A teacher of hearing-impaired students describes commercially available software for teaching sign language and finger spelling, lists sources of information about other software programs, and offers suggestions to encourage teachers to utilize computers in their classrooms. (JDD)

Seven preschool children with hearing impairment or deafness were studied for nine months as they learned to read, write, and spell or fingerspell their names. Analysis revealed that the children learned that names are powerful expressions of identity through teacher demonstrations, immersion in a literacy-rich environment, and numerous…

This study analyzed the fingerspelling of 25 teachers using Signing Exact English (SEE) 1 or 2, and 25 teachers using Manual/Signed English or Pidgin Signed English with their hearing-impaired students. Intergroup differences were not significant. Teachers used fingerspelling primarily to introduce novel words, spell short words, and spell proper…

Details the influence of English on British Sign Language (BSL) at the syntactic, morphological, lexical, idiomatic, and phonological levels. Shows how BSL uses loan translations, fingerspellings, and the use of mouth patterns derived from English language spoken words to include elements from English. (Author/VWL)

The paper examines the role of morphological (word) cues in reading and considers the implications for deaf students. Theories on the importance of decoding and morphological comparison in competent reading comprehension are reviewed, and studies on how successful deaf readers learn morphological cues are described. Findings show that deaf readers…

The educational unit on deafness for hearing students was developed by the Alberta (Canada) School for the Deaf and covers: (1) an introduction to deafness (covering types of hearing loss, causes of deafness, misconceptions and clarifications, and the programs of the Alberta School for the Deaf); (2) famous deaf Canadians; (3) a quiz on the deaf…

Twenty-eight deaf adolescents enrolled in a day-class program for the hearing impaired were administered a battery of four short factual stories using oral, manual, simultaneous, and interpreted modalities of communication. (Author/PHR)

Compared was the amount of verbal information processed visually by 19 elementary and secondary level deaf students, under print and fingerspelling conditions. (Author)

Reviews several experiments which examined the cognitive function of finger writing, an activity widely used by Japanese people and thought to be related to Kanji learning. Children and university students performed either Kanji anagram tasks or English word tasks. Finger writing appears to originate from the existence of motoric or action-based…

The article surveys literature and research about deaf children's acquisition of American Sign Language, especially as it compares to language acquisition of their hearing peers. The development of manual articulation as well as vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and fingerspelling acquisition are discussed. (JL)

Coding of printed letters in a task of consonant recall was examined in relation to the level of success of prelingually and profoundly deaf young children. Results indicated that the success of good readers appears to be related to their ability to establish and make use of linguistically recoded representations of the language. (Author/CI)