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Deaf
Literacy
Literacy
Instruction For Students Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing
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Research
Highlights
Students
who are deaf experience special challenges in learning
to read and write.
- Learning
to read and write is part of the language acquisition process,
and many of the difficulties deaf students experience are related
to their lack of a strong language base (either English or ASL).
- Deaf
students may lack some of the background knowledge that hearing
students bring to reading.
- Deaf
students' lack of exposure to spoken language makes teaching
traditional sound-letter correspondence difficult, if not impossible.
- For
those deaf students whose first language is signing, learning
to read and write in English constitutes learning a second language
with a different grammar, lexicon, and syntax.
Teachers
need special methods to teach literacy to students who
are deaf.
- Instructors
should provide students with background knowledge regarding
culture and content, as well as language aspects such as grammar,
use of idioms and vocabulary development.
- In
spite of the difficulties mentioned above, there has been some
success for the use of cued speech to teach traditional phonemic
(sound-letter correspondence) methods of reading to this population,
and this is not necessarily dependent on usable hearing.
Strategies
should address basic fluency, development of advanced writing
skills and reading comprehension.
- Basic
fluency is acquired within social contexts in which students
are motivated to communicate and relate to others.
- Literacy
provides students who are deaf with opportunities to enter the
world of literature and enjoy videos, TV with captioning, and
other forms of entertainment with their hearing peers. It allows
them to access information through all types of media. In addition,
strong literacy skills allow Deaf and Hard of Hearing adults
to compete in the job market.
Strategies
should include:
- Exposure
to a wide range of written materials in "print-rich physical
environments".
- Demonstration
of written, finger-spelled, and signed language, and the relationship
between the three.
- Opportunity
to experiment with reading and writing in a risk-free and supportive
setting.
New
Methods for teaching literacy to students who are deaf include:
Captioning
- Captioned
TV and video at home help expose children to lots of written
English, supporting natural literacy development.
- In
the classroom, captioning allows the teacher to focus on broad
textual concepts in a more directed instructional environment.
Computer
applications
- Interactive
video, multimedia, and on-screen captioning are all being used
increasingly to teach students who are deaf.
Advantages
of these methods include:
- The
ability to individualize lessons to the needs and preferences
of diverse students
- The
combination of text and video is highly motivational and reinforces
the context for literacy learning
- This
technology makes literacy more accessible and more comfortable
The
signing in the videos and computer applications is of excellent
quality.
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