SuPporting foreign Language lEarNing for stuDents wIth Disabilities

Foreign language competence is regarded by intentional educational bodies as a key competence that enables persons to enjoy good learning opportunities, employability skills and fruitful leisure experience. However, this competence is hard to achieve in the context of disability of special educational needs. Students experiencing this type of difficulties in learning rarely enjoy excellent educational opportunities in their foreign language classes which are not universally designed to serve every user.

The aim of the project is to develop the research and new methodological and didactic strategies and interventions for learning and teaching foreign languages in inclusive groups. In these groups both regular students and students with diverse learning difficulties (SLD), connected with additional educational needs and disabilities should enjoy learning language experience in a universally designed and educationally excellent way.

There are two key elements of SPLENDID:

1. Listening to the users’ voices: we plan to conduct extensive interviews with students with learning difficulties to learn as much as possible about their experience in foreign language learning, tackling both the challenges and user-made strategies for reaching the desired multilingualism.

2. Bridging the gaps by increasing awareness of the students’ needs and developing intervention tools that support the SLD students in gaining new and strengthening the existing key competences.