Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching massive open online learning course offered by Future Learn.

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Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences

By Judit Kormos, Anne Margaret Smith

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2012 Judit Kormos and Anne Margaret Smith
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-620-5

Contents

Preface, 
1: Views of Disability in Education, 
2: What Is Dyslexia?, 
3: Associated Learning Differences, 
4: Cognitive and Emotional Aspects of Language Learning, 
5: Identification and Disclosure, 
6: Accommodating Differences, 
7: Techniques for Language Teaching, 
8: Assessment, 
9: Transition and Progression, 
Appendices, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Views of Disability in Education

Introduction

The interaction between language and thought

Models of disability reflected in discourses

A medical discourse

A legal discourse

A discourse of social construction

Discourses of disability in educational settings

An inclusive discourse of disability

Labelling and self-identification

Challenging dominant discourses

Summary of key points

Activities

Recommended reading

Introduction

This chapter looks closely at the discourses of disability – particularly relating to dyslexia – to identify the current dominant trends, and to explore where they have their roots.

It will become clear throughout this book that a range of discourses is used, according to the topic under discussion. It is not the intention in this chapter to prescribe how teachers should use language, or which discourse choices should be made. Rather, it is hoped that readers will gain an insight into the power of language, and feel empowered to move between discourses, as it seems appropriate in different situations. Most importantly, this chapter discusses where responsibility lies for determining the relative power of competing discourses, and what impact the language choices teachers make might have on their learners.

Politicians and military tacticians have long known that during wartime language plays a crucial role in influencing public opinion and boosting the morale of the troops. In a survey of terminology used by the British press to describe the events of the first Gulf War, the Guardian newspaper (1991) reported that while British forces 'suppressed', 'eliminated' or even 'neutralised' targets, the Iraqi forces were simply 'destroying' and 'killing' whatever they targeted. Most tellingly, while British journalists were working under 'reporting guidelines' for reasons of security, the Iraqi journalists were subjected to 'censorship'; they were fed 'propaganda', in contrast to the 'press briefings' that allied journalists had access to. The power that carefully chosen language has to change the way we perceive a situation is clear. This has been the case throughout history, and has been well documented in the field of education, particularly with reference to disability.

When we talk about any aspect of our society we have to make choices about the words that we use; the particular way that we use language is described as the discourse of that field. Discourses do not carry meaning so much as perform specific functions, particularly in the socio-political domain in which education is located (Allan, 1999). Murray (1998) points out that acquiring the discourse of the teaching profession is part of the process of taking on the social identity of being a teacher, and being assimilated into the culture of the chosen field. It allows novice teachers to gain entry to the community and enables them to organize their ideas and understanding of the new concepts to which they are introduced.

Although the desire to use transparent and non-offensive terminology may be strong, it is not always easy to find expressions that all can agree on, and even the term 'disability' is itself not straightforward to define. In the British Equality Act (Great Britain, 2010) it is defined as 'a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities', a description which includes dyslexia, depending on how 'substantial' and 'normal, day-to-day activities' are defined. Many dyslexic people are surprised when they learn that they are classed – technically – as being disabled, because, in common with many other groups of disabled people, they perceive their disability as a series of barriers in their lives, rather than as a defining characteristic of their personality or identity. In the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities it is acknowledged that 'disability is an evolving concept' (UN, 2006) so definitions may be subject to alteration as society changes its perceptions, and as more disabled people find their voices and contribute to the debate.

Dominant discourses tend to reflect and further the interests of the powerful (for example, policy makers and professional bodies), while competing discourses seek to challenge this power structure and refocus the discussion, usually in favour of the oppressed or less powerful (in this case, these might be disabled students and their families and advocates). It takes time for alternative terminology to become established in a community, and usually even longer for attitudes to change; as Corbett notes, language pertaining to disability 'has always been built on shifting sands ... waves move in to wash away one set of words and new shapes are drawn' (1996: 70). In order to establish the role that discourses play in our society, it is important to consider the relationship between language and thought.

The interaction between language and thought

The exact role that language plays in shaping our thoughts has long been debated by linguists, anthropologists and psychologists, but opinions are still divided as to the nature of the relationship between language and thought (Slobin, 2003). Put simply, the question is whether language fundamentally determines our view of the world, or only reflects it.

Linguistic determinists argue that we may not be aware of things that our first language does not have ways of describing, because our world view is shaped by the first language we learn. Evidence for this view is exemplified by studies of colour terms in different languages. Some languages divide the colour spectrum into only two parts (equivalent to 'light' and 'dark'); others divide it three ways (having a separate term also for 'red' somewhere between light and dark). Most known languages divide the spectrum into a maximum of eleven distinct colour terms; English is one example of a language that has eleven terms (Dowman, 2007). The argument is that people whose first language has fewer colour terms are not so sensitive to the variations in colour that English speakers describe. That is not to say that they cannot perceive the variations in shade – colour perception is essentially a biological phenomenon, which language does not determine. However, on perceiving a colour, we assign it to the nearest category that we have a label for, and describe it in those terms. Even speakers of English, who have a relatively wide range of basic colour terms to draw on, still have to differentiate between the many shades that are described as blue using additional adjectives (light / dark / sky / navy / royal blue etc). It is not that English speakers cannot see...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1847696201
• ISBN 13: 9781847696205
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 248
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland