Introduction

Recently, deaf education has seen a new movement toward a bilingual-bicultural (bi-bi) approach.  This approach assumes that American Sign Language (ASL) should be the first language of deaf children and that English should be taught as a second language through a fully accessible sign language, ASL.  The ultimate goal is proficiency in both ASL and written English, as well as ease of socialization in both deaf and hearing cultures.  Both languages and cultures are given equal value and prominence.

The approach became well known after the publication of Johnson, Liddell, and Erting's 1989 proposal, Unlocking the curriculum: Principles for achieving access in deaf education.  Only 3% of the programs serving deaf students use such an approach (Schildroth & Hutto, 1996).  Therefore, research-based methods are derived mostly from those for hearing second-language learners.  The drive behind the movement is research on deaf children with deaf parents who learn ASL natively and on research against sign supported speech (SSS), also known as simultaneous communication.

This paper will examine the reasons behind bi-bi education, the population of deaf students who could benefit from it, the methods in the bilingual component and in teh bicultural component, and the arguments against bi-bi education.

Inadequacies of sign supported speech

Sign supported speech (SSS) is the use of a form of manually coded English (MCE) simultaneously with speech in an attempt to increase the input comprehended by deaf students by providing three sources of the message: audition, speechreading, and signs.  The purpose of MCE is to "facilitate deaf children's access to English by precisely representing it in a manual modality" (Mounty, 1986) and to "further expose students to the language of reading, writing and of the larger society" (Eagney, 1987).  Some forms of MCE are Seeing Essential English (SEE I), Signing Exact English (SEE II), and Signed English (SE).  MCE uses signs adopted from ASL but lacks the productivity, inflection, and variability of ASL (Mounty, 1986).  MCE follows English syntax (unlike ASL, which has a syntax separate from that of English) and English morphology.

However, MCE leaves a gap between teh signed form and the spoken and written forms.  Students show difficulty in transferring English in sign to the written mode.  They "may not recognize the printed form of a word that they might know in sign.  That is, they may have the vocabulary item in sign, but be unable to use it in writing and reading" (Akamatsu & Armour, 1987).  Unlike the signed form, spoken language phonologically connects to the written form.  Therefore, MCE does not provide similar transferability to written English.

SSS may also cause cognitive and perceptual strains in the expression and reception of the message, because signs require longer execution time than corresponding speech on account of the larger muscles used in sign (Mounty, 1986).  This lag in sign execution requires either slower rate of speech or omission of signs (Eagney, 1987).  Therefore, students do not receive an accurate representation of the target language, English.

Many teachers, however, may not try to represent English grammar but instead strive for effective communication (Akamatsu & Armour, 1987; La Bue, 1995).  Therefore, teachers' MCE becomes much like ASL due to the visual accessiblity and morphological efficiency of ASL.  However, as La Bue (1995) found, this is not MCE nor ASL, and it is not either one very well.  La Bue (1995) also found that many teachers have a tendency to concentrate on the spoken portion of SSS and therefore give the students with more hearing an unfair and unnecessary advantage over the other children.

La Bue (1995) found that fourteen year old students who had been exposed to SSS for many years continued to show great difficulty in understanding many of the most basic forms of English (wh-questions and commands).  La Bue concluded that the theory of SSS's three language exposure points (audition, speechreading, and sign) could not be accurate and is therefore ineffective.

Schick and Gale (1995) found that children interacted the least during stories told in SEE II than in stories told in ASL and in SEE II with some ASL adaptations.  These researchers concluded that pure SEE II is least interesting to children.  This lack of interest could be due to the language's above-mentioned shortcomings.

While most teachers agree taht gains have been made with the use of SSS, they realize that their students continue to achieve at an inadequate level of competence (Eagney, 1987).  With so much evidence against SSS, the question is why is it still the prominent communication method in 54% of the programs serving deaf students (Schildroth & Hotto, 1996).  La Bue (1995) found that many teachers do not base their teaching practices on research, but they rely on the teaching practices of their colleagues and on the beliefs of their teacher training programs.  She proposed that "those trained within a belief system, with little access or availability to alternatives, are not easily swayed by contradictory scientific evidence."

The Total Communication Philosophy

Despite the curren interchangeable use of the terms 'sign supported speech' and 'total communication,' TC originated by Roy Holcomb as a philosophy of eclectic methods of communication including, but not limited to, audition, speech and speechreading, MCE, written English, gestures, mime, ASL, and drawing.  The idea was to use any and all types of communication in order to accurately and effectively convey the message.  However, educators combined the first three of these methods into one singular method, SSS.  Eventually, the terms TC and SSS (also simultaneous communication) became synonymous.

Bilingual-Bicultural Education as a Return to Total Communication

The bi-bi movement is really a return to the original essence of TC.  Bi-bi programs continue the use of aural/oral training and sometimes even the use of MCE.  However, the communication emphasis is on ASL and written English.  This way, all students have equal access to academic material.  That is, academic success is not dependent on aural/oral abilities.  However, aural/oral training still exists in bi-bi schools, but it is held separate from daily classroom instruction.

Bilingual-Bicultural Approach for Deaf Children of Hearing Parents

Bilingual assums ASL is the first language of deaf students.  However, only deaf children of deaf parents are likely to acquire ASL as a first language naturally from their parents.  But what about the 90% of deaf children whose parents are hearing?

Many deaf children of hearing parents receive little or no language input due to lack of accessibility.  Fifty-three percent of the deaf students in the United States are classified as severely to profoundly deaf (Schildroth & Hutto, 1996) and only ten percent have deaf parents.  This means that over half of the deaf children have little to no access to spoken English or ASL.

ASL is a natural language for deaf children

So what language do these children have when they arrive at school?  Some researchers have found that even children without consistent ASL input have a tendency toward ASL, supporting ASL as a natural language.

Young children, hearing or deaf, instinctively construct a linguistic system different from the input language until, through assimilation and accommodation, the initial system conforms to the input language.  However, Mounty (1995) found that in the case of deaf children, the target language, English, is either inaccessible to the child or inadequate for the child's language needs.  Therefore, these children depend more heavily on their instinctive system and construct their language from this system instead of English.  Deaf children prefer ASL because of its visually and cognitively clear and processible characteristics in morphology and use of space (Mounty, 1986; Schick & Gale, 1995).  Mounty (1986) found these children develop morphological complexity without consistent exposure to ASL models.  Schick and Gale (1995) found that children were more likely to interact and initiate interactions when ASL was used.  They concluded that ASL signing makes communication more accessible to deaf children.

Native ASL signers surpass late learners of ASL

Research shows that native signers show better ease of transition between ASL and English and have a more advanced level of morphological development than signers who learn ASL later.

Hoffmeister and Moore (1987) found that deaf adults who learned ASL from their parents represented English more effectively than deaf adults of hearing parents when addressing a hearing audience.  This shows that native signers are better bilinguals by showing ease of transition between the two languages.

Mayberry (1993) found that as age of ASL acquisition increased, the grammatical acceptability fo the subjects' responses declined.  The later learning signers made more mistakes in signs related in form (e.g. handshape) than they did in meaning (e.g. opposites).  The opposite was true in native signers.  Mayberry also found that individuals who do not acquire a language before early childhood have limited processing skills for language.

Galvan (1989) analyzed the differences in verb usage between deaf native signers and deaf late signers.  He foudn that "late signers show cognitive development without morphological development."  Therefore, these late signers tended to see signs in their whole form and did not attend to the variability that occurs in morphemes within signs.

Therefore, if deaf children acquire ASL as a first language, they can build upon that language base.  However, children who do not acquire ASL as a first language have a weaker language base and show more difficulty in transferring between ASL and English.

Methods in the Bilingual Component

Hearing students receive linguistic instruction of their native language, English, in school.  However, deaf students rarely receive this same type of instruction in their native language, ASL.  Furthermore, many deaf students enter the educational setting without a solid first language at all.  Therefore, these students especially require direct teaching of ASL.  They cannot be left to learn it only from the environment.  Hall (1995) and Akamatsu and Armour (1987) noted an absence in the direct teaching of ASL or in the linguistic analysis of ASL or MCE.  Akamatsu and Armour (1987) also noted that even teachers who use some ASL in the classrooms may not utilize their own and their students' understanding of ASL to teach English.

Children who have a strong command of ASL as a first language can then transfer that knowledge of language to English.  Hall (1995) tested deaf students in writing, story reading, story retelling and response to questions, sign language interviews, and cloze tasks.  He found that deaf children used a type of English glossing of ASL which attributed to the students' limited abilities in English structure.  he concluded that a bilingual approach of instruction would help students improve their English by enabling them to transfer their understanding of language through ASL to an understanding of the English language.

Akamatsu and Armour (1987) studied the effects of ASL to English translation intervention in deaf students.  The intervention consisted of instruction in communication processes, the differences between MCE and ASL, transliteration and translation skills, and English grammar and editing.  The students compared English to ASL and practiced writing by translating ASL into written English.  After ten weeks, the intervention significantly improved the students' written English grammar.  The students also showed understanding of the ability to convey any idea in either ASL or English.  The researchers also saw that students could successfully convey their own ideas in English by signing to themselves, translating their own signs, and then editing as needed.

Researchers have also proven positive effects of ASL storytelling for deaf children.  ASL storytelling can be used with preschool children to motivate an interest in reading, and it can be used to explain the literature that older children read on their own.

Children who cannot read themselves can benefit from ASL storytelling because it opens the world of books in an accessible and interesting language.  Schick and Gale (1995) studied preschool student interactions during storytelling in ASL, in MCE, and in a mixture of ASL and MCE in the same story.  The researchers found that students were more likely to interact and initiate interactions when ASL was used.  The researchers concluded that using ASL during instruction would increase their interest in communication and their willingness to initiate interactions.  Such use of ASL during storytelling could increase the children's motivation to read books (Andrews, Winograd, & DeVille, 1994).

Older students who can read also benefit from ASL storytelling through prereading strategies of ASL summarizations.  Andrews, Winograd, and DeVille (1994) studied the effects of this strategy in elementary school students.  The teacher summarized fables in ASL without giving the moral of the story before the students read the fables on their own.  The students then retold the stories and also told the moral of each fable.  The results showed that the ASL summary technique improved the students' ability to retell the stories and to comprehend the moral lessons of the fables.  The researchers concluded that the ASL summary technique improved memory and inference tasks.

Methods in the Bicultural Component

Bilingualism in ASL and English naturally lends itself to biculturalism (Deaf and hearing) by opening the hearing society to children through literacy and by making Deaf role models more available (Hall, 1995).  However, some programs take a direct approach to cultural education by implementing deaf studies courses.

The deaf curricula at Cleary School for the Deaf in Nesconset, New York, and Kendall Demonstration Elementary School for the Deaf in Washington, DC, emphasize identity, proficiency in ASL, Deaf history, arts and literature of the Deaf Culture, and skills in the use of professional interpreters.

Before schools can implement bicultural programs, educators must have an understanding of both cultures.  Sign Talk Centre for Children (STCC), a reverse mainstream program, found that many of the hearing staff members did not even realize that they have a culture.  "As majority members, they have rarely had to think about the values and traditions that are part of their culture.  Deaf people, as a minority group, are extremely aware of their culture because they have fought so hard for its recognition" (Evans).  Therefore, STCC began training in cultural mediation to help bridge the gap between the two cultures and to prepare the staff for cultural issues among the children.

Arguments Against the Bilingual-Bicultural Approach

Several points of opposition confront the bi-bi approach.  Among these are a lack of qualified teachers, an unknown standard definition of ASL, research against ASL as a natural language for deaf children, less auditory exposure for children with aural abilities, the possibility of ASL replacing English, disagreement over the use of MCE, and the limited school environments that are conducive to such an approach.

Lack of qualified teachers

The implementation of a bi-bi approach requires a faculty of qualified professionals.  However, the availability of qualified teachers is limited due to lack of deaf teachers in the schools and to inadequate ASL skills of hearing teachers.

While many teachers may have positive attitudes toward ASL and the bilingual approach (Haselton, 1990), few have the ability to implement this approach into their programs.  A basic assumption of bilingual education is that the teacher is proficient in both ASL and English.  However, few native signers are teachers.  In a 1993 article, Andrews and Jordan reported that only 16% of teachers of the deaf are deaf themselves.  They attribute this lack of deaf teachers to little recruitment of deaf students into teacher education programs and inequitable Graduate Record Examination (GRE) requirements and teacher competency examinations.  Furthermore, many of those teachers who are deaf teach in vocational departments and in content areas other than reading and language (Andrews, Winograd, & DeVille, 1994).

While hearing teachers cannot be expected to have native fluency in ASL, they rarely have any abilities in ASL.  Andrews, Winograd, and DeVille (1994) noted that most teacher education programs require candidates for certification to take only two or fewer sign language classes.  Therefore, hearing teachers are not prepared to teach in ASL.

Unknown standard definition of ASL

Bilingual education depends upon proficiency in ASL.  While much progress has occurred over linguistic analysis of ASL, much debate continues over what exactly defines ASL.  Seal (1991) studied deaf and hearing signers' ability to distinguish between ASL and English signing.  Deaf and hearing observers were classified by years of experience signing.  Observers viewed a videotape of conversations and were told that two of the four children in the conversations were from ASL homes and two from SSS homes.  Observers were asked to decide which mode of signing each child in the videotape was using and to explain why they came to these decisions.  Five sign language specialists watched the conversations and served as criterion judges to which observer judgements were compared.  Seal found that years of experience did not significantly affect scores.  Except for one case, the deaf signers showed no significant difference in ability to recognize ASL signing than the hearing observers.  Therefore, the results showed that a standard definition of ASL is not widely known among signers.

Research against ASL as a natural language for deaf children

Eagney (1987) found that deaf children understand ASL, English signing, and simplified English equally well, and both younger and older children equally understand the three languages.  She concluded that ASL is not a natural language for the deaf, because ASL was not better understood than the two forms of English.  Eagney reasoned that if ASL were a natural language for the deaf, "younger children would automatically understand it better, and older children, having been trained in English, would not."  However, the results of this research did not find this to be true.  Eagney also reasoned that the more linguistically-sophisticated older children would have an even better grasp of a natural language, ASL, than of English.  However, this did not prove to be true either.

However, since deaf children do not receive formal teaching of ASL (which hearing children do of their native language, English) and since they do not receive consistent models of ASL to which they can compare their own signing and with which they can either consciously or subconsciously analyze and test their own assumptions about ASL, older children do not improve their understanding of ASL as readily as hearing children improve in their native language.

Less auditory exposure for children with auditory abilities

Some teachers believe that "using ASL all the time would be cheating some students out of an opportunity to be exposed to English, especially those students who can make use of their residual hearing" (La Bue, 1995).  After all, the students with the most hearing often do better academically than other students (La Bue, 1995).  The reason for this is obvious: if the only input from the teacher that is accessible to any of the children is in an aural mode, only the students with aural abilities will succeed.  The purpose of the bilingual-bicultural approach is to make instruction accessible to all students regardless of auditory ability.  Furthermore, all current bi-bi programs continue to provide intensive aural/oral training for their students.  This area is not neglected in the bilingual approach; it is only separated from academic achievement.

ASL could replace English

La Bue (1995) studied a hearing teacher of the deaf dn the fourteen year old deaf students in her class.  In the study, La Bue took an interactive approach to testing the teacher's philosophies of education and communication and to comparing the teacher's understanding of language and cognition in deaf students with her actual practices.  She found that teachers who use ASL summaries tend to give students credit for understanding the written story when, in fact, the children have relied on the teacher's signing of the story.

Disagreement over the use of MCE

Some proponents of a bi-bi approach believe MCE can and should be used as a mode of communicating in English (Mounty, 1986; Paul & Quigley, 1987).  However, some theorists in the approach (Johnson, Liddell, & Erting, 1989) and several current bi-bi programs believe MCE should not be used at all.  Literature from The Learning Center (TLC) for Deaf Children in Framingham, MA, states, "TLC staff take care to keep the two languages [ASL and English] separate so that they provide a pure and clear language model both in ASL and in English."  Communication guidelines from Sign Talk Children's Centre (STCC) in Manitoba, Canada, instruct teachers to "not speak and sign at the same time.  Simultaneously speaking and signing can appear to save time, but it is at the expense of one (and usually both) of the languages" (Evans).

Bilingual-bicultural approaches only possible in segregated environments

Because the bi-bi approach emphasizes interactive communication in the educational environment, mainstream programs cannot adequately implement such an approach.  Therefore, bi-bi programs are restricted to residential and day schools for the deaf.  Currently, only 29% of deaf and hard of hearing students attend these types of schools (Schildroth & Hotto, 1996).

ASL may be difficult for parents to learn

While ASL may be easier than MCE for deaf children to learn, it is easier for hearing parents and teachers to learn a new modality (sign) of the language they already know (English) than to learn an all new language (ASL) in a modality they have never used (sign).  Some educators may feel that ease of communication for the parents and teachers is more important than ease of comprehension for the child (La Bue, 1995).  In which case, MCE would be used in the home.

Conclusion

The bi-bi approach, though relatively new, has received much attention from professionals in the field of deaf education.  More importantly, overwhelming support for a return to ASL in the classroom has risen from the Deaf Community.  However, research in this area is limited.  Therefore, a need for further research exists, especially in the areas of effective placement, methods, and evaluation.  On-going assessment of current bi-bi programs needs to be widely available for others to examine and follow.  Without such research, this promising approach could lose support and therefore fail at the sake of deaf children.

References

Akamatsu, C. T., & Armour, V. A. (1987).  Developing written literacy in deaf children through analyzing sign language.  American Annals of the Deaf, 132, 46-51.

Andrews, J. F., & Jordan, D. L. (1993).  Minority and minority-deaf professionals: How many and where are they?  American Annals of the Deaf, 138, 388-396.

Andrews, J. F., Winograd, P., & DeVille, G. (1994).  Deaf children reading fables: Using ASL summaries to improve reading comprehension. American Annals of the Deaf, 139, 378-386.

Deaf Studies Curriculum Committee. (1992).  DEAFinitely Cleary! A Deaf studies curriculum for use at the Cleary School for the Deaf.  Nesconset, NY: Author.

Eagney, P. (1987).  ASL? English? Which? Comparing comprehension. American Annals of the Deaf, 132, 272-275.

Evans, G. (ed.) Discovering with words and signs: A resource guide for developing a bilingual and bicultural preschool program for deaf and hearing children.  Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: Sign Talk Children's Centre.

Galvan, D. (1989). A sensitive period for the acquisition of complex morphology: Evidence from American Sign Language.  Irvine: University of California.  (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 335 892)

Hall, W. M. (1995).  Jamaican deaf children interacting with written language: Support for bilingual instruction?  International Journal of Disability, Development, & Education, 42 (1), 17-31.

Haselton, W. T. (1990).  A survey of attitudes among teachers of hearing-impaired students toward a bilingual/ESL model for deaf education.  Master's thesis, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Hoffmeister, R., & Moores, D. F. (1987).  Code switching in deaf adults.  American Annals of the Deaf, 132, 31-34.

Johnson, R. E., Liddell, S. K., & Erting, C. J. (1989).  Unlocking the curriculum: Principles for achieving access in deaf education (Gallaudet Research Institute Working Paper 89-3).  Washington, DC: Gallaudet University.

Kendall Demonstration Elementary School for the Deaf.  The Deaf Studies Curriculum Guide.  Washington, DC: Pre-College Outreach Services.

LaBue, M.A. (1995). Language and learning in a deaf education classroom: Practice and paradox.  In C. Lucas (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities (pp. 164-220).  Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Mayberry, R. I. (1993).  First-language acquisition after childhood differs from second-language acquisition: The case of American Sign Language.  Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 1258-1270.

Mounty, J. L. (1986). Nativization and input in the language development of two deaf children of hearing parents.  Boston: Boston University.  (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 334 723)

Paul, P. V., & Quigley, S. (1987).  Using American Sign Language to teach English.  In P. L. McAnally, S. Rose, & S. Quigley, Language Learning Practices with Deaf Children (pp. 139-166).  Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Schick, B. & Gale, E. (1995).  Preschool deaf and hard of hearing students' interactions during ASL and English storytelling.  American Annals of the Deaf, 140, 363-370.

Schildroth, A. N., & Hutto, S. A. (1996).  Changes in student and program characteristics, 1984-85 & 1994-95.  American Annals of the Deaf, 141, 68-71.

Seal, B. C. (1991). Observer agreement on judgments of bilingualism in deaf children.  Harrisonburg, VA: James Madison University. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 341 216)

The Learning Center for Deaf Children.  Most frequently asked questions about The Learning Center. [brochure] Framingham, MA: Author.
 
 

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