Please help me help my Asperger's student

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Hello,

Please let me know if this post is in the wrong place. I am new to this forum.

I am a private tutor, who has been working with a student with Asperger's for the last four years. I am NT, but have found that we have developed a very good rapport and are able to communicate and understand each other very effectively and have made huge strides in academic progress (mainly going from my being the only thing holding organization together to self-organizing- actual "academics" have never been the issue). My student was only recently diagnosed with Asperger's, abotu a year previous to when we started working together. I have worked with almost 40 private students since I began tutoring about 7 years ago, but working with this student has been one of the most enlightening and gratifying experiences.

My student has recently switched schools (a good thing), and the new school requires 2 years of foreign language instruction. My student has a history of extreme difficulties with foreign languages, so I am hoping to find new methods to help with this difficulty. I don't know for sure if this difficulty is related to Asperger's, but thought it might be good to "go to the source" as it were. I know my student has difficulties with rote memory and remembering details even within context.

I would love feedback from Aspies who have had trouble learning a foreign language- are there certain methods or approaches that have helped, or others that have been totally useless? Anything that might be helpful in refining how I approach our sessions would be so appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

As an Aspie who struggled with foreign languages, but is now in college and minoring in Arabic, I know how hard it is to get proficient in a language. I know what helped me the most was something my high school French teacher did. With every new vocabulary set, everyone would make flash cards with either the english translation or a picture of the object on one side, and the french spelling on the other side. You then sit in groups of two to four, lay out all the cards in one set with one side or the other facing up. It's easier for me to have the French facing up to begin with. The teacher would then say either
A. the english word (if the french side is up)
B. the French word (if the english/picture side is up)
Then the first person to find and grab the correct card keeps it, and whoever has the most cards at the end wins. This is great for vocabulary help. Games for me were always a good way to get something down in my memory. I could start to see patterns, and hearing the sounds while searching for the words does wonders! You can hear the sounds, read them, and start to pick up what the letters sound like when put together.
To help with conjugation, I like it when I can see all the different forms laid out in a chart. You know, the verb in its regular form, and then in its masculine, feminine, singular, plural...excetra. The visual part is very beneficial. Also, one could have to root part (the part that stays the same) in black, and then have the parts that change in a different color, so the student can see at a glance what is different. Conjugations were always the hardest for me, and this really worked well. To this day I still make charts like that in my classes.

Of course, no one is the same, so you might have to tweak things a bit to get things going, but hopefully these ideas help! Good luck!

Those with AS generally have high verbal IQ's, and I don't think difficulty with learning a foreign language is an aspect of AS.

When I was learning another language, though I picked it up just fine from the book, one day the instructor brought in a few things, held them up in front of the class, and called them by the name in the language we were learning. Throughout class, she would occasionally pick them up and either say what they were again, or as what they were. I think it worked very well for most of the students.

I'm not entirely sure I can relate to your student considering I pick up language very quickly. I do, however have problems when it comes to thinking in 2 languages at the same time. In High School, learning Spanish, the class would be taught in English, but we were expected to answer questions posed to us in Spanish; I nearly failed one year of Spanish because of that. Now that I'm taking American Sign Language in college, there is no speaking in class at all, and we are expected to sign everything; it is a lot easier when you only have to think in one language.
I also think, for some Aspies at least, that sign language would be easier to learn. If your student is interested in sign, ask him if it is an option at his school.

I'm not sure if this is helpful or not, but thought I'd share.

I'm in a college level foreign language class right now and I've had difficulties. Our teacher showed us a chart of what methods of studying helped people retain the most amount of information, and while I don't remember each one, I remember that people who taught others the language (or what they knew of it) retained 90% of the information. So maybe let him be the teacher when you're doing foreign language? Also, I had a teacher in high school who told us to review our notes right before we went to sleep (like 30 minutes before) because the area of the brain that memorized language would work when we were sleeping...or something to that effect.

Thank you everyone for your replies- it is always helpful to get feedback and see what works for other people. Like you said, never_more, no one is that same and for me it is often a game of hit and miss; however, it is always helpful to hear what works for others as a place to start and to get ideas and strategies that might not have occurred to me.

Astaut, your post reminded me of my own experience learning a foreign language. Even though it was over 10 years ago, I remember very vividly a dream I had one night during high school after studying intensively for my French final the next morning. I had only completely 2 years of French, but the dream was entirely in (what seemed to me to be) flawless French- and, for some reason, featured me arguing very proficiently and vehemently with FDR. It totally makes sense that the language-acquisition portion of your brain is active during sleep- what a great tip.

Thanks to all who have responded, and I welcome any further tips or tricks that have been helpful for others.