Teaching South African Sign Language as a second language to university students: an integrated pedagogy

South African Sign Language (SASL) has become an increasingly popular language that hearing university students want to learn as a second language. This requires more qualified SASL instructors and new curricula at South African universities. This paper considers ways in which challenges associated with the teaching and learning of SASL can be overcome. Krashen’s Comprehension Input Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis form the theoretical framework as reference to our own independent experience, praxis, and reflection. This study considered different teaching methods and pedagogies and found the post-method approach suggested by Kumaravadivelu (2003) a viable method for teaching SASL as a second language. This method aligns with the method we had independently identified as the most empowering for teachers to create their own strategies focused on their intuition, experiences and pedagogy. Therefore, we do not favour one specific method above another, but rather adopt an integrated approach. We make a few suggestions regarding sign language curriculum content and further research in sign language as an L2, which need urgent attention.

Collaborative writing and process writing approach: The effect and students perception

Over the last few years, the researchers and practitioners have acknowledged the potential benefits attained from collaborative writing activity which was based on the well- known theories of social constructivist and output hypothesis. Grounding from these theories, this study examined the collaborative writing combined with writing process approach to find out the effect of the task on students' ability in writing an explanation essay and students perception about the task. Two intact classes involving 30 students in each class participated in this study. One class as the experimental group completed the writing task using process writing in pairs while the other class completed the task individually. The students in experimental group were given a questionnaire right after the treatment to pool their views on the task. Post-test by administering the writing test was conducted to see the effect of the treatment. Data analysis revealed that students employing collaborative writing using process writing had better writing ability than students working individually. It was also found that most students felt that they gained many benefits from doing collaborative writing. These findings suggested that collaborative writing combined with process writing can be implemented in EFL writing pedagogy to improve students' writing ability. HIGHLIGHTS 1. Collaborative writing has the positive effect on the overall writing ability and on each element of writing skill.2. Collaborative writing not only encouraged the students to share the knowledge they had to other members but also it gave them remarkable input they needed in improving thewriting skill.

The Output Hypothesis and its influence in the second language learning/teaching: An interview with Merrill Swain

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an interview with Merrill Swain, a Canadian researcher who proposed the Output Hypothesis, a way to understand the relevance of producing (by speaking/writing) the foreign language during its learning. According to Output Hypothesis, the learner may notice gaps while, test cognitive hypothesis and think in a metalinguistic way while producing the foreign language. This hypothesis influenced plenty of research in the second language learning/teaching field around the world, considering Brazil as well.

Impact of Pushed Output on Students' Oral Production

With the advent of communicative methodologies, the promise to develop both fluency and accuracy was made as a goal for teaching and learning English as an international language. However, it did not happen (Richards, 2008). In an attempt to equalize students’ both semantic and syntactic competence, this study investigates the impact of Swain’s (1985) oral pushed output hypothesis on EFL intermediate students’ L2 oral production under a mixed method approach. The participants were 16 seventh grade EFL students from a private school in Ibagué, Colombia that were randomly assigned to an output and a non-output group. For five weeks, the output group underwent oral pushed output activities while the non-output group was merely exposed to comprehension activities. Quantitative and qualitative instruments to collect the data included pretest and posttest, audiorecordings, stimulated recalls, and interviews. Results revealed that although pushing students to produce meaningful oral output does not promote significant noticing of their linguistic problems in past narrative forms, students can modify more oral output through one-way pushed output activities than two-way activities and equalize their semantic and syntactic competence since they can engage in both processsings. Additionally, students perceived oral pushed output as an affectivity regulator in L2 oral production and as a trigger of exposure to L2 vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

“Só mais um minutinho, teacher”: planejamento estratégico colaborativo e individual para tarefas orais em L2 em uma escola pública

Bearingin mind the challenges involved in speech production (LEVELT, 1989), especially in the L2 (KORMOS, 2014), this study examines strategic planning (ELLIS, 2005) and its impact on the performance of learners of English as an L2 in an oral task carried out after they had planned it individually or collaboratively. Drawing from the output hypothesis (SWAIN, 1985), this piece of research analysed quantitative and qualitative data from the narratives produced by 17 high school students. The quantitative analysis showed a statistically significant advantage for the outcome variable when the participants planned collaboratively. At the same time, while the results for fluency and accuracy were not statistically significant, they also favoured the same planning condition. The qualitative data indicated wide acceptance of oral tasks with the use of WhatsApp. It is suggested that the adoption of tasks that include strategic planning as a means to lessen the attentional burden involved in L2 speech production (FORTKAMP, 2000) may be an attractive pedagogical resource to help English students to learn the language in a contextualized way.

A Review of the Application and Development of Output Hypothesis Theory in Foreign Language Teaching

Since Swain proposed the theory of output hypothesis in 1985, the study focus of foreign language teaching has been shifted from input research to input and output research. The positive impact of output has been demonstrated by a large number of studies and output has been received more and more attention in the field of second language acquisition. This paper sorts out the development and application of output hypothesis theory in foreign language teaching in order to lay the foundation for further exploration.

Cognitive Socio-political Language Learning Theory, Multiple Input-output Hypothesis and Competitive Team-based Learning

The practical results of innovative methods/approaches to teaching like Cooperative Learning (CL), which have been formulated based on constructivists' theories, are falling short of expectation in the present world circumstances. This is because they cannot reflect the realities of the real world and as a consequence have contributed to uncivilised and even maimed societies. As their ancestors, thereby, these so-called innovative interactive methods and approaches are doomed to failure. This article, as such, gives a brief but to the point introduction to the author's seminal holistic approach to teaching namely Competitive Team-Based Learning (CTBL), which has been put forward as a significant alternative to the present methods and approaches. Most importantly, the author sheds light on his approach's theoretical foundations, which consider language as a liberating agent, and distinguishes it from other innovative methods/approaches like Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). The results of some researches on the effectiveness of Dr Hosseini's didactic catalyst/weapon (i.e., CTBL) have also found a place in this article for the benefit of researchers/educators, who have also been provided with some significant suggestions. Teachers' accountabilities in classes run through CTBL have also been explicated.