Teaching a foreign language to students with special educational needs

Abstract

This synthesis of studies is aimed at identifying strategies that could help the teaching of foreign languages to students who may present special educational needs in class. For the purpose of this synthesis, fifteen studies were considered and the effectiveness of the strategies found was analyzed on the basis of the perceptions of the participants of each study. All the studies were developed in different contexts, but not all of them were based on English language teaching; some were focused on the teaching of French and German. It is important to mention that even though the aim of this synthesis is the teaching of a foreign language to special needs students, two studies that focus on second language teaching were also included, considering the importance and relevance of the strategies found on the aforementioned studies. Additionally, different educational needs were emphasized in most of the studies; therefore, different strategies and perceptions were found in them. It is worth mentioning that some effective strategies were found throughout this research, which have helped us demonstrate that a foreign language can be efficiently taught in spite of the educational needs that can be found in class. With the purpose of discovering new strategies, further research is suggested. There is also a need to conduct more studies with teenagers that focus on the perceptions of teachers who deal with special educational needs.