Abstract
Educators need to understand the role of language and how it improves self-efficacy of gifted learners. Talented learners exhibit signs that demonstrate high personal competencies and have unique academic excellence which puts them ahead of others within a learning environment. However, educators need to understand the fact that it is important to provide such students with an atmosphere where they develop self-awareness, motivation, risk taking and confidence required to make them appreciate their giftedness. It is strategic for educators to employ advanced communication technologies to improve written skills of gifted learners. Besides having the ability to think critically and solve problems in real time, it is also important that gifted learners be able to express their ideas in written form and avoid incidences where they struggle with language mechanism. The case of Anya is used to discuss ways through which gifted learners could be competent in both oral and written communication skills.
Introduction
Gifted learners need to be provided with the most effective learning environment that provides them with the safety environment capable of fostering their emotional being. This implies that educators need to provide gifted learners with the opportunity to have positive social interactions and cultural understanding that makes them adapt to cultural diversity. It is only through adequate knowledge on the impact of giftedness and how social-emotional development that educators are able to design learning environment that motivate gifted learners and improves their cognitive skills. The paper relies on the case of gifted Anya to discuss ways through which gifted learners could develop proficiency in oral and written communication.
Providing an effective learning environment for gifted learners
Educators need to understand the role of language and how it improves self-efficacy of gifted learners. Talented learners like Anya exhibit signs that demonstrate high personal competencies and have unique academic excellence that puts them ahead of others in the learning environment. As a gifted learners, Anya has the capability to solve problems easily, has a lot of ideas and shows deep concern for other people’s welfare. However, the main challenge for Anya is on the fact that her language art skills are below average, something her mother is much concerned about. Educators need to understand the fact that it is important to provide students like Anya with an atmosphere where they develop self-awareness, motivation, risk taking and confidence required to make them appreciate their giftedness. The fact that Anya exhibits traits of anxiety could be attributed to the fact that she feels sad on her inability to boost her language mechanisms. Anya’s performance is superiors in aspects such as Verbal IQ and performance IQ but is poor in putting down her skills on paper such that she has difficulties with capitalization, punctuation and spelling skills. Through providing challenging roles, educators are able to maintain the high expectations from the gifted learners which in the end provide opportunities for gifted learners like Anya to make huge steps in self exploration techniques to improve their social interaction skills. It is important to develop the language and communication aspects of gifted learners in such a way that they demonstrate mastery of both oral and written skills. The fact the gifted learners such as Anya are fluent in oral communications more than written skills implies that educators have the role to play in making sure gifted learners develop sentences that are grammatically correct and which prove good punctuation, spelling and capitalization. It is strategic for educators to employ advanced communication technologies to improve written skills of gifted learners. Besides having the ability to think critically and solve problems in real time, it is also important that gifted learners be able to express their ideas in written form and avoid incidences where they struggle with language mechanism.
Foundational issues affecting gifted learners
Gifted learners at times tend to have the fear of certain concepts such that they would only prefer to subscribe to tasks they feel they could have the accurate answer. This is because of the stereotypes associated with gifted learners since the society tends to assume they are able to provide solutions to every problem. This implies that some gifted students would prefer factual writing compared to creativity thereby limiting their proficiency in written communications as with the case of Anya. Most of the gifted learners are perfectionists and would prefer getting everything right to avoid the discrimination that accompanies giftedness. Anxiety in Anya is possibly because of the fact that her family and teachers failed to identify her problem with elaborating written answers.
Educators need to identify the weaknesses in gifted students and provide them the opportunity to rely on topics that could reduce their anxiety and improve both verbal and written communications. The key aspects for Anya’s teachers and family is to emphasize on sentence structure and paragraphs in such a way that Anya will finally be able to improve her language mechanics. The stereotypes for gifted learners is that they are capable of having effective written communication in such a way that everyone expects them to have accelerated writing skills with no errors in punctuation, capitalization and spelling. Eventually, this causes panic and anxiety among the gifted learners if not provided with the appropriate learning environment that acknowledges the learners are not perfect and would require effective coaching to improve their skills in writing.
Strategies for helping gifted learners like Anya
Anya needs to be given the space to visualize and narrow the topics given for her to write on. Visualization is a necessary step in improving writing with Anya developing ways on how she can perceive writings in her thoughts. Imagination of own writings improves chances of Anya restoring confidence and develop a positive attitudes towards improving their language mechanics. The next objective for educators responsible for helping gifted learners with their written communication needs to be on allowing the learners to empty their thoughts by writing out their imaginations. No forms of criticism should be subjected to the learners when they are writing out their imagination to enable gifted learners relieve their anxiety. This implies that every idea put on paper by Anya needs to be accommodated no matter how weird they with measures used to allow her interact with her papers. It is important to ensure gifted learners with limitations on written communications are allowed to take structured writing lessons where they express their ideas in the best way possible. Coherence is a key consideration to take into account since their writing needs to have the flow that clearly supports their main idea. Practice makes perfect hence Anya needs to be provided with an environment that gives room for creativity and a detailed ways to construct sentences while at the same time being allowed to develop positivity towards improving her written communication.
Gifted learners need to be offered the best opportunity that allows them to clearly explain the main ideas in their writings with examples used to develop creativity among the learners. The role of enhancing creativity among gifted learners need to be undertaken by parents, educators and relevant people who understand the importance of improving ways through which learners could put their imaginations on paper. Topics could be given to the leaders to identify ways through which they can be creative in producing well-structured and coherent paragraphs. Anya needs to be taught on the fact that transitions are major elements of language mechanism hence need to be trained on how to write an organized paragraph. Simple transitions need to be used at the beginning with complex transitions used at later stages of her learning. Rules on grammar are necessary at this point especially for Anya who has poor mastery of written communication. Confidence in writing is largely achieved when students have a mastery of the grammar rules hence focus needs to be on making them understand application of grammatical aspects such as idioms, pronouns, and perfect sentences that take into consideration elements of present tense, past and future tense that are among the most important component written communications. Vocabulary is also important since gifted learners need to have the ability to rely on vocabulary that improves their written creativity.
Conclusion
Parents, educators and the society at large need to involve gifted learners in seeking strategies that make them improve their written communications. Vocabularies, sentence structures, spellings and punctuations are necessary in improving writing skills thereby making gifted learners confident whenever they take the initiative to engage in writing. However, learners need to be trained on all the types of writings that they are likely to engage with in the future. Understanding the types of essays is important since they enable learners to identify ways through which they can structure their written communications and understand all the requirements they need to put together in coming up with desirable articles.
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References
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Masadeh, S., & Alfatah, S. (2011). Understanding the Social and Emotional Life of Gifted Students. Tex: Prufrock Press.
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Sahin, C., & Schmdt, O. (2014). Teaching English Activities for the Gifted and Talented Students. Journal for the Education of the Young Scientist and Giftedness, 53-67.
