Professional Development Course on Catering for
Diversity in English Language Teaching
ENG5315
The Characteristics of Diversity
Session 7
Issues of diversity in a second language
classroom & characteristics of students with LD
in reading, writing and spoken language
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
1
Issues of diversity in a
second language
classroom
Difference in what?




Second language proficiency
First language
Transferability of skills from one
language to another
Aptitude
Personality
Extroverted learners vs. introverted
learners
3
Difference in what?



Attitude
Motivation
Integrative vs. instrumental
Learning style
e.g. tolerance of ambiguity; reflective
or impulsive; oriented toward
imagery; holistic, analytical, or
logical
4
acculturation /
assimilation
inclusion
equity
5
“Education for a culturally,
linguistically, and socio-economically
diverse population” (Chong, 2007, p.
54)
Children with special needs

Children with special needs are
those who need special educational
support because they have learning
difficulties of several kinds
(Education and Manpower Bureau,
2005).
7
SEN










Hearing impairment
Visual impairment
Physical handicap
Mental handicap
Emotional and behavioral difficulties
Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder
Autism
Communication difficulties
Specific learning difficulties
Giftedness
(Education and Manpower Bureau, 2002).
8
What are the elements of
spoken language?


Language can be divided into two
major categories: receptive and
expressive language.
It can be further subdivided into
major elements: phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics and
pragmatics.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
9
Receptive and expressive
language


Receptive language
How skilled is the listener in
understanding what is heard?
Expressive language
The production of language
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
10
Difficulties of children with
learning disabilities in receptive
and expressive language


Most learning difficulties exist in the
area of expressive, not receptive,
language.
Dysarthia: Difficulty with the
production of speech sounds.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
11
Language components




Language is generally regarded as
having three components (or
elements): form, content, and use
(Bloom & Lahey, 1978).
Form: the rules by which a language
is governed.
Content: what we listen to and read,
talk, and write about.
Use: the purpose of language.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
12
Phonology


Phonology is the study of the
individual sound units in a language
and the rules by which these units
are combined to create larger
language units (Raymond, 2008).
The smallest unit of sound is called a
phoneme.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
13
Morphology


Morphology is the study of words and
how they are formed (Kuder, 2008).
A morpheme is the smallest unit of
meaning in a language.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
14
Syntax

Syntax is the study of rules that
govern how words are put together to
make phrases and sentences (Kuder,
2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
15
Semantics

Semantics is the study of the
meanings of words and words in
sentences (Hallahan, Lloyd,
Kauffman, Weiss, & Martinez, 2005).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
16
Pragmatics

Pragmatics refers to ‘the use of
language to express one’s intentions
and to get things done in the world’
(Gleason, 2005, p. 23).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
17
Characteristics of students
with LD in spoken language:
Autism spectrum disorders
(ASD)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
18
Autism spectrum disorders
(ASD)



A group of disorders that includes
autism.
Autistic behavior lies on a continuum
(or spectrum) of severity (Kuder,
2008).
The number and severity of
symptoms may vary, but the
disorders have several
characteristics in common.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
19
Autism spectrum disorders
(ASD): Characteristics


Impairments in social interaction
 Withdrawal from contact with
others / little or no social
interaction.
 Fail to make eye contact with
others.
Impairments in language and
communication
 Significant delays in language
development (Kuder, 2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
20
Difficulties in specific
language domains
Phonology
 Considerable trouble with
suprasegmental features of sound
production.
 Fluctuations in vocal intensity.
 Often may speak in a monotone.
 Repeat sounds and/or words, making
their speech very hard to follow
(Kuder, 2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
21
Difficulties in specific
language domains
Pragmatics
 Significant impairments in the
pragmatic aspects of language.
 Very unresponsive (Loveland, Landry,
Hughes, Hall, & McEvoy, 1988).
 Rarely initiate communication
spontaneously and also produce
fewer communicative acts (Kuder,
2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
22
Asperger’s syndrome and
autism
Asperger’s syndrome
 A developmental disorder falling
within the autistic spectrum.
 A less severe form of autism.
 Children with Asperger’s syndrome
usually have deficiencies in social
interaction.
 However, they have much better
language and cognitive skills than
children with autism (Kuder, 2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
23
Key features of Asperger’s
syndrome




Children with Asperger’s syndrome
have poor social skills
Spoken language can sometimes be
odd
Narrow interests
Repetitive routines and inflexibility
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
24
Language and communication
difficulties of children with
Asperger’s syndrome


Failure to adjust their language
production in response to the context.
Shifting conversational topics
abruptly (Kuder, 2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
25
Characteristics of students
with LD in spoken language:
Attentiondeficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
26
Attention deficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD):
Characteristics






Have a short attention span
Poor concentration
Easily distracted
Have difficulty listening
Forgetful
Impatient (Cheminais, 2000)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
27
Language and communication
difficulties of children with
ADHD

The inability to concentrate on the
relevant features of a conversation
results in the children making offtopic contributions (Raymond, 2008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
28
Characteristics of students
with LD in spoken language:
Hearing impairment
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
29
Language and communication
difficulties of children with
hearing impairment


Problems of language form
Problem of language use (pragmatics)
 Problems with conversational turntaking
 Inappropriate shifts in topic
(Haynes, Moran, & Pindzola, 2006)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
30
What are the major elements
of reading?

There are two major components of
reading: decoding and
comprehending.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
31
Decoding and
comprehending


Decoding
The mechanical aspect of converting
print to spoken language (Hallahan,
Lloyd, Kauffman, Weiss, & Martinez,
2005).
Comprehending
The higher-order aspects of reading
in which one extracts meaning from
language (Hallahan, Lloyd, Kauffman,
Weiss, & Martinez, 2005).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
32
What problems do children with
learning disabilities have in
reading?

Problems with phonology
 Deficits in phonemic awareness
play a central role in the problems
of children who have difficulty
learning to read (Hallahan, Lloyd,
Kauffman, Weiss, & Martinez,
2005).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
33
What problems do children with
learning disabilities have in
reading?



Problems with decoding
 Grapheme-phoneme associations
Problems with fluency
Problems with comprehension
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
34
Characteristics of students
with LD in reading: Dyslexia
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
35
Dyslexia: General characteristics





Persistent difficulty in learning the
components of words and sentences.
A delayed language development.
Problems in spelling.
 Spatial directional confusion
results in difficulty in differentiating
letters that look similar
 Reversals of letters
Oral reading is marked by slow,
word-by-word reading.
Mispronounce a word but still know
what the text says (Mercer, 1997).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
36
Phonological and
orthographic dyslexia
Phonological dyslexia
 Cannot sound out words very well
and thus, have trouble reading new
words.
 Might drop some sounds from words.
 Might not be able to figure out that
blends like /fl/ or /str/ have more than
one phoneme to them (Hultquist,
2006).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
37
Phonological and
orthographic dyslexia
Orthographic dyslexia
 Problems with orthographic
processing leads to trouble with
reading and spelling because
orthographic processing deals with
the written symbols of language.
 Able to work with the sounds of
language but have trouble
remembering what letters or words
look like.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
38
Phonological and
orthographic dyslexia
Orthographic dyslexia (Con’t)
 Might have trouble remembering the
difference between the letters b, d,
and p.
 Might confuse words that look alike.
 Often read very slowly and make a
lot of errors when there are a lot of
words on a page.
 Might also skip lines when they read
(Hultquist, 2006).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
39
Two major types of dyslexic
problems
Auditory dyslexia
 Cannot perceive discrete sounds of
spoken language.
 Have difficulty discriminating sounds.
 Unable to associate specific sounds
with their printed symbols, thus have
great difficulty with spelling.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
40
Two major types of dyslexic
problems
Visual dyslexia
 Cannot correctly translate printed
language symbols into meaning.
 May see certain letters backward and
upside down.
 Also may see parts of words in
reverse.
 Students become frustrated trying to
read whole words of a sentence
(Johnson & Myklebust, 1967, cited in
Mercer, 1997).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
41
Specific difficulties of
dyslexic children
Phonological processing difficulties
 Phonological processing difficulties
are fundamental to dyslexia
(Snowling, 1995; Lundberg & Hoien,
2001).
 Dyslexic children may have difficulty
in detecting phonemes and linking
phonemes to graphemes (Riddick,
Wolfe, & Lumsdon, 2001).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
42
Specific difficulties of
dyslexic children
Visual processing deficits
 Difficulty in recognizing letters, with
frequent misidentification especially
of visually similar letters.
 Poor word recognition even for high
frequency words (Willows &
Terepocki, 1993).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
43
Reading comprehension
difficulties of dyslexic children



Poor reading comprehension
because of weak decoding skills.
In some cases, dyslexic children may
misread so many words that they
can’t understand what is written.
In other cases, their rate of decoding
is so slow that by the time they come
to the end of a sentence or
paragraph, they cannot recall what
has come before (Sanders, 2001).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
44
Students who experience
difficulties with writing

Written expression requires skills in
three major areas: handwriting,
spelling, and composition (Hallahan,
Lloyd, Kauffman, Weiss, & Martinez,
2005).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
45
Characteristics of students
with LD in writing: Dysgraphia
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
46
What is dysgraphia?


A learning disability that affects
writing abilities.
It can manifest itself as difficulties with
spelling, poor handwriting and trouble
putting thoughts on paper (National
Center for Learning Disabilities, 19992008).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
47
Specific difficulties of
children with dysgraphia




Illegible handwriting
Irregular and inconsistent letter
formations
Write legibly but very slowly and/or
very small
Ability to express ideas is interfered
(International Dyslexia Association,
1996-2007)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
48
Three types of dysgraphia

Dyslexic dysgraphia
 Spontaneously written text is
illegible.
 Oral spelling is poor.
 Copying of written text is normal.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
49
Three types of dysgraphia

Motor dysgraphia
 Both spontaneously written and
copied text may be illegible.
 Oral spelling is normal.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
50
Three types of dysgraphia

Spatial dysgraphia
 Illegible writing, whether
spontaneously produced or copied.
 Oral spelling is normal.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
51
Diagnosis of dysgraphia


Dysgraphia cannot be diagnosed
solely by looking at handwriting
samples.
Not only the finished product is
assessed, but also the process (The
International Dyslexia Association,
1996-2007).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
52
Characteristics of students
with LD in writing: Dyspraxia
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
53
Types of developmental
dyspraxia

Oral dyspraxia
A difficulty with executing non-speech
sounds.
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
54
Types of developmental
dyspraxia

Verbal dyspraxia
A speech disorder that affects the
initiating of movements required to
make speech sounds.
Children with verbal dyspraxia may:
 display highly unintelligible speech
 have delayed expressive language
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
55
Types of developmental
dyspraxia

Motor dyspraxia
A difficulty in sequencing and executing the
correct movement to perform age
appropriate skills in a coordinated manner.
Children with motor dyspraxia may have
difficulty with:
 coordination including awkwardness in
walk, clumsiness, or trouble with throwing
and catching a ball
 holding a pen or pencil properly
 handwriting
 age appropriate skills
 learning rules (Australian Dyspraxia
Association Inc., 1998-2008)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
56
Specific difficulties of children
with dyspraxia: Handwriting


Poor handwriting is one of the most
common symptoms of dyspraxia.
The handwriting difficulties experienced by
children with dyspraxia:
 Poor pencil grip.
 Abnormal posture.
 Incorrect letter formation.
 Erratic sizing of letter forms.
 Poor alignment of writing on the page.
 Inconsistent spacing between words,
either no spaces, too narrow or too wide
(Dixon & Addy, 2004).
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
57
(Handwriting of a Form 5 dyspraxic boy)
Prepared by Ruby Yang, Department of English,
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
58
Inclusive education in Hong
Kong

What are the obstacles in pursuing
inclusive education in Hong Kong?
59