Deaf children creating written texts: contributions of American Sign Language and signed forms of English.

The objectives of this descriptive study were to investigate the ways in which American Sign Language (ASL) and English-based sign allow for comprehension of text content, and to determine how these two avenues of communication might mediate the process of reconstructing "signed meaning" in a written text. The authors argue that comprehensible input in a visual mode is possible in either ASL or English-based sign. They further claim that English-based signing may be an effective means of bridging the gap between inner speech and written text.

Documenting English syntactic development in face-to-face signed communication.

The authors explored the face-to-face English competence of five students who were participating in a larger study of teachers' use of English-based signing. Using case studies, the authors report on the students' development of English-based signing at the beginning and end of their involvement in this 4-year study. Grammatical forms similar in English and American Sign Language (ASL) were initially more readily produced when tested for in English, and showed consistently higher attainment levels across all the students, than grammatical forms that are different in English and ASL. The authors found emerging English forms that could be documented (a) between prompted and imitated utterances and (b) within blocks of test items examining the same grammatical constructions. The authors conclude that teachers' concerted efforts to use English-based signing as a language of instruction enhance deaf students' English acquisition. Such signing helps build a bridge between native sign language and the development of English skills necessary for literacy.

Aiming for consistency in the way teachers sign.

A four year study examined the effects of a sign communication intervention program designed to enhance teachers' ability to consistently code English into sign. The secondary goal of the project was to help teachers use American Sign Language as an intervention tool for enhancing students' comprehension of instructions. Starting with an initial sign to speech ratio of 59.8% and 66.2%, two teachers were able to improve their ratio to 98.9% and 89.7% respectively. The basic components of the intervention program are presented along with their rationale. A breakdown of the sign to speech ratio is provided in an examination of how effectively the teachers coded articles, pronouns, sign markers, and the verb "to be."

Using immediate recall to assess language proficiency in deaf students.

We used an immediate recall paradigm to study the effects of list organization and semantic and grammatical features of printed stimuli on working memory capacity in deaf students with differing English language abilities. Thirty lists of five organizational types (random words, semantically related words, semantically paired words, scrambled sentences, and grammatical sentences) were presented to two groups of deaf students who differed in their proficiency in the English language. The students were required to recall the lists in writing. The results indicate that, overall, the students with higher levels of English language proficiency recalled significantly more than those with lower levels. Additionally, semantic and syntactic organization of the lists had different effects on the two groups of students. Semantic pairing aided the low-level group significantly more than the high-level group, whereas the syntactic organization of the grammatical sentences aided the high-level group significantly more. Implications for assessing language ability in deaf students are discussed.