Using the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths in the Slovenian lan-guage for the first time, in-service and pre-service teachers from our sample reported high endorsement of humanity and justice strengths and of some of the strengths of wisdom and knowledge. Strengths such as kindness, fairness, and critical thinking are substantial for a good teacher; thus teachers and future
teachers should be stimulated to build upon these strengths. In contrast, sur-prisingly, love of learning scored lowest of students’ strengths, and creativity ranked low in both samples. It seems imperative to work more systematically on students’ intellectual strengths during their undergraduate studies, so they could perceive learning as an important value and become good role models for their students in the future. Additionally, undergraduate study programmes for teacher education should offer numerous possibilities for students to express and foster their creativity.
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Biographical note
Polona Gradišek works as a teaching assistant for educational psy-chology at the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana. She is a Ph.D. stu-dent of psychology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Her areas of research are educational and positive psychology.
Kormos, J. and Smith, A. M. (2012). Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 232 p., ISBN 978-1-84769-620-5.
Reviewed by Florina Erbeli
Judit Kormos is a senior lecturer at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University. She is the editor of the volume Lan-guage Learners with Special Needs: An International Perspective. She was the principal investigator of a research and teacher-training project on the lan-guage learning processes of dyslexic and deaf learners in Hungary.
Anne Margaret Smith is a specialist tutor and assessor for students with specific learning differences. Her research interests include the assessment of cognitive functioning in multilingual learners. Her company, ELT well, offers advice and training for teachers and assessors who want to explore the overlap between language learning and specific learning differences.
For at least three different reasons Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences can be highly recommended to language teachers, students and researchers:
1. This book is unique, because the coupling between basic mechanisms underlying different processes involved in language learning and nu-merous examples for enhancing language instruction becomes evident in each chapter.
2. This book covers all important subjects of teaching languages to stu-dents with specific learning differences (SpLDs), i.e. from overview of dyslexia and associated learning differences to discussing language learning difficulties that manifest in four basic language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing), from the topic of different techniques and strategies used in language learning instruction when dealing with stu-dents with SpLDs to a remarkable array of issues concerning assessment and progression.
3. This book represents an adequate mixture of more recent research find-ings and the pedagogical implications of these findfind-ings. The book pre-sents a concise review, even for the more advanced teacher or scientist, who will find additional valuable information in the reference list at the back of the book.
Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences pro-vides a window into issues of language learning of students with specific learn-ing differences. Because until recently language learnlearn-ing was an option open to only a small segment of the populace, an elitism surrounding foreign language learning was maintained in our schools. (Early) language learning was viewed for years as the province of a select portion of students: students considered
‘college bound’ were encouraged to take a foreign language course (LeLoup &
Ponterio, 1997). In light of modern learning theory, coupled with the current educational policy of inclusion and teachers’ experience that all students can and should learn foreign languages in order to be fully functional in global so-ciety, the paradigm of language learning has changed, and so has the profile of the student population in the classrooms. Due to the transition of foreign lan-guage learning from an elite pursuit to a more mainstream educational goal, the students that populate foreign language classrooms have changed enormously over recent decades. Foreign language teachers face increasing numbers of stu-dents in their classrooms with diverse needs. We are seeing stustu-dents exhibiting specific learning differences, who however must not be deprived of equal op-portunities in education because of lack of a workable knowledge of another language. For a student who has an SpLD, foreign language learning can cause enormous anxiety and for some, it can be a humiliating experience. While in previous generations, these students may have opted out of language study, re-search shows that with appropriate accommodations, these students can be suc-cessful in learning another language. Although more resources are becoming available to the teachers who teach students with SpLDs, most foreign language teachers are ill-prepared to fulfil those specific differences (LeLoup & Ponterio, 1997). Only very recently has the pre-service foreign language teacher curricu-lum started to provide preparation in the area of special education. At the onset of our first teaching experiences, many of us believed that we would be in front of the perfect class with highly motivated students sitting there, ready to absorb everything presented to them. Most of us have witnessed students who strug-gle to learn a foreign language even when they excel in another subject. At the same time, many of us probably have a story of how we have experienced suc-cess or disappointment instructing students who may be classified as students with SpLDs. Through these experiences, we know that a student who works hard to overcome whatever SpLD he/she faces can, and will, succeed. Are we prepared for the challenges we face due to diverse backgrounds, learners with SpLDs, or other language-related difficulties our students might bring to the classroom? This book intends to give an answer to precisely this question. It focuses on what teachers and curriculum developers could do with information
about students with SpLD when dealing with learning foreign languages to im-prove language learning instruction. This book attempts to explain in detail the nature of SpLDs (dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD, Asperger’s syn-drome) and how an SpLD separately or in combination affects general learning processes and the mechanisms of second language acquisition. Teachers need to have a good sense of how SpLDs are reflected in learning foreign languages if they are to understand key implications from research as well as the range of instructional assertions made about what will foster success in the language learning of students with SpLDs.