Inclusion in LCTL instruction takes some extra thought

I recently facilitated a session on accessibility and disability inclusion in LCTL assessment for the National LCTL (less commonly taught languages) Resource Center’s Professional learning community.

I was discussing the importance and helpfulness of embracing multimodality in teaching strategies including assessments, when one participant asked a question specific to her language teaching context that I think is very typical of LCTL educators’ questions in terms of its sheer uniqueness. Here’s a little context, first:

This instructor teaches Yiddish. Yiddish erects particular barriers for students coming from certain home languages, like a different alphabet. For beginner learners, reading the new script can be difficult. So, she often offers scaffolding in the form of listening support linked to written passages. She described a student for whom aural processing was a particular challenge, rendering her go-to aural scaffolds unhelpful.

The instructor’s question:

What do you do when what is a common solution for you—like offering a listening option to support understanding something written—is actually one of a student’s individual difficulties?

My answer:

That is tricky, indeed.

First: keep doing what you’re doing. Just because it isn’t helpful for 100% of your students 100% of the time, doesn’t mean adding a second modality is not a worthwhile habit to keep.

Second: consider getting a little more nuanced for that one student, where possible. Without knowing more about how the student’s difficulty manifests in classroom learning, I was just guessing, but I offered the instructor some options she could try.

I think one thing to do might be to chunk up the listening into small strings of input rather than long and continuous ones which can be arduous for anyone and particularly so for learners with processing challenges. Offering time and opportunity for playback of listening chunks can also be helpful.

Sometimes a simple modality choice is enough support for students, and sometimes it’s necessary to drill down a little deeper to really address the heart of the challenge.