Investigating Teachers’ Strategies in Teaching English to Students’ with Special Needs

Teaching English as a foreign language is a challenging task for a teacher. It is considerably harder to teaching English to students with special needs than to teach students in general. This study is intended to find out the strategies used by English teachers to teach students with special needs at SLB and to discover the way English teachers deal with students with special needs in learning English. This study was conducted at SLB Negeri Pidie and SLB Negeri Bambi. This research used a qualitative method. Data collection was conducted by interview. Participants of this study were four English teachers in these two different schools. The results show that there are three strategies used by teachers to teaching students with special needs, namely applying a particular method, such as role-play, repetition, and direct instruction, using media in teaching, and teaching simple vocabulary and sentences. These strategies are used by teachers to teach all types of students with special needs. Besides having physical limitations, children with special needs also have intellectual and mental problems; they have uncontrolled emotions, less serious about learning and often leave the class. The teacher's strategy for overcoming such problems is to gently persuading them to return to the class and playing the game.