Supporting Students with Dyslexia in Giving Presentations
Victoria Mann and Yara Ali-Adib Victoria Mann is a specialist tutor In Special Learning Difficulties (SpLD) at the University of Sheffield. Her main interests are dyslexia and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - (STEM) subjects, multiple literacy practices, and English for academic purposes. She has presented at the British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP) International Conference and has been published in a number of academic journals, including ISEJ, Inform, and JIPFHE.
Yara Ali-Adib is an alumnus of the University of Sheffield.
Introduction Academic literacy is a specific genre, rarely encountered outside academic institutions and journals. Students embarking on further and higher education courses are required to get to grips quickly with this genre and write in an academic style, following the conventions of their institution or department. Academic literacy has been defined by Rafferty as:
Disciplinary and professional knowledge and skills, understanding the epistemology and 'landscape' of the discipline, and what it means to think and behave as a member of that disciplinary and/or professional community of practice (2010:4)
Developing these skills is therefore more than just the acquisition of core reading and writing to encode and decode text: the students are required to respond to diverse literacy practices. Whilst academic literacy has traditionally involved writing essays, other forms of assignments are also employed, such as creating posters or writing reflective journals. Students, therefore, are required to tailor their writing in order to meet the criteria for different types of assignments (Gibbs, 2006).
The development of these skills has been well documented (see Cason, L., 2011, for example). This paper, on the other hand, considers the specific demands that new presentation-based assignments make on students with dyslexia, and considers ways that tutors can support students in developing effective presenting skills.
Rationale for diversity in assignments This increasing diversity of task requires students to develop a range of different literacy skills. Hughes (2009) argues that this diversity provides an opportunity for students to develop multiliteracies in order to be prepared for the working environment, making the argument that the traditional essay-based assignment does not equip students for life after education. Gilbert (2012) suggests that a rationale for diversity could be that innovative assignment tasks result in more engaged and deeper learning, improving the learning outcomes of the students. She also argues that diverse activities can reduce the likelihood of plagiarism and can ensure that activities are more culturally relevant.
In terms of a definition of diversification in task, Nesi and Gardner (2006) divide diverse tasks into four themes: creative writing, empathy writing, reflective writing, and new technologies. Within these themes, presentations would appear to fall into the category of new technologies.
Specific elements of presentations Presentations differ from most other forms of assignment in that they require both oral and written communication skills; the use of new technology can also form part of the assessment criteria. Ramsey and Davies (2001) for example, have included use of graphical displays in their suggested marking criteria, advising that aspects of the presentation such as font size, readability of diagrams and charts, and
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