Looking around your class of diverse learners, the thought of fully including every single one may feel, well, ‘challenging’.
The good news is that implementing a few simple strategies can make your classroom more accessible for all.
The most important thing is getting to know your learners, so you can start to understand the barriers they are coming up against.
ELT well specializes in working with neurodivergent learners – those with specific learning differences like dyslexia, dyspraxia or AD(H)D – and we can enable you to do so, too.
Sometimes it is suggested that students who experience barriers to learning should not have to tackle another language, but should instead use the time to work on their first language skills. While this policy may be well-intentioned, there are some strong arguments for everybody having the opportunity to learn another language, alongside their peers:
- in our increasingly global culture, it disadvantages students if they remain monolingual
- for EAL/ESOL learners there is little choice but to learn English, if they are to have any independence;
- research suggests there are many benefits of learning another language, from improving phonological processing to facilitating a broader world view and greater tolerance of diversity and unpredictability.