Literature explaining the theories and principles behind bilingual-bicultural education for Deaf students is not too hard to find, but at some point, we have to ask, "So how do I do this with my first period class tomorrow?"  Descriptions of practical applications of bi-bi are rather hard to come by, but that shouldn't stop us from seeking them out.  Here is what I've found.  Hope it is helpful.
Please e-mail your suggestions and ideas to alicespeights@hotmail.com.

Check back every now and then for updates.  The flames  mean that section was added or updated on the date at the bottom of the page.
 

How Do Deaf Students Learn to Read?

Now, I will explain my hypothesis of how Deaf high school students with emerging English skills learn to read.  I am NOT proposing that I am right.  I am MERELY making a suggestion from what I've observed of my students and several Deaf instructors and from how I learned written French as a second language (though I've since forgotten much of it and NEVER could understand the spoken form).  I am VERY open to other ideas and discussion.  I'm looking forward to your feedback.

First, students MUST have skills in metalinguistics/metacognition.  It is a known fact that achievement above a fourth grade level requires these skills.  Students MUST be able to think about language and use inference skills.  If students can learn these skills in a language that they already know and is completely accessible (ASL), then using them in English will be easier.  These skills will transfer to the second language.

Now, the logistics of learning to read.  When explaining to my students what an English passage means, I've noticed that I, and other teachers, will point to a group of words in a sentence and then sign that part in ASL.  I think what I'm doing is reading until I can get some meaning from it and then showing the students what it means.  Sometimes I actually sign it pretty close to English word order, pointing out what each part of the sentence (small phrases) means.  Then I sign the entire meaning of the sentence in ASL (not in English word order).

I do this with my students because when I was *beginning* to learn to read French, I often attached English to each French word or phrase to help me sort out all the meaning.  I did (and sometimes still do) this with ASL, which is a second language for me.  As someone is signing, I'll attach glosses to the signs, especially those at the beginning of a sentence, until I've got an idea of what is being said.  The better I got at French and the better I get with ASL, the less I use this technique.  Of course, I don't make-up English words to attach to French words and ASL signs that have no English equivalent.  That would be silly.  And I certainly don't do this when glossing from English to ASL.

I also do this because when I'm reading on my own, I make a picture in my head as I read, but I have to wait until the words make a part of the picture before I can start to form the picture.  Then, as I continue reading, I add to or change the picture in my head to fit the text.  My point in showing my students the signs for the phrases is not to attach a sign to a word as much as it to show them how that part of the sentence affects the picture.  Essentially, I'm showing them the picture in my head and all the additions and changes that I make to it as I read.  If there's a point for ASL helping Deaf students read, this has got to be it.  Due to the visual-spacial nature of ASL, I can easily "paint" this picture that I have in my head.  It feels like it's more than a translation.

Instead of teaching grammatical constructions so much, the students actually internalize the structures and their meanings on their own.  For example, they start to see what the construction of the passive voice means.  We often have discussions about English syntax (remember, those metalinguistic skills are important), but I *rarely* use the worksheet/rote drill method.  We figure it out through discussion and through looking at the language in several contexts.

Recent research has shown that Deaf students who are strong readers make some use of phonology, though it is not clear how they do this.  Does this mean we should be teaching phonics?  I'd say not.  The point of teaching phonics to hearing children is so that when they sound out a word, they can recall if they've ever *heard* that word before.  If they have, they can then recall the context in which it was used and figure out the meaning of the word.  This is futile with Deaf students because the overwhelming majority of them haven't *heard* these words before.  I think these students might be using some self-made phonological coding to help them remember the words.  I don't think this phonology "sounds" much like hearing people's phonology, but I don't think this matters.  The point is that they have created some way to remember words other than just visually.  After all, it is a sound-based language.  Perhaps, the more they read, the more they are able to use a little of that recall system of phonology that hearing readers use.

The big point that I want to make is that we need to stop looking at how hearing people learn to read and then try to graft that onto how Deaf people *should* learn to read.  Instead, we need to be looking at Deaf readers and figure out what they're doing to read.  We need to watch Deaf teachers as they teach Deaf children how to read.  After all, THEY are the experts.

Separating ASL and English

While some bi-bi programs do use MCE sometimes, such as in English class, I have to ask myself, "If I believe MCE does not accurately and efficiently represent English, why am I still using it to represent English?"  While I use ASL to talk about English, I often find myself using some MCE to convey specific English constructions and phrases.

I decided I needed to take a good look at my goals.  Suppose someone watches me teach and then lists what s/he thinks my objectives must be.  Included in the list might be: "The students will be able to understand and produce signing in English-word order," and, "The students will be able to transcribe English-like signing into written English."  I am requiring both of these skills when I use MCE to present English.  While conceivably useful in a few specific situations, they have very little to do with the practical skills essential for success in either the Deaf or hearing worlds.  So what is my goal?  I want my students to be able to understand and produce written English.

Now the question remains, "What can I do to reach this goal more efficiently?"  The answer is obvious: cut out the MCE's and just write it, or even better, type it.  Before a lesson, I open a blank document in my word processor and set the font size around 26.  If teaching a group, I have to connect my computer to a projector or television.  Then whenever I want to show a particular sentence, construction, or phrase in English, I type it.  Now I am presenting it in the same form I expect my students to encounter it later.  It is also easier to quickly show several variations at once so the students can compare and contrast them.  An added bonus to typing is that I don't have to turn my back to the class to write on the board.  And at the end of class, I can size down the font and print it off for my students to keep.

However, teachers must be careful not to use this method as a crutch for poor signing skills.  Discussion and explanation in ASL is paramount to students' understanding of the English.
 

Facilitated Reading through Explanation in ASL

Some research (Andrews, Winograd, and DeVille 1994) has suggested that an effective prereading strategy for Deaf students is to summarize the text in ASL before the students read it in English.  However, I can't say that I would necessarily read the text myself if my teacher summarized it for me, and I could probably use what I got from the summary to deduce any other information I would need to make my teacher think I understood the text.  On the other hand, there are times when this strategy is helpful for getting a frustrated reader started.

The better strategy might be to let the student begin reading the text on her own.  As the student comes across something she doesn't understand, the teacher can provide an ASL translation of it.  If the student seems to be frustrated with much of the text, a quick ASL summary of the main ideas may provide the context needed for the student to figure out the problem areas on her own.  However, the teacher must decide what information is important to the understanding of the text while also avoiding the problem of providing so much that the student need not read the text herself.1

Furthermore, if you're signing the story, the kid isn't struggling with the language itself.  She can really focus on the story and what's in the story.  If she's only exposed to stories in print, she's got to worry about the language decoding and the implicit information and other skills needed for reading comprehension.  These could be developed in a fully accessible first language, and these skills would transfer to the other language (English).  It's so much easier to learn how to do something when you don't have to learn how to do everything at once.  The students need to be able to understand what's going on, concentrate on that, and then they can move on to other things.  It's important to start with the right thing, though.  If you start with the text and all of those verbs and articles, the need for these things is lost because the meaning isn't established.  The skills students learn in ASL will transfer to the other language.  The skill of how to think transfers.  You don't have to learn to think all over again when you start in another language.  Inference skills can be learned from signed stories.  Maybe there's a sign the kid doesn't understand, but he can figure it out from the context.  That skill transfers to English, too.2

Building Background Knowledge

Sometimes when students are having trouble with a text, it isn't the English as much as it is a lack of background knowledge that is causing the problem.  Teachers can determine what background information is essential to the understanding of the text, check to see if the students have this information, and provide the lacking information.  Many popular pre-reading strategies, such as K-W-L and shared imaging, aim at building background knowledge.  Of course, if a teacher (or fellow student) explains a concept using ASL, the student will understand the concept when she approaches it in English print.1

Reading Comprehension Discussions

When students are reading a text together, make overhead copies of the pages.  Have students read a paragraph (or more or less, depending on your students) and imagine what they've read.  Sometimes I tell students to make a movie in their imaginations of what is going on.  Then, have a student describe her "picture" of what the paragraph said.  Ask other students if they have anything to add or change.  Ask them where in the text they found this information.  In this kind of situation, the class is building on each other's understanding of the text and each other's background knowledge.  This is also a much better way of assessing student comprehension than those dreaded comprehension questions (which usually can be answered by pulling a line or word straight from the text and do not actually require the student to understand very much about the content).

Note that students are NOT "reading aloud."  That is, students should not be signing word-for-word.  This is not even a translation exercise.  The point is for students to read, build an image of what the text means, and then explain it in their "own words" (these words just happen to be in a language other than the text).

Comparative Linguistics

Sounds pretty complicated, but really very simple.  Students with a strong command of ASL can better understand the structure and lexicon of English if they can relate how an idea is conveyed in ASL to how it is conveyed in English.  There are several techniques for accomplishing this.

This can happen on several levels: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic.  For example, if students discuss and become conscious of directional (or reflexive, etc.) verbs in ASL and what information is conveyed in these signs, then seeing how English conveys these meanings through its own structure will help them make the connection.  Comparison of semantics can be very beneficial.  For example, if a student signs FOR-SURE, the class could brainstorm English words that fit this meaning (and there are lots), or vice versa. Sometimes, discourse is organized differently in two languages.  For expository contexts, ASL users tend to start with the specific and move to the general.  English users tend to start with the general and move to the specific.  Perhaps a conscious knowledge of this difference could help students in both reading and writing of English.1

For example, when I teach about putting commas between items in a list (remember, we're talking about ASL and *written* English), I begin a discussion of ways we list things in ASL.  This includes body shift, pausing, and "counting" on the non-dominant hand.  Students offer examples of these and more.  Then I show them a sentence on the board or computer.  This sentence has a list with about four or five items, but I leave out the commas. A real challenge is if some of the words in the list could easily belong with the item before and after it.  I ask the students to try to figure out how to sign this in ASL.  They share their ideas, and we discuss how they distinguished between one item and the next.  Then I explain that in written English, we use commas between items in a list to make it easier to distinguish.  I then write in the commas for the example sentence.  If there are many possible answers, I show all of them, and we discuss how the commas make a difference in the meaning.  Then, students make up their own ASL sentences using the form of counting on the non-dominant hand.  Sometimes, a few topic suggestions help get them going.  We translate these sentences into English, and students place the commas in the correct places.  I explain that it's like looking at that non-dominant hand, drawing commas between each finger, and sticking an "and" between the last two fingers on the list.  They rarely forget this rule.

Another technique is to videotape students' signing their stories (or at least the parts they're having trouble putting into English), and then decide how to word each part in English.  For example, we don't use a lot of prepositions in ASL, so if a student signs something that places something somewhere, you have to think about the relationship between the two things, and pick the right preposition.2  There are also many videotapes available of ASL stories which teachers can use to isolate certain ASL constructions.

Translation skills seem advanced and complicated, but I've seen elementary students able to benefit from these kinds of exercises.  Deaf adults need these skills and use them daily, so some good instruction could be very useful.  Mississippi School for the Deaf has recently started a program where students study connotations, multiple meanings, and lexical gap by comparing the English to the ASL.  When they see the English words and phrases in their reading, they can then make an immediate connection to the correct ASL signs and, therefore, the meaning.4
 

1    Bienvenu, MJ (1999).  ASL to English.  workshop at Gallaudet University through English Works!

2    Kuntze, M. (1999, Oct 20).  discussion with Gallaudet University's Deaf Education students

3    Mather, S. (1999). How to Proofread your Writing. workshop at Gallaudet University through English Works!

4    Schimmel, C., Edwards, S., & Prickett, H. (1999).  Reading...PAH! I (Got It!).  American Annals of the Deaf, 144(4), 298-308.
 
 
 
 

Return to English Language Arts in the Deaf Classroom
 
 

This page last updated April 18, 2000.