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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.'
A special August issue of Topics in Language Disorders (Vol. 18, No. 4) will address ASL and English literacy development.
Cover Page for This Issue
© PsycNET 2008 American Psychological Association
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.'
A special August issue of Topics in Language Disorders (Vol. 18, No. 4) will address ASL and English literacy development.
Cover Page for This Issue
© PsycNET 2008 American Psychological Association
on them. To me, oralism is about oppression.
