Academic mobilities of students with hearing impairment: Welcoming the challenges with specialized online course of written English
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| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This paper aims to present a specialized online course of written English for students with hearing impairment as well as reflect on the possible benefits of such a course in the context of European mobilities of higher education students. The reason for developing such a course is closely connected with the current focus on academic mobilities of higher education students. While mobilities undoubtedly bring a diversity of purposes and benefits for individuals such as access to programs unavailable at home, international awareness, competitiveness on the labour market as well as language skills, they also pose a significant challenge for participants, particularly those with specific needs. Students with hearing impairment are generally rather under-represented in mobility programmes for a number of reasons, the fear of instruction accessibility being the major one. Czech deaf students participating in EU mobilities often depend on speech to text reporting (STTR) and/or note-taking service provided by the host university. However, they have never received any formal training in this area and though they are familiar with this service, it is provided in Czech language at Czech universities. In addition, regular English lessons provided by the universities typically focus on mastering grammar rules and building vocabulary but do not offer any training of this kind. Therefore, this course aims to fill in the gap and prepare students with hearing impairment for international mobilities by creating a course concerned with the development of literacy skills through focused and graded practice together with continuous teacher feedback. Enhanced reading and writing skills in English will help the participants get better access to information needed for their academic activities, future careers as well as their active participation in international exchanges. The course is being developed as part of the LangSkills project (Language Skills of Deaf Students for EU Mobility) coordinated by the Teiresias Centre at Masaryk University. LangSkills is a European Union supported project (No. 2017-1-CZ01-KA203-035609) the main aim of which is to encourage the participation of Deaf, deaf, and hard of hearing higher education students in academic mobilities through a series of actions. |