engleski

Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Students with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia

Teaching students with special educational needs poses challenges for many teachers all over the world. Every student, regardless of their (dis)abilities, deserves to have educators who will encourage them to achieve their full potential. Dyslexia and dysgraphia are specific learning disabilities that hinder students’ academic development and can cause various emotional issues. Difficulties caused by dyslexia and dysgraphia also impair students’ acquisition of a foreign language, slowing it down and making its various aspects harder to attain. This is especially true in cases where students’ native and foreign language are very different, which is the case with English and Croatian. This implies that dyslexic and dysgraphic students, whose native language is Croatian, may have a hard time mastering English, due to all the phonological and orthographical differences between the two languages. This study focuses on investigating different didactic-methodological adjustments made in the process of teaching English as a foreign language to dyslexic and dysgraphic students in several Croatian schools. Ten EFL teachers participated in the study and ten structured interviews were conducted in order to investigate the matters of interest, e.g. various didactic-methodological adjustments, cooperation with colleagues, knowledge about specific learning disabilities etc. The results showed that participants use a variety of different adjustments in order to facilitate EFL learning for their dyslexic and dysgraphic students, some of which include multisensory approach to learning, modifications of visual aspects of the content and exams, extensions of time needed to solve tasks etc. Participants have also urged for assistance from educational experts, so as to help their students achieve their full potential.

TEFL, specific learning disabilities, dyslexia, dysgraphia, foreign language acquisition

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