Suitability of Selected EFL Classroom Materials for Learners with Dyslexia

Download or read book Suitability of Selected EFL Classroom Materials for Learners with Dyslexia written by Zala Završnik and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Educational systems around the world are finding themselves in a trend of an inclusive classroom. Discourse accompanying the inclusive classroom largely focuses on learners with specific learning difficulties. Those are dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD, Asperger's syndrome, and dyslexia; among those, dyslexia has the biggest impact on EFL learners. Coursebooks are the basis for learning languages for Slovene learners, thus my goal was to study the extent at which primary school coursebooks enable successful learning for learners, including dyslexics. The analysed materials were the Sounds and Letters workbook and three EFL coursebooks. One, My Sails 1, is of Slovene production, and the other two, You and Me 1 and Macmillan English language Book 4, are of British production. The materials were analysed in terms of the accommodations described in the theoretical part of this thesis. Those include clearly structured materials with a lot of routine and repetition that are presented with various colours and dyslexia-friendly fonts. The materials were further analysed in terms of their approaches to teaching grammar and the phonetic system, the pace at which they presented different tasks, structures, and topics, and their gradation of difficulty. The materials' utilization of the learners' mother tongue was also looked into, as well as the inclusion of communicative tasks, games and puzzles and opportunities for situational learning. Finally, the materials were analysed to determine whether they allow the learners to build and expand their schemata, and if they incorporate any multi-sensory teaching activities. The analysis was carried out to determine which of the materials are the most suitable for dyslexic learners. Expectedly, the analysis proved the materials appear on a spectrum of suitability for dyslexic learners and with a variety of solutions and approaches to problems learners with dyslexia face in EFL classrooms.