In my view, none of these ways of accommodating learners with dyslexia in the foreign language classroom is totally implausible or unfeasible. As a matter of fact, I believe that a number of them can be applied to our teaching context not only for students with learning difficulties or learners who experience problems with foreign language acquisition but also for learners who do not seem to display any difficultie in learning a foreign language.
For example, using technological devices, simplifying written instructions, repeating directions, highlighting important information, combining verbal and visual information and organising it into a visual format, presenting new information in simple steps and connecting it to prior knowledge, reviewing, using activities that involve all the senses, changing the response mode or allowing more time for the completion of a task are practices which we all use to a certain extent in order to make the lesson more appealing to the students, to facilitate them in their effort to acquire new knowledge or reduce stress and anxiety in the foreign language classroom.
However, there are two areas which present difficulties in my teaching context (primary school). The first one is peer-mediated learning. In some cases, students with a higher level of ability actually performed the task instead of guiding the students with the learning disability. In other cases, the former lost their patience in their effort to assist the latter so I had to intervene.Therefore, some training is required before I try to implement peer-mediated learning again.
The second area of difficulty is the provision of additional practice activities for students with learning difficulties. Since I have received very little formal training in this field so far, having to supplement the teaching material with practice exercises adapted to the needs of dyslexic learners is not an easy task for me. It is a process that involves a lot of experimentation on my part in order to find out which practices can bring the desirable learning outcomes.