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David R. Wilson · Newcastle upon Tyne · United Kingdom

Home | Contact | Professional | Work History | Education

Presented at FLEAT IV · Fourth Conference on Foreign Language Education and Technology

Rokko Island, Kobe, Japan
29 July - 1 August 2000

David R. Wilson

Harton School, Lisle Road,
South Shields, NE34 6DL
United Kingdom

School students with special needs access their full curriculum entitlement best when the learning support provider and the academic subject teacher collaborate in its delivery. The former's experience with dyslexia, sensory impairment and other learning difficulties complements the latter's subject knowledge. Teamwork eases the identification of individual needs and the modification of course content.

The special educator and the foreign language teacher share a professional interest in human diversity. The former identifies variation among learners and supports them when their individual needs mismatch the demands of an institution or curriculum. The latter initiates the young into a world of difference, where multilingualism is a key to international communication. Both practitioners are versed in the benefits of learning through technology and charged with the development of basic reading and writing skills.

At least one distance remains to be conquered, however. The special educator starts with the individual needs of the particular student, while the foreign language teacher begins with the demands of the subject. These two approaches must be skilfully and sensitively interwoven when a foreign language is introduced to students with special educational needs.

Sadly, such cooperation between colleagues is not always feasible, because staffing, time and other resources come at a high premium in public education. Foreign language teachers may, of course, seize the initiative when they reach out to their learning-disabled students. Sooner or later though, they will seek information and advice, if only to confirm that they are indeed on the right track. They will then discover that special educational needs guidance is largely couched in cross-curricular, non-subject-specific, medical and psychological terms, reflecting its multidisciplinary origins.

The author of this paper is a practising Learning Support and Modern Foreign Languages - French and German - Teacher in a mainstream secondary school for 11- to 16-year-olds in the North East of England. He has extensively researched, at home and abroad, the appropriate application of new technologies to the foreign language learning of students with learning difficulties, developing in the process a range of accessible printed and online classroom resources.

One of his recent projects has been the creation of a foreign language teacher's pre- and in-service training website. Case studies feature dyslexic, hearing-impaired and moderate-learning-disordered students, accompanied by problem-solving exercises. Links lead to a variety of Internet pages of direct relevance to foreign language learning difficulties. The website also identifies common issues of classroom practice arising from the use of information technology and encourages problem-solving via external links. It has been successfully trialled with student teachers of foreign languages at a local university and with colleagues in the Modern Foreign Languages Department of the author's secondary school.

The paper, since published in the proceedings, describes how this website was conceived to heighten student foreign language teachers' awareness of special educational needs and information technology, how its external information sources were chosen and how the project is intended to facilitate the process of introducing a foreign language to all 11- to 14-year-olds in English mainstream schools.

• Social constructivism: case-based instruction
• Teaching and learning of modern foreign languages for dyslexic students
• Using technology in the L2 classroom
• The learning disabled student in the foreign language class
• The instant access treasure chest: the foreign language teacher's guide to learning disabilities
• Treasure Hunt
• Applying new technologies appropriately to modern foreign languages
• A bibliography of modern foreign languages and special educational needs
• Subject teaching with Internet resources

Presented at FLEAT III · Third Conference on Foreign Language Education and Technology

University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
12 - 16 August 1997

David R. Wilson

Harton School, Lisle Road,
South Shields, NE34 6DL
United Kingdom

The National Curriculum for England and Wales now entitles all 11- to 16-year-olds in mainstream schools, including those with special educational needs, to study a modern foreign language. The 1990s have seen the genesis of a number of projects dedicated to the extension of school foreign language learning across the ability range via appropriate use of information technologies and other strategies.

This paper describes the latest phase in the author's school-based initiative supporting foreign language learners with difficulties and investigating the classroom exploitation of electronic resources originally developed for mother-tongue computer usage in countries where the target language is the medium of discourse. Having successfully trialled on-line and on-disc travel software in French, German and Spanish with 13-year-old lower achievers, the author's project now focuses on the ability of the Internet to deliver other curricular topics (School, Daily Routine, Weather, Health, Arranging Meetings and Holidays) to such learners and to contribute to their reading development, vocabulary knowledge and cultural awareness. The author has extensively searched the World Wide Web, identified a range of relevant authentic texts commensurate with the level, interest and ability of the learners and devised accompanying target-language tasks, which he has successfully deployed in school examinations.

The paper addresses an audience interested in the appropriate use of information and communication technologies in inclusive modern foreign language curricula, with particular reference to secondary education. It has been published in the conference proceedings and reviewed in Swedish in Magnus Nordenhake's conference report.

Selected Language Links Featured in Paper

• Vacances et congés scolaires
• Congés
• Journal d'Héloïse
• Météo nationale

Presented at EUROCALL 96

Berzsenyi Dániel College - Szombathely, Hungary
29 - 31 August 1996

David R. Wilson
EUROCALL membership No.: 026-IND

Harton School, Lisle Road,
South Shields, NE34 6DL
United Kingdom

Taped and printed target-language realia are now routinely integrated into most areas and levels of foreign language classroom practice. Far rarer, particularly in lower secondary education, is foreign language learners' exposure to electronic resources originally developed for mother-tongue computer usage in countries where the target language is the medium of intercourse. Neglect persists despite on-disc and on-line availability of authentic databases and other non-CALLware, whose information-rich features, textual constraints, subject-matter, language and sophistication match the prior learning of this age-group of inexperienced linguists but seasoned users of educational and industry-standard applications. Few British Germanists or Hispanists, alas, have ever accessed Bildschirmtext or Ibertex, two of Europe's score of national public interactive videotex systems celebrating the continent's cultural diversity.

This paper considers how travel software of German provenance relating to destinations, transport and accommodation may be reviewed and didaktisiert as a contribution to school foreign language informatics. A suite of computer programs, including a railway timetable, a camp-site and leisure-park locator, a hotel guide and a tourist information viewdatabase, has been compiled to investigate compatibility with the learners' linguistic knowledge and communicative competence and to attempt a typology of authentic interactive texts in the interests of replication. The tasks devised to accompany this material should generate not only on-screen responses but also conversation and penmanship.

Beyond CALL's "New Horizons" may lie an enchanted realm of polyglot edutainment boasting the latest multimedia, multisensory, virtual-reality technology. Most teachers, and many learners, of foreign languages might settle for more pronounced cis-Atlantic cultural markers in professional software development, e.g. clipart discarding cheerleaders' pom-poms for Schultuten; fonts including continental handwriting styles; pan-European standard character sets allowing a mix of English, German and Hungarian in Microsoft Word. Perhaps authentic software will do to foreign language computing what authentic texts have done to foreign language reading.

The paper has been reviewed in Finnish in a conference report by Taina Saurén and Esko Johnson

• German visitors' impressions of Scotland
• A town plan of Munich
• Children's riding holiday

My brother hosts this site.

© 2006 · David R. Wilson