Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences

Judit Kormos, Anne Margaret Smith

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Jahr: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847696229
• Thema: Langues et linguistique
• Thema: Enseignement des arts du langage

This book is intended to help language teachers to work effectively and successfully with students who have specific learning differences (SpLD) such as dyslexia. The book takes an inclusive and practical approach to language teaching and encourages teachers to consider the effects that an SpLD could have on a language learner. It suggests strategies that can be implemented to enable learners to succeed both in the classroom and in formal assessment. The book places issues of language teaching for learners with an SpLD in a broad educational context and, in addition to practical advice on methodologies and classroom management, also discusses discourses of the field, the identification of SpLDs and facilitating progression.

1

Views of Disability in Education

Introduction

The interaction between language and thought

Models of disability reflected in discourses

A medical discourse

A legal discourse

A discourse of social construction

Discourses of disability in educational settings

An inclusive discourse of disability

Labelling and self-identification

Challenging dominant discourses

Summary of key points

Activities

Recommended reading

Introduction

This chapter looks closely at the discourses of disability – particularly relating to dyslexia – to identify the current dominant trends, and to explore where they have their roots.

It will become clear throughout this book that a range of discourses is used, according to the topic under discussion. It is not the intention in this chapter to prescribe how teachers should use language, or which discourse choices should be made. Rather, it is hoped that readers will gain an insight into the power of language, and feel empowered to move between discourses, as it seems appropriate in different situations. Most importantly, this chapter discusses where responsibility lies for determining the relative power of competing discourses, and what impact the language choices teachers make might have on their learners.

Politicians and military tacticians have long known that during wartime language plays a crucial role in influencing public opinion and boosting the morale of the troops. In a survey of terminology used by the British press to describe the events of the first Gulf War, the Guardian newspaper (1991) reported that while British forces ‘suppressed’, ‘eliminated’ or even ‘neutralised’ targets, the Iraqi forces were simply ‘destroying’ and ‘killing’ whatever they targeted. Most tellingly, while British journalists were working under ‘reporting guidelines’ for reasons of security, the Iraqi journalists were subjected to ‘censorship’; they were fed ‘propaganda’, in contrast to the ‘press briefings’ that allied journalists had access to. The power that carefully chosen language has to change the way we perceive a situation is clear. This has been the case throughout history, and has been well documented in the field of education, particularly with reference to disability.

When we talk about any aspect of our society we have to make choices about the words that we use; the particular way that we use language is described as the discourse of that field. Discourses do not carry meaning so much as perform specific functions, particularly in the socio-political domain in which education is located (Allan, 1999). Murray (1998) points out that acquiring the discourse of the teaching profession is part of the process of taking on the social identity of being a teacher, and being assimilated into the culture of the chosen field. It allows novice teachers to gain entry to the community and enables them to organize their ideas and understanding of the new concepts to which they are introduced.

…discourse is socially constitutive as well as socially conditioned – it constitutes situations, objects of knowledge and the social identities of and relationships between people and groups of people. It is constitutive both in the sense that it helps to sustain and reproduce the social status quo and in the sense that it contributes to transforming it. Since discourse is so socially consequential, it gives rise to important issues of power. Discursive practices may have major ideological effects – that is, they can help produce and reproduce unequal power relations between (for instance) social classes, women and men and ethnic/cultural majorities and minorities through the ways in which they represent things and position people. (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997: 258)

Although the desire to use transparent and non-offensive terminology may be strong, it is not always easy to find expressions that all can agree on, and even the term ‘disability’ is itself not straightforward to define. In the British Equality Act (Great Britain, 2010) it is defined as ‘a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’, a description which includes dyslexia, depending on how ‘substantial’ and ‘normal, day-to-day activities’ are defined. Many dyslexic people are surprised when they learn that they are classed – technically – as being disabled, because, in common with many other groups of disabled people, they perceive their disability as a series of barriers in their lives, rather than as a defining characteristic of their personality or identity. In the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities it is acknowledged that ‘disability is an evolving concept’ (UN, 2006) so definitions may be subject to alteration as society changes its perceptions, and as more disabled people find their voices and contribute to the debate.

Dominant discourses tend to reflect and further the interests of the powerful (for example, policy makers and professional bodies), while competing discourses seek to challenge this power structure and refocus the discussion, usually in favour of the oppressed or less powerful (in this case, these might be disabled students and their families and advocates). It takes time for alternative terminology to become established in a community, and usually even longer for attitudes to change; as Corbett notes, language pertaining to disability ‘has always been built on shifting sands…waves move in to wash away one set of words and new shapes are drawn’ (1996: 70). In order to establish the role that discourses play in our society, it is important to consider the relationship between language and thought.

The interaction between language and thought

The exact role that language plays in shaping our thoughts has long been debated by linguists, anthropologists and psychologists, but opinions are still divided as to the nature of the relationship between language and thought (Slobin, 2003). Put simply, the question is whether language fundamentally determines our view of the world, or only reflects it.

Linguistic determinists argue that we may not be aware of things that our first language does not have ways of describing, because our world view is shaped by the first language we learn. Evidence for this view is exemplified by studies of colour terms in different languages. Some languages divide the colour spectrum into only two parts (equivalent to ‘light’ and ‘dark’); others divide it three ways (having a separate term also for ‘red’ somewhere between light and dark). Most known languages divide the spectrum into a maximum of eleven distinct colour terms; English is one example of a language that has eleven terms (Dowman, 2007). The argument is that people whose first language has fewer colour terms are not so sensitive to the variations in colour that English speakers describe. That is not to say that they cannot perceive the variations in shade – colour perception is essentially a biological phenomenon, which language does not determine. However, on perceiving a colour, we assign it to the nearest category that we have a label for, and describe it in those terms. Even speakers of English, who have a relatively wide range of basic colour terms to draw on, still have to differentiate between the many shades that are described as blue using additional adjectives (light / dark / sky / navy / royal blue etc). It is not that English speakers cannot see the colours, but they do not have distinct terms for them, and so mentally group them together under the umbrella term ‘blue’. However, by interacting with other language communities English speakers may become aware of new ideas or concepts and may even adopt the appropriate terminology if these concepts are deemed to be important enough, so the determinists’ position seems weak in this respect.

On the other hand, linguistic relativists argue, babies and infants must generate thoughts long before they develop language, so that it seems clear that our thoughts are independent of our language use, rather than being determined by it. Their argument is that the language used merely reflects what is important to the speech community using it. One domain where this seems to be demonstrated is in the terminology of kinship. In some cultures where marriage conventions are strictly regulated and potential partners may come from one side of the family but not the other, it becomes vital to recognize distinctions such as maternal vs. paternal relatives, and thus to label them differently (Hage, 1999). This is not the case in English, for example, since in most English-speaking communities, marriage partners generally are found outside of the family. Other examples include distinctions between terms for older and younger siblings, and for parents’ older and younger siblings, where the degree of deference due to individuals varies according to a strict hierarchy. Again, this is not the case in most English-speaking communities, and if a speaker uses the term ‘aunt’ it would be unusual to enquire whether a father's or mother's sister was being referred to, or an uncle's wife, let alone whether she was younger or older than the parent. It is not the case that English speakers are not aware of how a woman they call ‘aunt’ is related to them, but that it is not of sufficient cultural importance to warrant indication in everyday speech, and so the language lacks the necessary terms to do so.

Perhaps it will never be possible to say definitively whether language exerts more influence over thought, or vice versa; most likely it is a cyclical process, which starts as language use develops and continues throughout a person's life (see Figure 1.1). However, what is important in this chapter is the idea that making a conscious effort to change language habits and usage can affect the way we think about the world around us, and can also influence the thinking of others we interact with.

Figure 1.1 Language reflects as well as shapes our view of the world around us

Models of disability reflected in discourses

The first educational psychologist in the UK, Cyril Burt (appointed in 1913) is best remembered for developing the idea of categorizing people according to their IQ, as measured using the crude tests of the time (Segal, 1967). Those whose IQs were gauged at 50 or below were classed as ‘feebleminded’, and those with an IQ of 70 were deemed to be ‘backward’, which later became known as ‘educationally subnormal’. The 1959 (British) Mental Health Act stipulated that these children were ‘ineducable’ – a powerful and demeaning label which reflects the pressure on students to be receptive learners, rather than on the instructors to be effective teachers. In 1970 these terms disappeared from official usage (Rogers, 1980), but of the generations of teachers who had been trained using this discourse, it is hard to imagine that all would immediately find it easy to embrace the idea that every child could – and should – be able to access education. What does seem likely is that changes in terminology would have been adopted (even if not fully internalized) more readily by the educational and medical professionals than by lay-people. This may well have caused difficulties in communication between parents and teachers, educational psychologists and students (Norwich, 1990). The use of language that is unfamiliar to non-experts serves to underline the power of the professionals and the powerlessness of the people they are supposedly working for. This is a common theme, as will be seen in the following sections which trace the development of discourses relating to dyslexia. Figure 1.2 illustrates the progression from a medically dominated discourse pertaining to dyslexia, to a more inclusive discourse, indicating some of the key terminology. As will become clear, though, it is by no means the case that when a new discourse is introduced, the previous one disappears.

The condition that is generally called dyslexia among medical professionals and lay-people alike is not easy to define precisely (see Chapter 2 for more on this). Perhaps for this reason, over the years a range of different expressions has been used to denote the particular difficulties that dyslexic people experience; some of these are explored here. It is over a hundred and thirty years since it was documented that people of apparently average intelligence in other fields could experience difficulties in manipulating symbolic representations of speech, music or numbers. The first identification is usually ascribed to Adolph Kussmaul, a German doctor, who in 1878 recognized that one of his patients was unable to read, despite being otherwise cognitively sound (Kirby & Kaplan, 2003). He called the condition ‘word-blindness’, thereby relating it to the visual impairment already well known and documented; this is a term that many people would find relatively accessible. Half a decade later, Rudolf Berlin, a German ophthalmologist, coined the term ‘dyslexia’ (from the Greek words for ‘difficulty’ and ‘word’) to describe a condition in which people seemed to have lost their ability to read (Wagner, 1973). This term (arguably less accessible to non-medical lay-people) is now most commonly used for a developmental difference in learning, having replaced the term ‘congenital word blindness’ proposed in 1917 by Hinshelwood (Ellis, 1993). Another early term for this condition which is no longer in everyday use is Samuel Orton's word ‘strephosymbolia’, which translates literally as ‘twisted symbols’ (Orton, 1925, cited in Hallahan & Mercer, 2005). This is now reserved for a specific visual disturbance phenomenon in which the reader perceives the text to be distorted or moving. Other terms that are often used interchangeably for dyslexia, such as ‘reading disability’, ‘specific learning difficulty’ and ‘specific learning difference’ will be discussed below.

Figure 1.2 Chronological developments in dyslexia-related discourses

A medical discourse

Much of the terminology relating to disabled learners (covering a full range of impairments) that was used in Britain up to the 1970s is considered unacceptable today, as was noted above. Expressions from the 1950s and 1960s such as ‘imbecile’ and ‘feeble-minded’ betrayed a lack of understanding of the issues that gave rise to difficulties in learning, and a lack of respect for the individuals so labelled. As diagnosis was in the hands of doctors, and based on the perceived deficits in individuals, the emphasis was on what learners could not do as well as their peers, resulting in them being designated ‘dumb’ or ‘handicapped’. This medical model of disability focussed on physical or cognitive abnormality and informed many developments in the British education system. The assumption of the need for segregated ‘special’ education can be seen as analogous to quarantine for the students’ own good, and that of the wider community (Oliver, 1990). Dyslexia is still often referred to as a ‘reading disability’, particularly in North America, which embodies the assumption that learning to read is a ‘normal’ activity that everybody should be able to do, rat...