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A Foreign Language Learner with Hearing Impairment

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Introduction
n Joanne has profound hearing loss. She is highly intelligent and responds very positively to music, dance and visual stimuli. Your school's Special Needs Coordinator approaches you and asks whether you know of any teaching materials, including multimedia, which would lend themselves to additional MFL support work. The Special Needs department has arranged for a Learning Support Teacher, who is not a linguist, to come into your lesson to assist Joanne. You meet before the first supported lesson to discuss what you intend to teach the class in general and how you are going to include Joanne in particular in the learning process.

Problem 1
n What provision is made under the National Curriculum for Joanne's special needs in Modern Foreign Languages?
n Find out how this Additional information for modern foreign languages document contributes to the implementation of the National Curriculum statutory inclusion statement with particular reference to foreign language learners with hearing impairment (HI).

Problem 2
n Your Head of Department wants Joanne to make the most of her MFL and asks you to find out more about her condition and to devise strategies that will help her access the subject better.
n For more information about the implications of HI for MFL, browse through the paper Foreign Language Learning and Deaf Children presented at an international conference on deaf education by Mairi MacAulay, Headteacher, Aberdeen School for the Deaf. Then study Sandie Mourão's summary of information about Foreign Languages and Deaf Children, based on the replies received after help with MFL/HI was solicited on LinguaNet Forum. Read about the place of MFL in the curriculum of the hearing impaired at Royal School for Deaf Children in Kent and Mary Hare Grammar School in Berkshire.

Problem 3
n You decide to find out how other countries address the issue of HI and MFL.
n Gallaudet University in Washington DC is billed as "the world's only university for deaf and hard of hearing undergraduate students." Read about its Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures and find out which US states recognise American Sign Language as a Foreign Language. Then, for a European perspective, read Teaching the deaf English as a foreign language: Polish experiences by Ewa Domagala-Zysk of the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. Anna Huonker's Englischunterricht für Gehörlose an der Fachoberschule is about the teaching of English to deaf German vocational education students.

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© 2009 · David R. Wilson