Mainstreaming Slow Pace Learners Through Mobile Assisted Language Learning: A Case of Bengali Primary Level Students with Dyslexia

Abstract

Every child has the right of taking education. The rights of having education of the children who have learning disabilities come forward in recent decades. The main aim of this thesis was to explore how Mobile assisted language learning tools can help the dyslexic children in mainstreaming education. Towards attaining the broad objectives, the study has also focused on some relevant objectives such as, to assist students with dyslexia in mainstreaming by focusing on phonological, morphological, and syntactical awareness, introducing dyslexic students to a multi-sensory learning system, to propose a focused device to assist dyslexic students in dealing with phoneme-grapheme harmonization, which are crucial in reading, to identify the perceptions about dyslexia among parents and teachers. Qualitative study was applied for this study where five dyslexic students were played main role as sample. Moreover, four teachers and five parents have also a role of assisting sample. The study was conducted from a Government Primary School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study showed that children having dyslexia have more difficulties in reading the voiced sounds, multisyllabic words, rhyming sentences. Furthermore, they have problems of sentence repetition, naming and timing knowledge. The study also demonstrated that parents and teachers play very negative role with these children that causes them to demotivate in terms of going school regularly. The major findings of the study showed that mobile assisted language learning tools help these dyslexic students to develop their skills in a tremendous way. The main reason is that they can hear a sound or word as many times possible as they want compared to the classroom where they have not the opportunity to ask several times. After using the tools, they felt more motivated and encouraged and most importantly they started enjoying their learning. Though government and many organizations have taken many activities to promote mainstreaming education, the opportunity of mainstreaming the dyslexic students is yet to develop.