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

Building bridges to inclusive foreign language education through appropriately applied technologies

Abstract: 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 at http://www.tomwilson.com/david/case/. 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 will describe 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.