METHODOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES OF TEACHING ENGLISH TO HEARING, VISION, AND SPEECH IMPAIRED STUDENTS

Abstract

The article is devoted to outlining the peculiarities of teaching English to schoolchildren with special educational needs, in particular those with hearing, vision, and speech impairments. The problem is viewed through the prism of the “Concept of the New Ukrainian School”, as well as the system of inclusive education. The main regulations of the foreign language teacher's activities regarding the education of children with special educational needs are highlighted. They consist in the need to adapt educational materials, taking into account the type of impairment that the child has, and planning lessons taking into account the basic principles of corrective and developmental education. The English language lessons for children with health impairments are proved to have a corrective turn and are aimed not only at teaching educational material, introducing new vocabulary or training grammatical structures, but also at correcting the shortcomings of such students’ cognitive as well as emotional and personal spheres. Teaching English to children with speech and attention disorders, hearing disorders will be more effective if the processing of new material takes place simultaneously with the use of various visual aid, namely color drawings, presentations, handout cards, diagrams, tables, comics, videos, etc. The specificity of the speech development of children with hearing impairments requires the introduction of a special strategy for learning English, in particular, focusing on writing instead of understanding oral speech, since this is their weak point. The recommendation to pronounce sounds and words in front of a mirror is substantiated, taking into account the fact that hearing impaired students learn material mainly through the visual channel due to the dominance of visual memory. The effectiveness of auditory perception is proved by frequent watching videos with sounding in order to see the articulation of the lips. As far as visually impaired children are concerned, the need for adjusting the methodology in such a way as to present the lesson orally, repeat the task several times is grounded. Repetition in chorus after the teacher, listening to audio texts, singing songs, memorizing materials in English are sure to give a positive result.