Teaching Mentally Handicapped Children (MHC) Using Audio-Visual Aids: A Pedagogic & Psychoneurolinguistic Approach

Abstract

Background: Over the years, Audio-visual aids used to aid in the communication of our everyday ideas mainly those related to pedagogy which normally takes place in classrooms.

Aims: As a correlational research, the purpose of the present study is to focus on addressing how and why certain audio-visual aids are used to teach Mentally Handicapped Children (MHC). The aim is to measure whether or not using these Audio-visual aids affects positively the performance of MHC in comparison to their classmates who do not use them.

Method: A total of 157 MHC (girls= 67, and boys= 90) with severe receptive disorders, and presented as bewildered MHC at al-Malādhresidential school of Dhamār city in Yemen participated in this study. The age of 87 of them ranges between 5 to 12 years old. Students were divided into two groups: the first group was put in classes equipped with audio-visual aids while the second group was put in classes with no audio-visual aids at all.

Conclusions: Results show that audio-visual aids found to be effective on MHC’s performance. These audio-visual aids play an important role in teaching MHC who enjoy them and benefit from them. Audio-visual aids allow more professional and entertaining presentation for teachers of special education who use them to elicit desired response made by MHC. More importantly, they serve as means of treatment when teachers use them properly according to the size and nature of the impairment of MHC. The results suggest that teachers cannot teach MHC without using these audio-visual aids as means for teaching language components and skills.