Meet Ervin Nemeth
You may want to check out Ervin's ham operator pages as well. |
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Meet Ervin Nemeth
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Ervin Nemeth
7. I. 1. Szegedi Street
H-6900 Mako, Hungary
Tel.: (+36/20) 329-14-12
E-mail: Click
here to send an e-mail
The following is a (very) brief summary of what we have tested and achieved in the past years -- from the 1998-99 school year to current -- at Pápay, Endre Special Education School, 1 Vásárhelyi u., H-6900 Mako, Hungary. I do hope that the information will help you in your teaching and that you can see that it's worth teaching foreign languages even to slightly retarded people. Thanks for all the help to TESL-L list members.
In the fall of 1998, when the special education school in Mako, Hungary decided (actually was forced by the Ministry of Education) to take up the Hungarian National Core Curriculum. It meant that they had to start teaching a foreign languages to their 7th graders. The school had to decide first on the choice of languages: German would be a language with an easier pronunciation for Hungarian speakers, but English is the language that is more universal in the world. Also, English is the language of the children's favorite songs, thus it can be practiced more easily in out of the classroom settings. As there was no qualified language teacher in the staff, the director contacted the Ervin's ESL Net language school for assistance.
Some TESL-L members might remember that I posted an urgent request for assistance asking members to help me develop a teaching program. I received approximately a dozen responses -- some simply saying that teaching languages to retarded students was a waste of time and energy, others congratulated on the idea and asked me to report about the project, and about two or three gave me some useful hints. But no one was absolutely sure what to do and how to do it. It was obvious that teaching foreign languages to retarded students is an uncharted territory of language teaching. After three years of practicing it I have a rough map of that territory -- with only the basic outline of the major continents and no exact details of the subtleties. I do believe, however, that teaching languages to DD students can be an important tool in developing them.
I also promised to give some feedback on my results. Had I the time and energy, it could be a study of several hundred pages. Unfortunately a computer HD failure erased most of my notes (among them the private e-mail messages I received from TESL-L members). All I have now is a couple of handwritten notes and the memories, a few corrected test papers and "art work" by students.. Perhaps a brief summary can help you develop your teaching approach.
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Experiences with setting objectives and scheduling classes |
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Year One -- 7th graders in regular classroom setting |
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Year Two -- 5th-8th graders in after school program |
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Year Three -- 9th graders in Vo-tech school setting |
Here's a drawing by a 7th grader from year 1
The above drawing can certainly show you that there was no lack of interest in learning basic vocabulary. One of the students (Károly Kovács, "Charles") did it on his own, after class. But there were many other similar attempts by other students (especially after giving a lot of positive feedback upon receiving the first few such pages). Students tried very hard to remember basic words and often used drawing as a method to visualize them.
We did have a course book intended for very young learners. It had a lot of basic words, drawings, opportunities to color pictures and practice spelling. One must understand that DD students often have great difficulties with spelling words in their own language. We must not expect them to spell words a hundred percent correctly. When the word they write can't be easily misunderstood, we must accept them as correct on tests. Of course, by writing the correct spelling above the misspelled words is important. But many of them will simply not be able to "spel korrektly" no matter what. When translating short sentences they often use the word order of the original language (see the sample test paper with the marks below).
If you speak Hungarian, you will notice that I tried to get them learn basic words that are similar in English and Hungarian:
| English | Hungarian |
| lamp | lámpa |
| doctor | doktor (orvos is a synonym) |
| Asia | Ázsia |
| elephant | elefánt |
But we also focused on other basic vocabulary, such as the names of our country and some English speaking countries (England, US, Australia, Canada), simple greetings, numbers (up to 12 initially), names of animals and objects (often asking them what they would like to know in English). It is essential to show DD students that you are interested in them and in their opinion and that you consider them as normal as any other students who don't have learning difficulties. Lots of games, little songs (e.g. the alphabet song) can enhance interest and participation. Rewards and recognition for achievements and extra-cullicular activities is an absolute must. In general, you should use (and I will not quote them here) methods that you would use with very young children except that you try to convey the basics of writing also.
Why writing at all? Very simple: the National Core Curriculum left no other choice. But even in year 2 when it was an after school activity setting I found it useful to learn basic spelling. Should they ever get into an English speaking country, they would need basic reading and writing skills. We did have an example of a visiting ex student of the school who lives in the US now. He was able to learn English well enough to function well in his everyday life. The students were very impressed when he had a short basic conversation (about him, the family who adopted him and the place where he lives). He did not have more errors in English than in his native Hungarian. So that was proof to both students and me that a DD student can learn a foreign language if properly stimulated. Of course there is the limitation that in a non-native country it is basically the classroom where they can learn and practice. Some perhaps are a bit slow to learn as the test shows below:
but others will be a bit better:
even if hesitant a bit (the student who wrote the test below had chosen almost all possible answers in the allotted time frame and sorted out one by one which one should be the "real" answer failing only one question):
and of course there were some exceptional students who did remember much more than the average and could do their assignments much faster (they were the ones who did most extra-cullicular activities. The student who wrote the test below is the same who drew the picture with the fruits above):
