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In most cases, there is no reason why a child with special educational needs or disability cannot learn a second language. As long as this process takes place in the most natural way possible, resembling how a first language is learned.

When talking about special educational needs and disability, each case is different and should be assessed on an individual basis by a specialist. It is not uncommon to hear parents and teachers arguing that children with special educational needs shouldn’t try to learn a second language. Unfortunately, these statements are often based on preconceptions based on myths about a person’s abilities as well as on the way languages should be taught.

Language as a right

The British Council Spain and Instituto Cervantes held an event in March 2023 with the focus of bringing together experts from the Bilingual Education context in Spain to remind society of the many advantages of learning a second language. 

In line with the The European Parliament in its resolution (2021), the panelists stressed the idea that, given the economic, social and cultural benefits of learning a second language, when a person is denied this, they are being denied a fundamental right.

Cognitive benefits of bilingualism

Not only should learning an additional language not constitute a cognitive challenge for a student with special needs as long as it is taught in the right way, but it has actually many added benefits for our cognition. Bialystock (2015) and other researchers were able to observe the enhanced control of bilinguals over executive functions. 

Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that allow us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and multi-task. They depend on: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. Students with certain special educational needs such as ADHD and ASD, will often show low control over some or all of the executive functions. Speaking an additional language will help strengthen an individual’s control over these functions with the resulting positive effect in other areas of non-linguistic learning and in their life as a whole.

High quality education for students with special educational needs is high quality education for all.

Schools’ resources, teacher training and high student ratios can be a first hurdle to inclusive education. In the view of the social model, disability is a product of external barriers and attitudes, rather than within the individual. It is society that is disabling when there are no ramps for a wheelchair user to access a building, the font of an exam can’t be enlarged enough for a student to read it or a class activity is not well scaffolded for all students to be able to complete it.

Universal Design for Learning provides school practitioners with guidelines to make sure that all students are being included by giving multiple ways of engaging, accessing information, and responding to it. When all lessons are planned taking these principles into account, there are much higher chances that every learner’s needs will be met. Teachers will still need to scaffold tasks for some and stretch them for other students, but this will be done more easily when it becomes the rule rather than the exception. 

Learning a language is a communicative process that takes time and needs plenty of practice. The majority of a language’s elements are hard to learn in an explicit way. When a child has a special educational need due to which they might have low working memory, a short attention span or need more time to process information, being taught in a way in which they heavily rely on all these areas will make learning more difficult. 

Human beings have an innate ability for languages. Bilingualism is the natural state for half of the population of the world and no one would ever doubt a child’s capabilities to learn their mother tongue. Despite this, a second language is often taught very differently from how a person learns  their first language. 

Children and adults have different ways of learning a language. While children learn using their intuition, musicality, creativity and imagination, adults draw on their logic, reasoning and analytical skills. Children are also going through a sensitive period in which language learning as a whole is easier. However, this is true as long as it is done in the natural way in which a first language is always learned.

Teaching a language by asking a young learner to analyse a sentence structure, memorise a long vocabulary list or pay attention to a teacher or a book for a long time will mean asking them to go against their natural mechanisms for language learning. Raquel Muñoz, English teacher in the Spanish National Association for the blind (ONCE), reminded teachers in her conference in 2023, that a lesson designed in this way will also most certainly fail to include some of the students that cannot rely on these skills for their overall learning.

In most cases, there is no reason why a student with special educational needs or disability cannot learn a second language. As long as this process takes place in the most natural way possible, resembling how a first language is learned, and the student’s specific needs are taken into account, a learner will be able to take advantage of the countless benefits of learning a foreign language.

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