Studies on developing a communicative competence in relation to people with different deficits;
cognitive, intellectual, neurological, provide interesting information in a discussion on cerebral,
cognitive and socializing mechanisms of language acquisition.
The analyses devoted so far to the communication of children with reduced intellectual norm
above all concentrated on showing relationships between the level of a cognitive deficit and
speech retardation, as well as description of a linguistic competence and skills connected to its
individual realizations. The main aim of the article was to show to what extent the students below intellectual norm
acquired the letter genre and define if the level of text realization enabled them to actively
participate in social life and development of their mental activity. The author treats the realization
of a genre model of the letter as an intermediary form inspiring to acquire language rules
combined with a search for the means of translation from a microworld to the macroworld.
On the basis of an exemplary material consisting of several dozen letters of mentally retarted
students from special and integrated schools in Silesia, the author presents components of the
genre model of the letter and discusses the structural, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic aspect of
the letter
