Ignoring Second Modality (M2) Beyond Second Language (L2) in Turkish Sign Language Teaching

Abstract

The issue for the teaching a language with the same modality and a language with a modality being different from L1 involves various teaching approaches and strategies. However, due to limited theoretical and empirical knowledge there are a large number of serious problems on pedagogical standards in TİD teaching for hearing L2 learners despite a growth in the number of courses. In addition, a sustainable acquisition planning has not yet been achieved due to the limited knowledge of policymakers on visual-spatial modality and TİD. This critical paper is an overview of the current implementations in different aspects such as curriculum design, teacher qualification, acquisition planning etc. in TİD pedagogy and addresses two basic questions: (i) how is TİD traditionally taught for hearing learners as a L2 in classrooms? and (ii) how are the L2 courses designed to ensure the modality-specific requirements? Overall, the results demonstrate that TİD curricula (MoNE, 2011a; 2011b; 2021) currently in use are mainly adaptations of grammatical and lexical features of Turkish and consequently, this “spoken-driven” approach does not offer hearing L2 learners the possibility of interacting and communicating with TİD at all.