by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: May 13, 2007   Last Updated: May 16, 2007

The purpose of writing this article is that it may act as a guide to those wishing to teach language to adult students of limited ability or in some cases learning disability.

Taking my experience in the UK of helping a school with children who had "Special" needs, what the experience taught me was that not all children learn by the same methods. For those less academic, explaining things in another manner that is relevant to that child can indeed make the learning process easier and achieve similar results. This also works will adults.

Here, to illustrate, in order to teach a non academic student, I used demonstration with items that were relevant to his lifestyle. For example, teaching fractions with the use of a Mars bar, split between perhaps brothers and sisters, or marbles being used to demonstrate division. It worked. What teachers forget sometimes is that if a lesson does not hold the interest of the student, then the likelihood of failure is increased. Taking children that enjoyed television, I taught them reading from a TV magazine, again, material that was relevant to them, enabling them not just to switch on the television willy nilly, but to understand times and when programs would be shown, and encouraging parents to reinforce the use of reading as a pleasure instead of an academic nightmare.

Using my own background experience, I decided that my knowledge of the French language was sufficient to teach those people who came to live in France that had little or no knowledge of spoken French. In these circumstances, it was alarming to note that amongst my students, ranging in age from 60 to 82, very few of them had any knowledge of the structure of grammar, and had given up traditional lessons because they simply did not understand the relevance to their lives. These are people that have chosen to live in a foreign country. They don't want to learn conjugation, although of course this is the essence of the French language, and where other classes failed, I researched ways in which I could teach elderly students a new language in a way that was relevant to their needs, and that could be put into practice by the student on a day to day basis.

Looking at needs made subject matter quite simple. Many wanted to learn the niceties of politeness. Simplistic subject matter helped, although here, little by little I interspersed the lessons with smatterings of conjugation, explained simply, so that the overall effect was that the student learned. Many had complained

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