Helping Students on the Autism Spectrum Get the Best Out of College by Kate Ripley

Author:Kate Ripley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2020-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Working with text

Students on the autism spectrum can typically decode text proficiently. The comprehension of a text requires a hierarchy of skills similar to those discussed for listening with understanding as presented in Chapter 4 in Figure 4.1. Comprehension may be compromised by semantic difficulties such as vocabulary and understanding complex grammar. Fortunately, unlike spoken language which is transient, written language is available to be revisited over time. Students in college will be expected to read text independently and extract the relevant information.

Students may be supported to do this by using a range of strategies:

• Simplification of the text or questions. For example, ‘There were many consequences of Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Outline the causes of this course of action and their effect’ can become: ‘Why did Hitler invade Poland? Describe what happened after Hitler invaded Poland. What did the invasion make other countries do?’

• Pre-preparation of text. Explain new vocabulary and any complex grammar. Clarify the order of events in the text. The order of mention is often not the order of action; for example, ‘Tom went outside to investigate the noise that had woken him from a dreamless sleep.’ Think of a title for each paragraph to clarify the main idea.

• Text modification. Add subtitles, underline or put in bold type the key points of the text. Highlight key words. This can be particularly helpful when dealing with dialogue or a play script. Different characters can have different colours. Use diagrams and mind mapping to summarize the text. Text modification can be seen in Figure 5.1.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 was significant because Russia struggled to beat an enemy that should have been dealt with easily. Russian defeats in battle, such as at Mukden, were humiliating for the government and angered the Russian people who could not understand how the Russian military had lost to an unimportant Asian country. This anger spilled over into a mini revolution. The tsar responded by creating the Duma, which allowed the population to have more say in the way the country was to be run. However, Nicholas clamped down on its powers (using the Fundamental Laws of 1906) so this was not such a big change after all. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, Nicholas II instructed his ministers to speed up industrialisation and to improve the railway system. Without this, Russia would never have been able to compete in a major conflict with the other European powers. Even though this was mostly successful, Russia still struggled to cope with the First World War.

(from OCR A-level History, Russia and its Rulers by Andrew Holland)

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