Oral school

[Hear Again]

Flip beat me to it!

Here's more...

Students whose backgrounds included multiple facilitating factors were
competitive with and, in some cases, surpassed standards for progress by hearing monolingual students.

By taking a fundamentally different approach to the literacy dilemma, current
research has focused on improving inadequate methods by capitalizing on each child’s full linguistic repertoire (Nover, Christensen, & Cheng, 1998). This alternative paradigm considers linguistic, cultural, and educational implications more than the actual sensory disability (Charrow, 1981; Nover & Moll, 1997; Padden & Humphries, 1988). Supporters of this model have promoted American Sign Language (ASL)/English bilingual education to support the academic success of deaf and hard of hearing children (LaSasso & Lollis, 2003; Nover et al., 2002; Strong, 1995). Dual language methodology is not new. Indeed, the concept of using dual languages in deaf education has been available since the early 19th century (Kannapell, 1974). However, the dual language approach was discontinued during the push for oralism after the Milan Conference of 1880 and decisions by the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Program for the Deaf in the mid-1920s (Nover, 2000). A reemergence, evident in the last two decades (Johnson et al., 1989; LaSasso & Lollis, 2003; Strong, 1995), has created a change in teacher training options, as programs in France (Bouvet, 1990), Denmark (Hansen, 1994), the United States (Padden & Ramsey, 1998), and
England (Knight & Swanwick, 2002) have begun to see promising results. As
training options have become more available, the forward momentum continues.

However, ASL/English bilingual education has a fundamental emphasis on oral
skill development: oracy (listening, speaking, and speechreading) as a key
component within the bilingual framework, along with signacy (receptive and
expressive ASL, fingerspelling/ finger reading) and literacy (reading, writing,
and typing) (Nover, 2005; Nover et al., 1998). Contrary to common misconception, the approach does not ignore oracy; rather, it supports instructional delivery that separates languages, thereby preserving the complete linguistic code of any language used in the classroom.

DeLana, M., Gentry, M.A., &Andrews, J. (2007). The efficacy of ASL/English
bilingual education. American Annals of the Deaf. 152(1). pp73-87.

 

[deafdyke]

You expound all day and all night about what is like to be Deaf, and you have only experienced a sliver of the possibilites. You have never been a CI user. You have never been a successful oral deaf person. You have never been born hearing and then slowly lost it after learning spoken language. Every single deaf person is different and has a different life experience, so NO ONE can speak for all deaf people. You like to try to convince me that I'm wrong because I'm hearing, but that is just your insecurity talking. I am well informed, well read and well researched.

That's true.....every single dhh person is different.
However, CI users are hoh. Being functionally hoh as a deaf person is nothing new....Some kids were sucessful with just hearing aids you know. An implantee's experiance is not that new. Besides, implantees hear at all different levels from moderate loss to mild loss.....
Define a sucessful oral deaf person. Many of us developed oral skills OK. Very few of us are oral failures.
And your last example is kind of rare.....it's fairly unusual to be postlingally dhh in this day and age. Some of them do ID as Deaf, but most of them tend to be culturally hearing....not even hoh.

 

[Hear Again]

VOLUME 29 , NUMBER 4 -April 1998
________________________________________

Sign Language May Help Deaf Children Learn English

Research reveals some unexpected benefits of American Sign Language.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

Language learning in the deaf community is in critical condition.
Despite efforts to mainstream deaf children into public schools and to develop new techniques for teaching English to deaf children, the average deaf high school graduate reads and writes at the fourth-grade level, say deaf education experts.

Until recently ideas about how best to teach language to deaf children were based more on strong feelings than science. Some psychologists hope to change that. They're stepping in to provide a scientific base to the long simmering debate: Should deaf children be taught American Sign Language (ASL) first and then be taught English?an option known as bilingual education? Or should they be
taught English only?

English-only education provides either oral training, which concentrates on lip reading and written English, or 'total communication' training, which uses oral English as well as signed English. Signed English is simply English translated into signs, and linguists don?t consider it a language per se. In contrast, ASL is as different from English as any foreign language, with its own vocabulary and grammatical structure.

Oral-only and total communication training have dominated American education of deaf and hard of hearing children over the past 20 years. More than 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many of whom want their children in English-only programs. They assume that learning ASL will impede learning English and that English-only programs will best facilitate it. But recent research is beginning to gather evidence for the opposite: Learning ASL doesn't appear to hurt subsequent English learning but appears to enhance it.

Apples and Oranges

Signed English provides an inadequate base for learning any language, says educational psychologist Jenny Singleton, PhD, of the University of Illinois. As early as the 1970s Ursula Bellugi, PhD, and her colleagues found that signed English is visually cumbersome and that it takes speakers nearly twice the time to produce a sentence in signed English than in oral English or ASL. Signed
English takes so long, in fact, that it?s feasible for a child to forget the beginning of a proposition before seeing the end.

Also, because signed English isn?t truly a language, it doesn?t mimic English grammar well, says University of Rochester psychologist Elissa Newport, PhD. For example, with grammatical constructions like 'he is walking,' English-based signers may leave off the 'ing' portion of the verb, producing 'he is walk.' 'It's hard for children to deduce the grammar of English from seeing something that's not grammatically like English,' says Singleton.

ASL is also nothing like English. But researchers believe it provides a solid language base on which to build a second language. And several studies support their claims.

For example, Michael Strong, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco, and Philip Prinz, PhD, of San Francisco State University found a strong relationship between ASL proficiency and English literacy in 140 students attending a residential school for the deaf. The students whose ASL proficiency improved over the three years of the study also showed significant improvements in English literacy.

In a recent study of 80 deaf children, Singleton and Sam Supalla, PhD, of the University of Arizona found similar results. They evaluated the written English skills of children attending three types of schools:
• A bilingual school where educators use ASL as the primary instruction language
and teach English as a second language.
• A traditional residential school for the deaf where teachers use oral and
signed English. These children learn some ASL from peers who learned it at home.
• A public school where teachers and interpreters use English-based sign. These children have no exposure to ASL.
Children in the bilingual school were the most proficient in ASL, with some children in the residential school showing proficiency and none of the children in the public school, says Singleton. When the researchers examined writing samples from the children, they found a strong relationship between higher proficiency in ASL and better writing for children between ages 9 and 12. They didn’t find such a correlation for children under age 9, which isn’t surprising, says Singleton, since children at that age don’t tend to write much.
'Across several studies we're seeing indications that exposure to ASL certainly isn't hurting English proficiency and may be enhancing it,' says Singleton. The finding is pretty robust, agrees sociolinguist Claire Ramsey, PhD, of the University of Nebraska. She and Carol Padden, PhD, of the University of California-San Diego have begun to examine the connection between ASL proficiency and English proficiency. In a recent pilot study of 30 deaf students, Padden and Ramsey examined how specific aspects of ASL proficiency tracked to English. They found that finger spelling and knowledge of initialized signs, knowing that in ASL you can sometimes use the first letter of a word as a shorthand for that word, correlate with reading and writing ability in English. Padden is expanding on these findings to discover the mechanism responsible for this relationship.

A Resource for Learning

Of course, beyond a mechanism that helps children move from ASL to English, sign language is a useful resource for teaching children English, says anthropologist and educator Carol Erting, PhD, of Gallaudet University. She and her research team study language interactions between children and adults. In particular, they look at the interaction between deaf children and their deaf parents.
They?re finding that deaf parents who are bilingual speaking American Sign Language (ASL) and reading and writing English spend a lot of time interacting with their children in both languages. They build bridges between ASL and English during everyday interactions by signing in ASL and pointing to English words in books or articulating words with their lips. In fact, she finds that these parents begin finger spelling and showing their children books when they are only a few months old. ASL gives children a language in which to think and process complex thought. Adults can then use their ASL proficiency to teach them English, says Erting.

Without such a base, children are at risk of never fully developing proficiency in any language, says Singleton. 'We now have this new generation of students [trained in signed English] who are not developing proficient English or ASL,' says Singleton. 'Do they even have a native language? They seem to have lots of nouns and verbs but they string them together without the grammar links necessary for understanding what they mean.' Researchers are not finished with their studies, but some communities aren’t waiting for the results, says Singleton. A handful of ASL-based bilingual schools have cropped up around the country use ASL to teach the children about English.

'Some people think it’s tantamount to child abuse not to provide these children with ASL training,' says Singleton. 'Especially since the latest research suggests that an ASL-first approach can lead to better English learning outcomes.'


© PsycNET 2008 American Psychological Association

 

[faire_jour]

Ok, but they didn't compare the writing of ASL users to hearing peers, or even to mainstreamed deaf kids. They didn't say if the writing was age appropriate, just that it was better than TC kids.

 

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faire_jour,

If they say that the writing of ASL users is better, I would think it's safe to assume it's also age appropriate.

 

[faire_jour]

faire_jour,

If they say that the writing of ASL users is better, I would think it's safe to assume it's also age appropriate.

That is a huge leap. If the TC kids are writing at a first grade level at in 5th grade, but the ASL users are writing at 3rd grade, that is a huge improvement, but still not age appropriate. It doesn't say that they are were they should be at all. I don't think it safe to assume. Why wouldn't they say that if it was true?

 

[Hear Again]

That is a huge leap. If the TC kids are writing at a first grade level at in 5th grade, but the ASL users are writing at 3rd grade, that is a huge improvement, but still not age appropriate. It doesn't say that they are were they should be at all. I don't think it safe to assume. Why wouldn't they say that if it was true?

Researchers can't include every aspect within their study. That's why they only include the important data to validate their claim.

 

[faire_jour]

Researchers can't include every aspect within their study. That's why they only include the important data to validate their claim.

But I think the most important thing would be to say that their skills are the same as hearing peers, and they don't ever say that. It is not safe to assume they are.

I think it is clear that their skills are higher than SEE users and kids in TC schools though.

 

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But I think the most important thing would be to say that their skills are the same as hearing peers, and they don't ever say that.

They said it was better than oral kids. The whole point of the study is to see if ASL users are age and grade appropriate in their comprehension of and use of English.

 

[faire_jour]

They said it was better than oral kids. The whole point of the study is to see if ASL users are age and grade appropriate in their comprehension of and use of English.

It said SEE and TC kids, not kids who use spoken language as their mode of communication.

 

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faire_jour,

If the ASL users are not age appropriate, then the oral kids are even less age appropriate.

 

[faire_jour]

faire_jour,

If the ASL users are not age appropriate, then the oral kids are even less age appropriate.

That study does not address that at all.

 

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faire_jour,

You've said in the past that Bi-Bi did not have a focus on oracy and this article proves otherwise.

 

[faire_jour]

faire_jour,

You've said in the past that Bi-Bi did not have a focus on oracy and this article proves otherwise.

No, this article discusses writing only, not oracy at all.

 

[Hear Again]

faire_jour,

You said they didn't compare them to hearing kids, but the standards are set on grade appropriate skills. Grade appropriate skills are determined by the curriculum. The curriculum is determined by the State Dept. of Education. They use standards based on hearing, non-LD, non-disabled students. Therefore, they were compared to hearing students simply by using grade appropriate standards as their comparison.

 

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faire_jour,

It's simple. If a TC kid with sign is still not getting what they need to learn English and develop literacy and they are getting visual cues, then the oral child is missing even more. The more they miss, the lower their scores.

 

[Hear Again]

faire_jour,

Since you use ASL with Miss Kat, why are you objecting to the results of this study?

 

[Hear Again]

One more point: TC kids do use spoken communication. Maybe it didn't include oral kids because they couldn't understand what was being asked of them in the experiment.

 

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faire_jour,

Oracy includes writing, lip reading and speech. ORAL is speech. Written skills are used to determine literacy. Speech doesn't have anything to do with literacy. The challenge was to post any research that supported that ASL improved literacy over other methods.

 

[Hear Again]

faire_jour,

Take a look at the last paragraph for a definition of oracy in post #255. Those are direct quotes from the research cited in that post. It also states that oracy is a focus of Bi-Bi education.