Teachers who, generally, rely on printed materials to teach vocabulary and grammar to sighted students, may find it challenging to teach vision impaired ESL students. Since it's possible to learn a language by hearing and speaking, there are still plenty of activities that can help vision impaired students to learn English. There are methods for teaching vision impaired ESL students. Some of them are speaking activities, adapted and enhanced listening, and tactile and kinesthetic teaching methods.

Enhance common listening and speaking activities. Talk your student through comprehension and grammar questions related to listening exercises. For speaking practice, bring realia, raised line drawings or tactile pictures. Ask the student to tell you something about the object or image. For example, the student might describe the scene depicted in a tactile image. You'll rely heavily on verbal activities, so prevent boredom by choosing those that encourage spontaneity and creativity. Role plays and timed speaking are good choices.

Teach grammar through touch and movement. Make Cuisenaire rods tactile by gluing on textured material such as nubby fabric, rubber or sandpaper. Choose a texture for each color. Use each texture to represent a part of speech and build sentences with the rods. Rods can also represent parts of words, such as suffixes and prefixes. To teach prepositions, have the student physically place a rod at different points relative to another object. In a safe environment, try the Total Physical Response method in which students respond physically to directions.

Make reading activities accessible and efficient. For low vision students, always use a pre-reading activity before working with a text. After reading, focus on general comprehension, since scanning and skimming exercises may be exceptionally difficult. For Braille-literate students, translate words or phrases with an online Braille translator, print the text and put a drop of glue on each dot to make it legible. Although not practical for long texts, this can help you teach commonly confused words, such as "to" and "too" or "sheep" and "ship."

Review material with games. Games let you repeat vocabulary and grammar points verbally without boring the student. Possible games for vision impaired ESL students include twenty questions, fortunately/unfortunately, I went to the market, two truths and a lie, If my friend were..., and Chinese whispers. Adapt common games for vision impaired students. For example, adapt the phrasal verbs card game by choosing one verb and reading a list of prepositions, allowing the student to decide whether each preposition can be used with that verb or not.

Provide homework oriented towards listening and speaking. A vision impaired student can listen to a recording at home and answer comprehension questions verbally on tape or via computer. If your student has a screen reader, provide written material on disk. Encourage the student to find a conversation partner, whether in person or online, and set discussion topics for homework.

Tips:

Record each lesson on tape so the student can listen again at home. Make raised line drawings by gluing string along printed lines. Create tactile pictures with textured material and small objects like buttons and coins. Commercially made tactile picture books with Braille text are also available.

Students from developing countries may be unaware of assistive technologies like talking dictionaries, text-to-speech scanners, screen readers and voice recognition programs. Familiarize yourself with what's available and stay alert for problems the student is having so you can suggest solutions. There are different types of Braille. If you use Braille material, make sure it's the type your student can read.