Enhancing the Communicative Skills of Normal ‎and Mentally-Challenged Learners through ‎Emo-Sensory Textbooks ‎

Abstract

Struggling with basic restrictions in mental operations, information processing, and social and communicative skills, mentally-challenged children learn with delay. Numerous methods have been proposed to enhance learning among the mentally challenged. One is emo-sensory education which highlights the interplay of senses and emotions and raises teachers’ awareness of practical sense and emotion utilization in class. This study analyzed emo-sensory text on Persian literature, basic sciences, and theology books of mentally-challenged fourth-graders in terms of senses and emotions. These books were compared to those utilized for normal fourth graders. The emo-sensory text analysis revealed no significant differences between these two sets of books regarding applying emo-sensory words. Material developers merely paid attention to the visual sense, while mentally-challenged and normal children are considerably different. Various senses have to be integrated into the textbooks to enhance learning and communicative skills, which seems to have been overlooked. As a result, authors should include more emo-sensory stimuli to boost information processing and benefit the mentally challenged.

Keywords

• communicative skills
• course book evaluation
• emo-sensory ‎education
• mentally-challenged learners