To the Editor:
Thank you for reporting on the experience of students with learning disabilities at Dartmouth (Students Learn to Conquer Learning Disabilities, Nov. 4, 1999) and for featuring their personal stories.
The headline unfortunately did not match the content of the story. Accommodations such as extra exam time and even, for a few, waivers of the foreign language requirement surely can't be construed as conquest, though their learning disabilities can be somewhat compensated for with the use of technology available here.
The audiolingual method of foreign language learning which presents problems for certain learning disabled students -- because of auditory drill -- isn't alone responsible for their difficulty.
Pace is the much bigger issue at Dartmouth. I was parapharased as pinpointing the "Rassias method" when in fact we in the Academic Skills Center are careful not to use that description even as the students themselves -- and The Dartmouth, in two recent articles -- use that shorthand term to describe this problem. I wish John Rassias himself had been interviewed for his perspective if his name was used in the article.
I would like to point out that these same learning disabled students when they try to succeed in Latin or Greek, in which visual material is more available, often experience great difficulty because of the speed of instruction. For foreign language learning, ten-week terms don't allow a slower pace for auditory and reading comprehension, both of which would make that learning more successful for students with learning disabilities.
