OUTPUT ACTIVITIES TO HELP STUDENTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE

LEARNING
Erika Jordenn Gmez
Danny Julieth Muoz
As second language teachers it is vital to know how to help students in different language
aspects. Since, sometimes second language teachers forget the psychological part of
acquiring a language, such as, the representation of the mind / brain, and processes of
language, such as, comprehension and production. That is why, language teachers are asked
to notice of learning students needs, weaknesses and strengths with the purpose of
providing students authentic strategies and classroom activities to accomplish the proposed
aims when learning a second language.
Therefore, this paper proposes a complete set of language tools which would help language
learners to achieve the following aspects: Fluency through automaticity, gaps in their own
knowledge and processes to move from semantic to syntactic part to focus students
attention on relevant information. Also, the comparison between the first language and the
second language hypothesis allowing monitoring and revision. Finally, this paper includes
the speaking part of eliciting relevant input and solving problems.
Firstly, regarding the fluency through automaticity we are focused on writing skills. It is
often said that in order to develop fluency and automaticity, it is necessary to practice the
act of writing. For instance, some researches indicate readers who do not read fluently
devote much of their cognitive energy to decoding individual words and phrases, making it
difficult for them to focus on the meaning of what they read. Similarly, students lacking
writing fluency devote lots of cognitive energy to forming individual words or basic
sentence structures, making it harder for them to focus on conveying their thoughts and
feelings effectively.
As a result of the previous aspect, we would apply the following two activities to support
the writing fluency through automaticity. The first activity (1) consists on giving students
an important vocabulary term or question you have been addressing in your instruction and
write it on the board. Then, instruct students to write (or type) as much as they can, as well
as they can for 60 seconds. Have them always write in the same place (writers notebook,
science notebook, etc. depending on class). At the end of 60 seconds, tell them pencils up
and ask them to count the overall number of words and tally it in the margin. Later, have
students circle the errors they noticed while rereading their writing. Have students repeat
this procedure two more times, giving them a new related vocabulary word or relevant
question each time. For each session have them graph the highest number of words they
wrote in any one minute period. Also, have them set goals for the numbers of words they
will write in any one-minute period next time. At least once a week, have them choose a
previously written entry to revise and extend into a more formal explanatory or
argumentative piece for homework.
Another activity is Roll the Dice! (2) You simply need a topic, a six-sided die, and an
overhead projector and pens. You will build the story by writing sentences in a variety of
lengths with a variety of beginnings, all determined by the roll of a die!
First, ask your class to determine an imaginative topic for writing, such as "a mysterious
Christmas Eve." Then, roll the die, and have your students create an opening phrase with
as many words. For example, if you roll a four, they may suggest, "As the snow fell, we
drove home from a late Christmas Eve service." Roll the die again, and ask your class to
compose a second opening phrase with as many words. Suppose you roll a six. Your
students may suggest, "When we pulled into the driveway, we noticed a plain brown box
waiting on our front porch."
Continue rolling the die and writing new sentences with different beginnings, until you and
your students feel the piece is finished. Roughly eight to ten sentences should be enough.
Now read the entire story aloud, revising as you and your kids see fit, discussing the
importance of writing sentences with different opening phrases.
Secondly, as students are learning a new language, one of the first abilities they gain is the
semantic capacity. But through the time it is also crucial for them to acquire or refine
syntactic abilities due to this ability is essential when it comes understanding of the
language as well as production of the language. On the one hand, it is indispensable for
learners to notice themselves about the gaps they have in this process of developing the
syntactic abilities.
There are several activities to practice syntactic abilities every day in our classes. One of
those activities is called morning activity and consist on write a shorts sentences or a
short paragraph (depending on students level) on the board every day before students come
to the classroom. Those sentences have to include several syntactic mistakes and students
are told to analyze the different sentences individually or in pairs. When students complete
the exercise, some volunteers come to the board to correct those mistakes and explain
rationally each one of them.
This activity helps students to practice syntactic competence every day in a few minutes
and at the same time it allows them to think critically about those mistakes. Additionally, if
students are confused about any of the mistakes when correcting them, they are allowed to
begin a debate in which they can discover the correct answer by themselves, this process
permits them to reflect about their lacks and notice how they can improve their syntactic
competence.
Additionally, when it comes to develop syntactic abilities teachers should use a holistic
methodology in their classes. A holistic methodology refers to the one in which the teacher
focuses not only in the knowledge that students acquire but also focuses on students whole
being, their motivations to learn and their emotional state when learning. It is important for
students to feel motivated when learning, especially the syntactic fields because as we
teachers know it is a very complicated field for our students to understand especially when
students are not kids anymore and they have their mother tongue structures rooted.
This holistic method is focused on the humanistic approach by Rogers (1969) and the
Affective filter hypothesis by Krashen (1985). Both of them agree when proposing that
students learn better if they feel comfortable with the environment, without pressure or
anxiety. Besides, William and Burden (1997) declare that actual learning will only take
place when the students are involved in active participation but this participation will not
be achieved if learners feel ashamed in the classes. Finally, when giving students the
opportunity to feel comfortable in the class they will participate actively in activities as
competitions, group discussions, group projects and this will give teachers the opportunity
to observe their weaknesses regarding syntactic competences and at the same time will give
them the opportunity to correct those mistakes or reinforce their strengths and it also allows
students to practice what they learn without feeling ashamed of mistakes, so they can
improve and correct those mistakes they keep doing.
Thirdly, Corder (1967) mentioned on his book that some of the strategies employed by
second language learners are essentially the same as those used by children learning their
first language, Furthermore, there are some specific errors common among students from
different countries. such as the use of I have 20 years to talk about the age. This is one of
the reasons for the comparison between first language (LI) and second language (L2)
learning hypothesis. Accordingly, we found two activities to help students to achieve the
previous goal. The first one is recording students you could play the recording, ask for
general impression, give them the tape script and transcript, have them self-correct their
own and later peers errors. In this way,
This activity creates a positive class atmosphere as students realize teacher is not the only
source of error correction and they can learn a lot from one another.
The second activity consists on asking some students to be monitors and write down the
errors that they hear during speaking activities. Then monitors write the mistakes on the
board and each student tries to correct the mistakes by using the dictionary or online
resources at home and then write them in their journal.
Fourthly, to help our students to reach the last goal, it is important to have in mind that
language users comprehend more than they can produce, but we as teachers need to elicit
participation in our students creating innovative and contextualized situations that
encourage them to solve problems and at the same time activities which have a clear
language objective.
One of those activities is based on the use of realia, where the teacher comes to the
classroom with a bag in which there are some mysterious objects, following, the teacher
acts as if the bag had been forgotten by someone outside the classroom and using the
objects inside the bag, the teacher elicits some questions about who is the owner of the bag
or maybe the preferences of that person.
This activity is certainly motivating for any kind of student as it involves realia while
giving s relevant input to the students while the teacher is eliciting questions and giving
answers too. It also allows students to talk and participate actively when trying to solve the
mystery and finally it has a hidden language objective, it means that while students are
trying to know who is the owner, they are practicing questions in the target language.
Last, by the hand of the previous activity, the inductive learning methodology is crucial
when trying to give relevant input and problem solving abilities to our students. This
methodology encourages students to think beyond in order to deduce language structures
and rules. Furthermore, it also gives students opportunities to learn the language in context
and more opportunities to practice due to, it focuses mostly in the use of the language.
To sum up, there are several activities and methodologies to reach the different objectives
when learning a language. The activities above are some of them and we as teachers
sometimes have to apply using our creativity in order to build meaningful activities for our
students, because as we know every class has different needs and of course every student is
a different world.

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Corder, S.P. "The Significance of Learners' Errors." IRAL, 5 (1967): 161- 170.
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