to Learners with Special Educational Needs

Pokrivčáková, S. et al. (2015). Teaching Foreign Languages to Learners with Special Educational Needs:
e-textbook for foreign language teachers. Nitra: Constantine the Philosopher University. 128 p.
ISBN 978-80-558-0941-0
The principal requirement is to appoint procedures, to select topics, vocabulary, teaching
and learning materials, techniques and practices which will be convenient to a concrete
group of pupils. All the mentioned items are interconnected and/but are discussed gradually.
The content – new topics, vocabulary, related activities etc., must be presented in small
amounts and a lot of repetition is needed for satisfying learning results. The cognitive functions
(will be mentioned below) have to be developed in frames of individual possibilities by using
adequate support from psychological and educational resources and according to creative and
inventing effort of the teacher – his/her professional and personal capabilities and
erudition are inevitable.
To set an appropriate procedure in teaching means to modify timing, ordering and
arrangement of presented units. The emphasis is put on communication – listening - nonverbal
and verbal reacting, thereafter autonomous speaking. Other language competencies (i.e. reading
and writing) can be involved but much later than in regular classes. Also the results must be
evaluated more tolerantly than usually, in other pupils.
Techniques and practices have to be developed and applied according to pupils´ specifics in
cognitive functions: intentional attention (and perception) – short-term, easily dissipated and
detached; memory – prevailingly short-term, linked to concrete experiences, fostered by
repetition; language – short vocabulary generally and in educational/ state language
particularly; thinking – based on real and single experiences and practices.
For better understanding pre-conditions of children of the age, let´s explain the psychological
presumptions which must be respected.
According to J. Piaget´s classification 8-10 year olds inhere in stage of concrete operations, i.e.
their understanding and assessing the world is connected to really experienced and seen
matters and events – this concerns children nurturing in standard surroundings. The
background of the children from MRC is but different and thus we have to regard also
characteristics of the previous period – preoperational stage (till 7 years of age), i.e. limited
experience, assessing the world through his/her own perception and from only one´s point of
view (Piaget, Inhelder, 2014). And all this links to low passive and even lower active vocabulary
(in their mother tongue and/or in educational/state language).
The techniques, methods and practices have to follow possibilities of the individuals – slow
advancing with a great extend for repeating and handling presented notions, practical
implications and utilization in real surroundings. Games, especially games with motion
represent effective activities that can keep interest of pupils and motivate them to active
approach in learning process.
Another fact should be viewed in preparing suitable practices and materials: there exist
several types of thinking (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and other types and their combinations).
It means that individual pupils learn easier by using different types of presenting new matters –
pictures, video and audio recordings, motional games etc. More detailed characteristic of
thinking types by H. Gardner (Gardner, 1983) and what activities are effective in which cases, is
introduced in the chapter “Foreign languages in education of gifted children”.
Topics: Text-books for pupils mostly offer topics which are close to them in connection with
their ages, their interests and a scope of their everyday experience. Pupils from MRC, living in
distant and detached settlements, having rare contacts with children and standard surrounding
of the village or town (they live in), cannot understand and use properly contents, presented
matters, contexts and global interconnections.
Topics in text-books must be reviewed carefully and selected those ones that correspond
with a diapason of the pupils´ knowledge and their everyday-life context. The topics should be
arranged in order to provide developing process, storyline, to join particular subject-themes, i.e.
inter-subject relations for understanding dependences among matters and events and for better
remembering words, phrases and contextual sentences.
All this must be prepared in connection with word-stock selection which has to insure the
comprehension and adequate using of words, phrases and related grammatical phenomena.
Vocabulary must be filled with expressions that can be applied in various situations to foster
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