Teacher education

Dyslexia for teachers of English as a foreign language (Dystefl2)

DysTEFL2 project is innovative and practical in its content, structure and format. It addresses a gap in the field of English language teacher training where the needs of dyslexic students are frequently neglected. It provides both a solid theoretical foundation about the nature of dyslexia and practical suggestions for classroom teaching, task and curriculum design, and assessment. The course is unique in its focus on dyslexic language learners, in its approach to teacher training and in providing freely downloadable booklets and a complete set of self-study materials. An important innovative feature of the course is that it takes a task-based approach to teacher development and employs tasks to enhance learning and reflection.

Website of the project: http://dystefl2.uni.lodz.pl/

Link to the free self-study course: http://dystefl2.uni.lodz.pl/?page_id=1053

DysTEFL2-booklet: Nijakowska, J., Kormos, J., Hanusova, S., Jaroszewicz, B., Kálmos, B., Imrene Sarkadi, A., Smith, A. M., Szymańska-Czaplak, E., Vojtkova, N., Alexiou, T., Košak Babuder, M., Mattheoudakis, M., Pižorn, K. (2016). DysTEFL2 – Dyslexia for teachers of English as a foreign language. Łódź: Department of Pragmatics, University of Łódź.

ENGaGE project: Teacher training materials in English and German

The ENGaGE Teacher Training Programme aims to raise teachers’ awareness of the needs of language learners with dyslexia and specific learning difficulties. Its goal is also to enrich teachers’ methodological toolkit to be able to cater for these needs in the language classroom. This innovative free online programme accompanies the ENGaGE digital task bank developed for dyslexic language learners aged 10-14. It familiarises teachers with the potentials of the task bank and offers a wide repertoire of useful teaching methods, techniques and tools that they can apply to foster inclusion, collaboration and intercultural communication in language learning. The teacher training materials are available in English and German.

Link to the free self-study course in English: http://engage.uni-miskolc.hu/index.php/teacher-training-programme/

Link to the free self-study course in German: http://engage.uni-miskolc.hu/index.php/lehrer-fortbildung/

Link to the ENGaGE project homepage: http://engage.uni-miskolc.hu/

Dyslexia and Foreign Language Teaching: Massive Open Online Learning Course

Each year in April we run this massive open online learning course in collaboration with Future Learn. This course offers practical tools, as well as theoretical insights, to best accommodate and meet the needs of students with dyslexia in foreign or second language classes. The materials and tasks in the course are designed to be applicable for various age groups of dyslexic students and for a variety of language learning contexts. These include both the teaching of English as a foreign or second language, and the teaching of modern foreign languages.

Link to the course: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/dyslexia

Teacher training resources for the South-Asian context

sri lankan project

This website produced by Dr. Bimali Indrarathne contains information on six projects conducted in Sri Lanka aiming at English language teachers, primary grade teachers and university English language teachers. The materials include a teacher training guide on English language teaching and dyslexia, a teacher training guide for primary teacher educators and a supplement for identifying dyslexic language learners.

Link to the materials: http://www.dyslexiaprojectsl.com/materials/