The first conclusions

After doing the first cycle of an Action Research, these are the first conclusions...

1. Deaf students are people first, and second deaf and working with them requires recognizing their innate learning abilities before mentioning their potential disabilities. Teaching these individuals implies much more than designing a lesson plan and implementing an “effective” strategy. It involves being ready to deal with all the possible aspects and challenges that make every class and every group of students unique.2.

Deaf students consider English quite important to feel themselves as equal members of a hearing society that uses English as tool to grasp the world and appreciate the opportunity to receive an English course and interact directly with the teacher and their peers showing a positive attitude towards the learning process.

3. The effect of using EFL Internet resources as a support on the development of an English course designed for deaf university students is related to explore all the resources that Technology provides to enrich the learning process. The high ratings and positive comments about the blended course confirms that it is an effective way of making the English teaching process more practical and dynamic providing students with flexible times and new learning strategies. Students take advantage of their expertise surfing on the web and use their spare time to reinforce their learning process.

4.About the learning process of deaf students: they require a visual support to get a better understanding of grammar and vocabulary explanations and a slower rhythm in the class to “capture” all the information given by the teacher and “translated” by the interpreter.

5. Collaborative work is preferred by a group of deaf students who use only sign language to express their ideas and comments in a class that demand them a similar rhythm and level of participation. When they work together they provide immediate feedback and make peer and self correction which are positive aspects to contribute to the reflection and learning of the group.

In summary the combination of some technological resources available in the virtual learning environments with the traditional educational resources contributes to update the teaching-learning process for deaf students in an educational policy of inclusion and equality.

The last details

Choosing the appropriate title to” catch” the reader’s attention was an interesting exercise. Using the key words and trying to set a “sound” phrase were tips useful to get the title. The feedback given by some colleagues and by the tutor enriched the initial proposal.

The final title is Teacher: Can you SEE what I am saying. A research experience about developing an English language course for deaf learners.

About the abstract, I just followed the patterns given in class. Once again, I did a kind of ” brainstorming exercise” and then, I organized the ideas trying to fulfill the requirements set by the journal.

This is the final abstract:

Since 2003 the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional has integrated deaf individuals as regular students in the institutional academic programs. However, these students have not received English instruction as part of their academic curriculum, making feel themselves in disadvantage with their hearing peers who have at least three levels of the foreign language training.

The main goal of this research project was to identify the effect of using some EFL internet resources as a support on the design and development of a blended English course for deaf university students. It was also an attempt to diminish the disadvantage of these students in a spoken-language environment that uses English as a means to cope with a growing deal of information useful for personal and professional purposes.

The present Action Research project involved eleven volunteer deaf participants who belong to different academic programs at U.P.N. and met once a week to have a face-to-face session with a hearing teacher supported by a Sign Language Interpreter. Students also had the opportunity to develop a weekly virtual activity designed by the teacher in order to explore and use some EFL internet resources for learning purposes.

The data were collected by means of surveys, artifacts, field notes and a recorded interview in order to know what worked well for deaf students and what barriers could interfere with their English learning process.

The study revealed some insights on the English learning process of deaf university students related to their preference for collaborative learning, the effectiveness of virtual vocabulary activities linked to visual media and their interest to get immediate supported feedback of grammar exercises.

What does writing an academic text imply?

Writing an academic text involves a simple but organized process which implies following pre, while and post- writing steps. First of all, the pre-writing strategies included choosing and narrowing the data, outlining the text and organizing the ideas according to the components of the model of a research article given in class. I chose listing ideas as a brainstorming technique useful to write all the words, phrases or sentences that came into my head about each component of the research article. It enabled me to write many ideas as possible in a short time. After listing the ideas, I re- classified them into the components of a typical research paper such as Introduction, Methods, Results, discussion, etc. Here, a first proof-reading exercise was necessary and some sentences were crossed out because they were irrelevant, confusing or repetitive. Probably, the most difficult part was choosing the valuable findings and “knit” them with a logical and fluent discourse which is usually supported by a theory.

After writing the paper, revision was an essential part of the process. During the revision stage many changes appeared in order to refine and improve the paper’s organization, coherence, unity, punctuation, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.

Although writing this article implied following a process of writing, rewriting and checking several drafts, I think that the whole process was effective because it helped me to produce a coherent paper by following academic guidelines.

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