Multilingualism In Children

Knowing a language other than the mother tongue is a critical concern in today’s world of international communication. According to Rondal (2000), those people who can speak only in one language are regarded as illiterate. As exhibited by research, there are a lot of advantages of bilingualism including broad cognitive development and executive functions enhancement through life span (Bialystok & Craik, 2010). While multilingualism is an obsession for many language teachers, it may seem ridiculous when it comes to teaching it to children with intellectual disabilities. Since these individuals suffer from maladaptive skills functioning and slower than normal intellectual development (Hawkins, Eklund, James & Foose, 2003), even the think of teaching

Children with developmental disorders may have impairment in any measures of their executive functions (Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996; Costanzo, Varuzza, Menghini, Addona, Gianesini & Vicari, 2013). Moreover, intellectually disabled students have deficits in mathematical and linguistic abilities which adversely affect their educational accomplishments (Rosenberg, Westling & McLeskey, 2008). Regarding language development in children with disabilities, SubbaRao (1992, p.123) mentions that “Generally, it is accepted that the speech and language development in mentally retarded children is delayed as compared to normally developing children. That means to say that mentally retarded children develop speech and language skills in the same sequence as do normal children and the factors underlying development are same. However, they develop skills more slowly and they have a lower ceiling of development than normal individuals. The available evidence suggests that mentally retarded children are likely to show specific difficulties or delays in the structural aspects of language particularly in respect of sentence length, syntax and sentence

Sparks, Ganschow, and Patton (2008) claimed that through provision of sufficient support, students with learning disabilities can improve in their foreign language learning. In this line, TOPPELBERG, et al (2013) mentions that quality of L2 input is of crucial importance in children with developmental disorders due to their deficits in many areas including communicative, discourse and pragmatic skills. Krapez (2010) also mentions that through using special pedagogical approaches or methods of training, and teachers’ high level of foreign language proficiency, students at-risk can succeed in learning certain foreign language skills. In support of this view, DiFino & Lombardino (2004) states that traditional methods which focused solely on memorization of lexicon and structures of a language aggravated language learning difficulties of students with learning disabilities. Therefore, appropriate alternations should be made to curriculums to allow students with learning disabilities to enter language programs by considering their special needs for