The national policy in deaf education in Mainland China primarily focuses on oral/aural instruction and hearing rehabilitation. The curriculum in primary grades is specifically structured on speech and hearing skills for language development. But there is little evidence that documents what early literacy instruction looks like or how teachers…

This is a dissertation study focusing on the ability of deaf children to fast map common and newly learned novel fingerspelled words through a training task. It also explored the relationship between the ability to learn fingerspelled words and the children's reading and vocabulary skills. Learning was assessed using five domains: imitation,…

This paper focuses upon the deaf as an American Sign Language-using community, out of the English-using mainstream. (RC)

In this paper the author takes a positive not a negative view of sign language. It is the center of attention, not as an object of interest to the specialist in language, but as the central feature in the complex sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic system that makes the deaf person part of general American culture and at the same time part of a…

The fingerspelling component of thirteen samples of Visible English (the system of communication in which all speech is supposed to be simultaneoously fingerspelled) used by teachers in classrooms in two schools for the deaf were analyzed linguistically. Only 56 percent of what should have been fingerspelled was present and legible. (Author/CFM)

Discusses a series of seminars designed to teach situational communication skills to deaf adults and enable graduate students to improve their ability to work with the deaf. (RW)

The acquisition of past tense inflectional suffixes using the written and fingerspelling modes were studied with 24 prelingually deaf children (ages 8 to 15 years) randomly assigned to fingerspelling, writing, and control groups. (PHR)

Charles A. Ferguson's concept of "diglossia" (1959, 1964) is used in analyzing sign language. As in Haitian Creole or Swiss German, "two or more varieties" of sign language are "used by the same speakers under different conditions"--these are here called "High" (H) sign language and "Low" (L) sign language. H sign language is formally taught…

This paper deals with the integrative function of sign language in the British deaf community. Sign language communities exhibit a special case of diglossia in that they exist within a larger, hearing community not necessarily characterized by diglossia itself. British Sign Language includes at least two diglossic varieties, with different…

THE EDUCATION AND ACHIEVEMENT OF THE TOTALLY DEAF IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SOCIETY WERE DESCRIBED. DISCUSSED IN DETAIL WERE THE FOLLOWING TOPICS--(1) A DESCRIPTIVE MODEL OF DEAF INDIVIDUALS, (2) EDUCATION OF THE DEAF, (3) SIGN LANGUAGE, AND (4) EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE AND CONCEPT FORMATION. THESE DISCUSSIONS SUGGESTED THAT THE…

AN INVESTIGATION WAS UNDERTAKEN TO DETERMINE WHETHER EARLY MANUAL COMMUNICATION WITH DEAF CHILDREN INFLUENCES THEIR SUBSEQUENT ACQUISITION OF (1) INTELLIGIBLE SPEECH, (2) READING ABILITY, (3) SPEECH READING ABILITY, (4) WRITTEN LANGUAGE, AND (5) PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT. THE DESIGN INVOLVED MATCHED PAIRS OF SUBJECTS BECAUSE OF THE LARGE NUMBER OF…

This book is written primarily for those studying linguistic topics in the area of sign language, but also can be useful to sign language teachers who want to understand more about American Sign Language (ASL). Pen-and-ink illustrations allow the reader with no knowledge of sign language to follow the discussion. The hypothesis examined in this…

Some insight into the relationship between language and thought can be achieved through a comparison between American Sign Language and English. This paper discusses several studies on this topic and defines some of the problems. The author feels that the deaf using American Sign Language cannot be considered linguistically deficient. A structural…