Well, I had a long chat with that coworker who grew up using CS today at lunch break.
Here is her take and experience with CS.
She was enrolled in an oral-only environment for the first 10 years with no visual cues to languages nor ASL. She was reading and writing at late 1st grade level by the time she entered 5th grade. Her parents got fed up with the failure of the oral-only programs and sent her to a CS program. She said that was when her English skills took off and she was able to narrow the gap with her literacy skills. She said she thanks CS for helping her that. However, she did say that she didnt feel that CS should be used for language acquisition just only as a teaching tool to develop literacy skills. I asked her if she had ASL from the start would it deprived her from developing fluency in English and she said no way. In addition to that, she said she would definitely not have gaps in her literacy skills. Having said that, she knows she can write good English but it is not creative nor advanced as she would like it to be. She learned ASL at the age of 15 and she said that ASL was the best thing she ever learned but she also does support CS too. Like me, she is against the oral-only approach.
