Language instruction isn’t always the most engaging part of the classroom day for many students. Whether the student has a learning disability, ASD, ADHD, or just doesn’t feel particularly comfortable with this academic area, educational approaches to the language arts may require more than just basic group instruction or lessons that isolate grammar, syntax, and other facets of written/spoken communication. This is where embedding language facilitation strategies within meaningful contexts comes into play.
What Are the Challenges of Language Instruction?
Some students won’t ever experience verbal or written language development challenges in the classroom. But a large class size, students who have different learning styles and students of varying abilities may make language learning difficult in the classroom. Additionally, the learning challenges that some students face may make learning language concepts or using language effectively an issue.
How Do These Challenges Affect the Individual Student?
Just like there isn’t one challenge to language-learning, you also won’t find one way that these issues impact every student. The effects of the challenges depend on the child, the classroom, and the level of education. But the results could range from missing minor pieces of information, to not being able to participate in group learning activities, to a significant learning loss that impacts the student’s ability to effectively communicate and fall many grade levels behind. This makes it necessary for special educators (such as SEITs, SLPs and learning specialists) to address language-learning issues in the child's natural context, such as embedding language facilitation strategies within classroom activities during individualized instruction.
What Is A Meaningful Context?
Instead of discrete, or stand-alone/skill-focused instruction, embedding language instruction within meaningful contexts provides a more natural approach to the learning process. Contextualized language instruction creates, as the name implies, a meaningful context or framework for the interaction. This could involve experiential learning or lessons that reference people, places, objects, or even activities that the child knows or enjoys. The specific context a teacher uses may change based on the lesson, educational goals, language-learner’s abilities, or the overall topic.
While a meaningful context could include something that is unique to the individual student, it could also fall under a general “theme” category. The use of themes or thematic instruction contextualizes the language lessons and turns skill-focused content into something that the child could understand through real-life experiences. To increase overall language learning outcomes, the theme or context engages the child and helps them to focus on the material in ways that rote memorization activities (such as flashcards) couldn’t. This can help to increase understanding and retention.
How Does A Teacher Embed Language Into Contexts?
The way a teacher creates a meaningful learning scenario depends on the child and the material at hand. Again, the type of context used could hold special meaning for the individual child. This approach or strategy works well during a one-on-one tutoring or intervention/therapy session. But it may not meet the needs of several students at the same time or an entire class of young learners.
If the teacher needs or wants to create meaningful contexts for a group of learners, they may choose to use a thematic approach. The theme they choose should remain age/developmental-level appropriate, have plenty of opportunities for focused language instruction, and hold the students’ attention. This could include a circus theme for first graders, a soccer theme for a group of older elementary school students, or a tech-focused theme for middle and high schoolers.
Like the themes themselves, the activities used within the contextualized lesson could vary from student to student or class to class. An immersive pretend play lesson could help younger grade school-aged students to explore the basic parts of speech, while a creative arts or dialogue-rich project could help older children to learn about syntax, grammar, or build vocabulary skills. A thematic approach provides the educator with a way to get creative and tailor the language learning experience to the students’ needs. This can increase the child’s interest level and help them to understand the material in a way that makes sense.
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