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TEACHING GERMAN TO STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS HUNGARIAN AND INTERNATIONAL OVERVIEW
55-67Views:325Nowadays teaching children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is at the centre of attention. However, the field is really new in language pedagogy and, due to the students’ different abilities, a common methodology has yet to be developed. As a result, teachers’ creativity plays an even more important role, since they rely heavily on their own teaching experience. We will dive deeper into this topic in our two papers built upon each other, both dealing with the issues of teaching a second language to school-aged children with SEN. This present paper is about teaching German students with SEN at a Hungarian and an international level. Our research involves an international overview of several European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Russia, Estonia, and Italy). We contacted specific institutions in those countries and asked for their experience in teaching a second language to children with SEN. It also includes the language learning characteristics of children with SEN as well as the Hungarian rules governing their language teaching.
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TEACHING GERMAN IN NYÍREGYHÁZA TO STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS
69-81Views:204The present paper deals with the issues of teaching a second language to school-aged children with SEN in Nyíregyháza, Hungary. In our research, we made semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions featuring 25 children with Special Educational Needs in grades 7 and 8 in order to gain more information about their opinion and attitudes concerning German lessons at school, which in turn might help to unify the material and/or the methods. We also contacted the children’s parents (25) to fill out a questionnaire about their impressions and opinions with regard to their children’s German learning experience at school. Finally, we asked the two teachers to paint a broader picture of teaching German to children with SEN. The research took place in spring 2020 in Nyíregyháza. We did our research in Viktor Göllesz Vocational School, Skills Development School, Student Hostel, and Integrated Special Educational Methodological Institution as well as in Gusztáv Bárczi Primary School, Skills Development School, Student Hostel, and Integrated Special Educational Methodological Institution. To carry out our research, we asked for the parents’ and the head teachers’ ethical consent. Our experience underlines that all the participants in the teaching process feel that there is a need for unification. It would be much easier for all parties to have a German coursebook written for students aged 13-16 with SEN. Based on the answers of the language teachers, we came to the conclusion that they pay attention to individual development and playful, communicative language teaching, even though it is challenging to teach German to children with SEN, as they often have difficulties in their mother tongue.