How Can Teachers Work Around Students’ Trauma
Language acquisition is an ordinary process that human beings go through. This cognitive ability that enables us to communicate needs, emotions, and feelings is what differentiates us from other species.
Language acquisition occurs early in an individual’s life. During the critical period, the child goes through the rapid development of language, and it is a crucial time for the child to acquire the language which would be hard if passed this period, hence the name. In this period, the child may face a few obstacles like a trauma that could affect his/her language acquisition or even his/her second language learning in the future.
In this article, the main focus will be how childhood trauma or PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) affects the process of acquiring or learning a language, and what should be taken into account when teaching a student that has had traumatic experiences in the past.
Key Terms: Trauma, Language acquisition, Language learning.
Trauma is damage to the mind of the individual that occurs as a result of suffering from a distressing event like an accident, natural disaster, war, or child abuse. It is usually a result of an immense amount of stress that exceeds the individual’s ability to take the emotions involved with that experience. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), trauma is “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster.”
Trauma has several types that are different in the method the individual gets them, including:
1. Acute trauma is the kind of trauma that is obtained through one stressful experience. For example, an accident.
2. Chronic trauma is the kind of trauma that is obtained through repeated exposure to stressful events. For example, domestic abuse.
3. Complex trauma refers to exposure to multiple traumatic events.
Language Acquisition is the process through which human beings cognitively pick up their mother tongue through an innate ability.
Language Learning: Scholars have distinguished between language acquisition and language learning as the latter refers to the process of learning another language subsequently to having the native language after acquiring it.
Regardless of race, sex, or religion, all human beings are prone to experiencing stressful events throughout their lives, but what kind of trauma exactly are we talking about? It is not the everyday situations like losing a class competition as a kid, but the type of severe stress situations like repeated physical or emotional abuse, bullying, neglect, or even more significant tragedies like war. These kinds of recurring traumatic experiences can significantly affect the individual’s health to the point of a higher risk of chronic diseases and shorter life expectancy.
According to the American Psychiatric Association (2013), one of the reasons for developing or worsening child onset fluency disorder or commonly known as stuttering or stammering is family dynamics as having high-stress levels at home, high expectations for the child can contribute to a certain level of stuttering and make it harder for the child to communicate properly.
Many studies have been conducted to examine refugee ESL students’ process and competency compared to students that have not faced the same traumatic experiences. The study of Stevens (2001) showed that Cambodian refugees in Australia experienced symptoms that relate to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and that they experienced symptoms that directly affected their cognitive and learning functions like poor concentration and loss of memory. Ying (2001) also revealed a case of a refugee having poor concentration, severe headaches, and nightmares that all ultimately affected his learning ability in general, and not only his language learning process.
English language teachers should take into consideration the social and psychological situations of their students, and that not all students have had similar life experiences. In the study of Medley (2012), some solutions that could help teachers deal with students that have gone through traumatic experiences were offered:
· Firstly, in order to have multiple channels for self-expression and language learning, teachers should include intelligences that may be neglected in traditional language classrooms as a way to address the needs of trauma-affected students.
· Secondly, he stated that teachers should integrate language instruction with self-expression. Thirdly, he also added that teachers should include content-based language instruction that explains the trauma-healing process.
These cases and studies only show that trauma not only affects the individual mentally and physically but also could affect cognitive learning abilities and could slow down the learning process, especially in a language which is the main method of communication that distinguishes human beings from other species.