ENGL 431 Theory and Practice of Tutoring Writing
Dr. Kim Jaxon
18
. May. 2010.
Chung, Hwa-Su
The writing literacy of students with hearing impairments
Writing is certainly a critical element which indicates who the writer is.
Working through several schools for special needs students, I have seen many
different styles of writing. No one who showed me exactly the same feature as
others, as their literacy, named disabilities, and difficulties in school were totally
different. The tones, grammatical errors, writing patterns, and structures of
paragraphs each student used were distinct, and these distinguishable features led
me to believe that each special needs student has a very unique the writing style and
it will never be similar to others.
However, working for a student only with hearing impairments, one
question came to me. He was a fourth grader in elementary school, using both sign
and spoken language. I expected he would show me a unique writing style since he
had no difficulties with literacy due to the fact that he had only hearing impairments,
not other disabilities like learning disabilities. However, his writing was extremely
interesting. The patterns of his writing deviated from those of other children
without disabilities in his age. I was so confused about whether this pattern
emerged from the difference in this individual’s writing pattern, or writing features
of students with hearing impairments. I scrutinized other papers written by
students with hearing impairments, interestingly, they also showed me similar
writing patterns and errors to his writing(e.g., they wrote “various mountains rivers”
to express “nature”. The word, “Nature” in Korean sign language consists of the
signs of “various”, “mountains”, and “rivers”). What are the writing features of
students with hearing impairments?
The article by Alberini and Schley (2003) titled, ‘Writing: Characteristics,
Instruction, and Assessment’, helped me untangle my idea of what patterns students
with hearing impairments have. The authors reported deaf children’s lexical
difficulties. They use fewer cohesive markers or fewer lexical devices to signal
cohesion. These results match my assumption that they have lexical difficulties
rather than spelling difficulties. They also report that “the acquisition of morphology,
syntax, and lexical knowledge often lag behind the acquisition of vocabulary,
content knowledge, and rhetorical skills” (p. 130). According to my experience of
teaching students with hearing impairments, the lack of the plentiful lexical use
most of the students possess emerged from their scanty learning experience. As
they are more exposed to learning experience, they showed me their use of more
vivid vocabulary. Reading through the article, I found an interesting case of some
deaf students who had some facility in ASL (American Sign Language). “They had a
richer vocabulary base and were less repetitive and formulaic in their writing” (p.
126). The article also introduced Schely (1994)’s findings that “students who had
more ASL experience and input scored higher on two measures of English literacy
(SAP-HI and written samples)” (p. 126). It was certainly a different result from my
assumption. Examining the paper written by students with hearing impairments, I
saw many awkward words which seemed to be caused by the students’ confusion
between sign language and spoken language. I assumed that their writings were
interrupted by their knowledge of sign language. The cases in the article got me very
curious about the correlation between sign language proficiency and literacy.
The article of Mayer and Akamatsu (2000) , Deaf children creating written
texts: contributions of American sign language and sign forms of English, shows me
that there is a positive correlation between sign language and literacy. The authors
explain that high proficiency sign language supports the development of literacy.
According to the article, sign languages conceptual and background knowledge
might facilitate the acquisition of L2 literacy, subject matter content, and the
strategy based on ASL helps students to organize the content and meaning of
written texts (p. 142). Sign language proficiency seems to be a basis for learning
literacy. Rathmann explain the correlation in his study on Narrative structure and
Narrative development (2007). ASL fluency contributes to a linguistic foundation
that develops literacy skills through concretely correlating meta-linguistic
awareness of sign language and the development of the same literacy skills in the
written form. According to the author, the construction of sign language overlaps
with that of spoken language, which makes deaf students be aware of metalinguistic awareness that contributes to the development of spoken language
literacy. Only after I reached this part of this article, was I able to assume what is
going on in deaf students’ head when they are writing and be aware of why their
writing construction looks so similar to non- deaf students’ in spite of having “weird
vocabulary”. I assumed that they are able to make a similar looking writing
structure based on their meta-linguistic awareness gained from the sign language
they use, but still using sign language vocabulary style in their written forms. So,
what is really going on in their brain while writing? How do they use sign language
while writing?
In the article, Bilingual-biculture models of literacy education for deaf
students: considering the claims, by Mayer and Akamatsu (1999), bilingualism for a
written language as L2 is briefly introduced by comparing it with the process
hearing writers use, “the strategy of verbalizing their thoughts piecemeal and then
attempting to write them down” (p. 4). The authors suggest that deaf students
should have a strategy as a pathway for establishing a speacking-writing connection.
Mayer and Akamatsu’s study (2000) showed me several types of literacy paths. I
simply guessed that the awareness of sign language contributes to second language
(English), whatever it is spoken or written language through reading Rathmann’s
study. However, the contribution of sign language awareness to L2 (like English)
literacy is a more complicating issue. There have been some researchers who
formulated a hypothesis that the spoken form of L2 developed by the spoken form
of sign language contributes to the development of the written form in L2. Yet, this
assumption is vulnerable in the sense that there is no literacy in sign language and
deaf students might not have spoken proficiency in L2. The authors present two
types of composing processes. One way is that the literacy acquisition of deaf
students depending on English-based sign. English-based sign as the first language
helps the development of written English, also American sign-language. This is to
approach the acquisition of literacy by using English-based sign. Since the sign itself
has the same structure as English, the proficiency of signed English is able to
directly contribute to the development of written English literacy. The other way is
much more interesting to me; it is that the sign English developed by American signlanguage contribute to the development of written English. By looking at these two
ways, I realized that deaf students also use inner speech to write like non-deaf
students do. For deaf students, English-based sign and sign language are presented
as means for inner speech to write. Inner speech revealed by Vygotsky is accepted
as an essential means for students to use in order to consider or solve problems.
The fact that sign language and English based sign function as bridges from inner
speech to written form refreshed my understanding because I just thought that
inner speech was just one of the means to solve the learning problems of learning
disabled students. It also explained to me why bilingualism used in the education of
deaf students has gotten so much attention from researchers, special educators, and
parents.
Reading through several articles, I figured out a very interesting and
renovating idea that reversed the idea of teaching English writing to students with
hearing impairments, writing ASL. When I just faced this concept, I was so confused
since I just read the article of Mayer and Akamatsu which points out there is no ASL
literacy form. Wood (2004) has a question, “why should the only avenue to literacy
for deaf people be through English?” (p. 183). The author exemplifies using
videotape as the equivalent of English writing in order to explain the concept of
writing ASL. “It allows people to preserve their words and to distribute some types
of literature”(p. 183). The author support this idea by pointing out that using
videotape satisfies some of the functions of writing, distancing and aesthetic
function. The idea itself is so meaningful to me in the sense that the sign language
used by deaf people is considered as a language that should be accepted by society
and deaf students are able to get learning experience with their own language;
however, I think that teaching English writing is more meaningful to deaf students
in terms of transition which is a basis of special education.
As a special educator, I have been educated to use bilingualism for teaching
students with hearing impairments, being reminded the importance of bilingualism,
rather than being aware of why it is important. Through my research, what the process
is that students with hearing impairments use to write, how their awareness of sign
language appear in their writings, and why bilingualism is valuable in special education.
Now, I’m so much interested in branching out my idea to how to apply the concept of
bilingualism to teaching writing to students with hearing impairments and reading some
resources for it. I strongly feel that sign language plays an important role for the deaf
students’ writings as their first language which can be a basis for using inner speech to
write through reading the articles relevant to bilingualism. I look forward to figuring out
the application of bilingualism to teaching writing and practical techniques to teach both
languages to students with hearing impairments by continuing my inquiry.
References
Albertini, J., & Schley, S. (2003). Writing: Characteristics, instruction, and assessment.
In Marschark, Marc., & Spence, Partricia. E (Eds). Oxford handbook of deaf studies, language,
and education (pp. 123-135). NY US: Oxford University Press.
Mayer, C., & Akamatsu, C. (1999). Bilingual-bicultural models of literacy education for
deaf students: Considering the claims. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 4(1), 1-8.
doi:10.1093/deafed/4.1.1.
Mayer, C., & Akamatsu, C. (2000). DEAF CHILDREN CREATING WRITTEN TEXTS:
CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AND SIGNED FORMS OF ENGLISH. American
Annals of the Deaf, 145(5), 394-403. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Rathmann, C., Mann, W., & Morgan, G. (2007). Narrative Structure and Narrative
Development in Deaf Children. Deafness and Education International, 9(4), 187-196. Retrieved
from ERIC database
Wood, Kathleen M. (2004). English literacy in the life stories of deaf college
undergraduates. In Brueggemann, Brenda Jo (Ed), Literacy and deaf people. NY: Gallauder
University Press.