Improving deaf students' literacy in American Sign Language and English

Improving Deaf Students' Texts in ASL and English

Hoffman and Wang (2010) understood the difficulty for deaf students to correlate learning language through visual representations. Thus, the research they conducted aimed at exploring how sign language graphics used early on in educational facilities would impact the literacy development of deaf students. The research included two students using commercially available literacy materials. Both had hearing loss caused by various reasons. The intervention used direct teacher instruction in the form of a mini-lesson which was then followed by a 15-20 minute reading independent student session, with available teacher guidance. Sign language graphics were used to clarify vocabulary, and were taken from the American Sign Language Clip and Create. Previously the teacher strategies lacked independent student reading during the school day, rather instructing it only unsupervised at home. Overall, research findings suggested that "adding sign language graphics to texts in the leveled classroom library did appear to have a positive effect on the reading behaviors of the two students," (136). Both students benefitted from this more structured support using sign language graphics. However, the study was limited in its larger assumptions based on the extremely small sample size of the participants. Future research would definitely benefit from larger participant groups.

Hoffman & Wang (2010) went a different direction and tested how well the presence of a fluid sign narrator impacted literacy levels in deaf students. This researched focused on shared reading experiences, where many deaf students have greater insecurities resulting to poor literacy capabilities. Researchers used a single-subject- design study to combine greater resources spent on parent education and the use of new technologies to assist in shared reading practice; in this case the research used the Iowa Signing E-Book developed by the University of Iowa. This program used a multifaceted approach to student reading, with engaging elements of both reading exercises with a digital sign narrator of what was in text below. Study findings showed that the two combined factors did improve time and effort spent on shared reading exercises, along with vocabulary acquisition. This study also used very few participants. This makes the analysis of result factors more in depth, but often limits the overall findings to broader populations of students.

Reitsma (2009) also looked at the implementation of computer learning software to help increase overall literacy development and vocabulary acquisition in deaf students. The research used two computer-based educational exercises that were later evaluated through the use of student post tests to gauge effectiveness in learning success. The software used three modes of learning, one with spelling, another with a digital signing of the word, and the final one being meaning oriented. To strengthen the study more than the previous two, the researchers used a larger participant group. In fact eleven deaf children were drafted into the context of the research. The research also pitted the three different learning strategies against one another to test which was most effective in terms of teaching practice. What the study results showed was that word spelling strategies were most effective in increases literacy awareness, but that drawings and videos also showed statistically significant improvements beyond previous levels without use of the technology.

Mayer & Akamatsu (2000) also exposes the difficulties in achieving typical literacy levels within the context of deaf children. In fact, there is the unfortunate recording of many high school deaf students have literacy rates at nearly a fourth grade level. Mayer & Akamatsu (2000) created the presently discussed research study to explore potential avenues for improving overall literacy rates using bilingual and multifaceted approaches to teaching deaf students. Three children from grades seven and eight were drafted into the study from an urban educational facility for deaf children. The facility where the students attended had been using both American Sign Language (ASL) and English, in both sign and print. In order to compare educational strategies from the two lingual forms, the study used signed video tapes using both ASL and English sign. The three students then watched the tapes over a period of two separate sessions, after which they were asked to produce "a written version of the text they had viewed," (Mayer & Akamatsu 2000 p 295). This was then followed up by later interviews comparing and evaluating the two different signed texts they had been exposed to. Study results showed that the three students understood both forms of sign rather similarly, with some slight misunderstandings based on differing contexts between the two. Errors in grammar became the element that showed various distance between the two languages used within the study. One student showed similar mistakes in both, the others showed more grammatical understanding in the English form. The types of mistakes the students made based on language used was also a key factor. This lead researchers to conclude that using both languages helped increase literary understanding overall, especially when used in conjunction with one another, and that mistakes made were often "misunderstanding specific lexical items, not misunderstanding the language as a whole," (Mayer & Akamatsu 2000 p 84). Once again the study could have been stronger by using more participants in a broader sample category. However, the in-depth detail of the study was augmented with the strong design that implemented follow up interviews which were then compared to the actual written data provided by the students themselves.