Teaching Languages to Students with Specific Learning Differences

This book is intended to help language teachers to work effectively and successfully with students who have specific learning differences (SpLD) such as dyslexia. The book takes an inclusive and practical approach to language teaching and encourages teachers to consider the effects that an SpLD could have on a language learner. It suggests strategies that can be implemented to enable learners to succeed both in the classroom and in formal assessment. The book places issues of language teaching for learners with an SpLD in a broad educational context and, in addition to practical advice on methodologies and classroom management, also discusses discourses of the field, the identification of SpLDs and facilitating progression.

Judit Kormos is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, UK. She is the author of The Second Language Acquisition Process of Students with Specific Learning Difficulties (Routledge, 2017). She was a key partner in the ELTon award-winning DysTEFL and Comics for Inclusive Language Learning Erasmus+ projects and is the lead educator of the Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching massive open online learning course offered by Future Learn.

Anne Margaret Smith is a specialist tutor and assessor for students with SpLDs. She is the editor of Activities for Inclusive Language Teaching: Valuing Diversity in the ELT Classroom (Delta Publishing, 2020). Her company ELT Well offers advice and training for teachers and assessors who want to explore the overlap between language learning and SpLDs.