L'insegnamento della Lingua Inglese a studenti con Disturbi Specifici dell'Apprendimento: significato, implicazioni e casi di studio.

The basis of this study lies in the importance of understanding what Specific Learning Disorders are and, especially, how they relate to the teaching of the English language in the Italian school system. In most cases, learning takes place automatically, but the smaller percentage of people who present obstacles in this process – no longer defined as “natural” – should not be neglected. The difficulties are typical characteristics of any learning that normally vanish with the passing of time; however, for some pupils, the deficit does not have temporariness and, therefore, is configured as persistent and capable of altering the processes of automatic learning such as reading, writing and calculation. These difficulties are defined with the acronym SLD – Specific Learning Disorders – and have an extremely delicate and very problematic clinical role. They affect about 3-4% of the school population and, unfortunately, tend to be often interpreted as poor commitment, laziness, or simple listlessness on the part of the child. When the interpretation tends to be wrong, hasty, and coarse, real problematic situations are created, also increased by the underestimation of the disorder itself that does not allow a timely diagnosis and intervention. Moreover, even if they manifest themselves with different seriousness, they heavily affect the general scholastic performance creating in the pupil situations of discomfort also at a relational and social level. In the last twenty years, there has been an evolution in the attention to these issues both by the Italian Legislature and by international scholars, thus allowing the delineation of laws, theories and interventions that could help, explain, and intervene to improve the living conditions of these people. Particularly, regarding the learning of the English language, the difficulties are even more remarkable. This is because English, differently from Italian, is an opaque language: this means that the correspondence between spelling and phonological units is irregular and unpredictable. In this regard, the presence of correspondence facilitates students whereas the lack of transparency represents a problem and a factor of difficulty. Furthermore, the process of learning a foreign language is influenced by factors of different nature: among the most common, contextual, linguistic, and personal variables are to be mentioned