Psychological and pedagogical peculiarities of teaching the English language to learners with special educational needs

Abstract

The urgency of this article is due to the problems of inclusive education that has recently emerged in Kazakhstan. In our opinion, when implementing the inclusive education principles teachers might face the following difficulties: ignorance of children’s psychological and pedagogical peculiarities, resulting in misunderstanding of which students have special educational needs, as well as teachers’ lack of knowledge of approaches and teaching methods of such learners. Thus, the objectives of our study were to identify whether teachers know which children are learners with special educational needs, what difficulties teachers experience when teaching such children, and what methods and techniques should be used in an inclusive classroom. The content knowledge and understanding of inclusive education principles by the English teachers in public schools and methods of teaching children with special educational needs served as the objects of study. The evaluating of knowledge content and understanding of principles was conducted by surveying English teachers and further analysis of the results obtained. The survey showed teachers’ need to gain knowledge on psychological and pedagogical peculiarities of special needs children, methods of teaching English in an inclusive environment, and understanding the principle of short- and long-term subject planning adaptation. Taking into account the fact that the survey results confirmed the theory posed at our study’s beginning, we carried out the second part of our study. Psychological and pedagogical peculiarities of learners with special educational needs have been analysed, and recommendations for teaching such children were identified as well. Based on the survey results, there is a need to organise refresher courses on methodology of teaching English to students with special educational needs. The methods and techniques of teaching such students also require further in-depth study, and psychological and pedagogical peculiarities of special needs children require analysing with further synthesis of new teaching methods.