How to Teach English to the Blind
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Transcript of How to Teach English to the Blind
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8/3/2019 How to Teach English to the Blind
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Teaching English to Blind and Visually Impaired Pupils
Anna Maria Aiazzi
Anna Maria Aiazzi graduated in Modern Foreign Languages (English Language andLiterature) at the University of Florence on October 29th, 1999, discussing a thesis on V.
Woolf's 'Orlando'. She took her Ph-D. degree in English and American Literature at the
University of Florence on July 19th, 2004, discussing a dissertation on English Modernist
writers (Vorticism) and Quantum theories. Since 2002 she has been teaching English
Language and Culture mainly in Italian secondary schools of second degree, in and around
Florence From 2004 to 2006 she attended the SSIS-course at the University of Florence. In
April 14th, 2007) she also took a degree as Teacher for Impaired Students at the University of
Florence (to teach in secondary schools of first and second degree). While attending this
course she taught in a special school for blind pupils in Florence. She is among others the
author of the article 'Teaching as a Matter of Love' published in HLT .
E-mail: [email protected]
In the last school year I had the opportunity to teach English at a state vocational school for
blind and visually impaired pupils. This school gives Italian blind adolescents and adults the
possibility to take a Certificate of Secondary School Education, to learn a job and become
(hopefully) economically independent. The school, which has got a well established
reputation, offers a three-year course for switchboard operators (or massophysiotherapists)
which attracts pupils from all over Italy. In that same period I was attending a post-graduation
university course as a teacher for impaired students, so I was particularly motivated to teach
to blind pupils because I could have the opportunity to experiment in practise what I was
investigating in theory about typhlology. I must admit that the attendance at the course provedto be fundamental for me, not only from a methodological and pedagogical point of view, but
also from a psychological one, because I felt supported and reassured about what I was doing.
First of all I was equipped with basic instruments which helped me to break the ice with my
pupils and to avoid some common mistakes people usually make when dealing with the blind.
In fact, people speaking to a blind person usually tend to censor their speech by avoiding
verbs like to see, to look, to watch, partially out of embarrassment and partially out of
the mistaken belief that they could hurt the sensibility of the blind or visually impaired
person. But blind people can also see, look and watch, not obviously through the sight
but through the sense of touch, which is their privileged way of approaching the outer world.
So, avoiding to mention these verbs of perception and the actions they imply makes the blindor visually impaired only feel more conscious of their disability.
Another important step was to learn the Braille alphabet and be able to read Braille writing.
Little by little I was able to correct the written works in Braille typewriting some of my pupils
did. Although such work was time and energy consuming, it was very helpful to me because I
could better understand the practical problems my pupils had to face when writing or reading
in Braille English. Only a few of them, though, wrote and read in Braille; most of my pupils
wrote their English works on computers using special hardware for the blind and visually
impaired, such as scanners and Braille displays, vocal syntheses and screen readers. In any
case, learning Braille gave me the opportunity to get closer to my pupils perspective and
better understand the limitations and difficulties with which they processed the Englishlanguage and culture through reading and writing.
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Even though blind pupils are generally very quick at reading Braille, with their fingers
flowing harmoniously through the pages, they still need more time to make sense of what they
read. Teachers should bear in mind that blind pupils might not be able to keep the pace of
their classmates since they have more difficulties in understanding the meaning of a text,
being their attention more focussed on deciphering letters and words than on processing their
meaning. The teacher has to stop very often to make sure that all the pupils can follow andunderstand the text correctly: this takes a lot of time and energy, both on the pupils and on
the teachers part. In fact some pupils, unable to follow, can get distracted (lose the tread) and
get discouraged. Blind pupils and their teachers have to come to terms with time, being aware
that they need much more time in anything they do than fully sighted pupils.
Books in Braille can be another pressing problem, because they are expensive and difficult to
be found. Furthermore, Braille writing takes a lot of space on the page, so that a page in black
ink can become three pages in Braille. So, books in Braille are very voluminous and not
handy. My pupils had no English books in Braille and I had to prepare my own material using
the technology of the school. For the visually impaired I prepared large prints of the same
files according to their residual vision.
With Braille it is important to keep in mind that writing follows in a continuous way on only
one line, so it is not possible to skip lines to make random lists or to draw charts, because
pupils can get confused. Blind pupils, when they do exercises in English, in handwriting or on
the computer, have to have all the elements they need on the same line and cannot skip lines
forwards and backwards to look for useful information, as in fill-in exercises, otherwise they
get lost. The kind of exercises blind pupils can do, and the kind of activities teachers can
arrange on paper, are thus rather limited and repetitive. I came to terms with this problem
trying to do grammar exercises as much as possible orally by providing hints at the missing
information the pupils needed to complete their exercises.
Another obvious limitation is the fact that teachers cannot use images, drawings or pictures to
teach English, or anything implying the visual code, such as blackboards. If we consider that
eighty per cent of learning is through sight, this is a severe limitation, also because, on my
part, I am an essentially visual-verbal learner and teacher, that is, I make an extensive use of
the visual code when I teach, by writing on the board, gesturing, miming and showing objects
to pupils. So, I had to re-invent and adapt my teaching method, trying to use, as much as
possible, other sensory codes such as hearing and touch.
Here the risk that many teachers can run is to use hearing as a privileged code to teach blind
pupils too much, by trying extensively to put ideas into words and talk about things. Thisexcessive tendency to teach through the use of the verbal code is dangerous because it can
misdirect pupils and make them build distorted mental images. Relying on the auditory code
too much is also dangerous because blind pupils have, on their own, a natural tendency to
blindisms, that is, to speak extensively and repeat words and gestures without knowing their
real meaning, so teachers may tend to encourage them when, on the contrary, they should try
to restrain their pupils in case of exaggerations. If it is not easy to find a right balance in the
use of the different sensory codes, teachers should always remember that, as far as possible,
the best way for their blind pupils to learn and to build reliable mental images is through
touch. I had the occasion to experience it when I could make my pupils touch geographical
maps in relief of the United Kingdom, instead of simply describing them orally.
I have spoken of blind and visually impaired pupils without pointing out that these terms
have totally different implications. A blind person can be blind from birth, can have become
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blind in early childhood or in different phases of his/her life: a person who is blind from birth
has more difficulties in building effective mental images and in processing the outer world
than a person who has seen for some time and can remember what he/she has seen. The latter
does not usually need a lot of explanations about things and events, whereas the former will
never be able to understand certain mental concepts such as colours or particular shapes and
will never have an independent motor development. A visually impaired person can havedifferent degrees of residual vision which can range from low vision to legal blindness:
different stages of visual impairment can affect his/her life in a significant way which is
difficult to categorise.
With blind or visually impaired pupils, in any case, rapport is fundamental: to establish a
human relationship with them, which is really sympathising and not patronising, is the
essential step to teach anything. If this is true for any pupil, it is truer for blind pupils or any
kind of senso-motor and mental impaired pupils. These pupils are more sensitive and
psychologically fragile than other pupils; they need to rely completely on their teachers and
feel self-assured in order to be able to develop their cognitive skills. In the case of blind or
visually impaired pupils we have to consider that they are very unsure about the world thatsurrounds them because they cannot rule over it completely; in particular, blind pupils from
birth are usually very unsure persons who incessantly pursue reassurance and gratification. If
it is right to give them verbal reassurance when necessary (i.e. to explain them what or who is
in a room), teachers should avoid to treat them as young children who constantly need to be
guided. It is also important to pay attention to ones tone of voice, because the blind are very
sensitive to it and can interpret peoples moods from slight modifications of it. A slightly
angry or bored tone can be misinterpreted and can affect the learning-teaching process if not
well understood by the pupils or explained by the teacher.
The innate egocentrism and uncertainty about the outer reality blind people have can often
affect classroom activities, especially pair-work and group-work, which are very difficult to
be carried out with blind and visually impaired pupils, because they ask continually the
teachers attention on them and need to be constantly reassured on what they have to do, even
if the teacher has previously given them plenty of explanations on what they are expected to
do and knows that they are perfectly able of doing it by themselves. Nonetheless, they are
rather passive in their general attitudes and tend not to take any initiative, constantly
interrupting the lesson and asking for further explanations which are not needed, so that they
seem not to be able to work independently without the teachers support.
In this respect, I have realized that I would not help them by giving them all they asked me,
that is, by complying with their passive attitude and self-centredness; on the contrary, the bestway to help them was to stimulate them, as far as possible, to find answers and solutions by
themselves, that is, to become more responsible of their learning process in order to increase
their self-assurance and esteem. What gratified me most was my pupils curiosity and their
desire to go on studying English independently, exploiting all the resources they could find
out of the school: this confirmed me they had understood that English is a live language and
not only a school subject as they had always considered it before.
References
Barnes R., Kashdan S., Teaching English as a new Language to Visually Impaired and Blind
ESL Students: Problems and Possibilities, American Foundation for the Blind(www.afb.org).
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Seng C., Teaching English to Blind Students, BBC British Council(www.teachingenglish.org.uk).
VoiceBlindness in Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org).
Zanobini M., Usai M. C.,Psicologia della disabilit e della riabilitazione, Milano,FrancoAngeli, 2005.
The Expert Teacher course can be viewed here.
The Building Positive Group Dynamics course can be viewed here.
The Building Positive Group Dynamics course can be viewed here.
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http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/http://www.en.wikipedia.org/http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/http://www.en.wikipedia.org/