Borderline intellectual functioning refers to students whose intellectual level is slightly below that of their peers, typically with an IQ between 70 and 79, which leads to difficulties in learning and daily life adaptation. Students with borderline intellectual functioning learn slower than their peers, but this does not mean they are incapable of learning.
Common characteristics of these students include:
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Deficits in abstract and logical thinking abilities.
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Weak verbal expression skills and a limited vocabulary.
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Poor limb or hand-eye coordination, along with weaker self-care abilities.
In terms of learning, students with borderline intellectual functioning usually do not have much difficulty copying Chinese or English characters, but they require significantly more time to understand their meanings. Regarding English pronunciation, they generally do not struggle with recognizing individual letters or phonetic sounds; however, they often encounter difficulties when asked to bridge the two, as they struggle to grasp the abstract connection between phonetic symbols and letters. When learning mathematical concepts, they can successfully count and complete calculations based on patterns or specific rules, but they are often unable to solve problems once the concept or the way the question is phrased is changed.
Can children with borderline intellectual functioning still learn?
The answer is: absolutely, and "learning" is the core pathway for the development and progress of children with borderline intellectual functioning. Although they require more time to learn, "slower" and "borderline" by no means imply "stopped" or "impossible." Every child with borderline intellectual functioning possesses the potential to learn and grow.For these children, learning does not happen automatically; it requires systematic, strategic, and patient teaching methods to guide them. Below are the core principles for supporting their learning:
Core principles for helping them learn:
1. Early Intervention and Individualized Education Programs (IEP) The earlier targeted training begins, the better the results. After assessing the child's academic performance, we create a customized Individualized Education Program for them. This serves as a personalized "learning map," setting short-term and long-term goals that align with the child’s actual abilities. During the teaching process, we also identify the learning methods that best suit the individual child.
2. Systematic Instruction Tasks that a typical child might learn in one go need to be broken down into smaller steps for children with borderline intellectual functioning. We provide students with an overview of the learning concept, then systematically break it down into smaller steps. We teach them learning strategies to master the content, rather than relying on rote memorization. This not only allows the children to gain a sense of achievement after mastering these techniques but also helps them clearly understand how each individual concept fits together like a "puzzle." For example, when teaching the Chinese conjunction "因為" (because): we teach the character, pronunciation, real-life examples, pictures, sentence restructuring, and independent sentence construction in sequential order. By breaking these abstract concepts down into numerous small steps, we avoid the need for mindless rote memorization.
3. Concrete and Multi-sensory Learning These students often learn more effectively through things that are concrete, visible, and tangible. For instance, when learning Chinese vocabulary, we incorporate physical movements and images to help them understand character structure, and we use games to help them practice constructing and writing characters. In mathematics, children use physical objects and hands-on methods to discover patterns, allowing them to master addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through practical experience while enjoying the process. To return to the example of the conjunction "因為," we might have the child splashes water on an object to make it wet, helping them intuitively understand the cause-and-effect relationship.
