No abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the written phrasal constructs and grammar usage of deaf and hard of hearing students with varying expressive language skills. Twenty-nine d/hh middle school students attending a residential school for the deaf were divided into three language groups: students using spoken English, ASL/English bilinguals, and language delayed learners. Personal narrative writing samples were collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the academic year. The samples were divided into T-units and coded for language variables, including word efficiency ratio (WER) scores according to the Structural Analysis of Written Language (SAWL) and phrasal errors. The repeated measures ANOVA for WER III showed a statistically significant main effect with no between-subjects factor, demonstrating that students from all three language groups made positive gains in their written outcomes over one academic year. There was a reduction in phrasal errors over the course of the year for all language groups. Differences in word efficiency ratio scores by language groups are discussed. Findings from this study suggest that SAWL is an effective tool in assessing the grammaticality of written compositions for d/hh students with varying language abilities over time. Instructional implications are discussed.

h i g h l i g h t s• Six categories of language transfer were identified in deaf adolescent writing.• The most prevalent category was the use of lexical ASL features.• The most common syntactical category was adjectives.• Both lexical and syntactical ASL features responded similarly to instruction. a b s t r a c t Similar to second language students who embed features of their primary languages in the writing of their second languages, deaf and hard of hearing (d/hh) writers utilize features of American Sign Language (ASL) in their writing of English. The purpose of this study is to identify categories of language transfer, provide the prevalence of these transfer tendencies in the writings of 29 d/hh adolescents and describe whether language features are equally or differently responsive to instruction. Findings indicate six categories of language transfer in order of prevalence: unique glossing & substitution, adjectives, plurality & adverbs, topicalization, and conjunctions. ASL features, of both lexical and syntactical nature, appear to respond similarly to instruction.

Disciplinary literacy (DL) is an important facet of adolescent literacy development. However, for adolescents who struggle with literacy, opportunities to engage with DL and advanced concepts are often withheld in favor of focus on basic skills. Deaf or hard‐of‐hearing (dhh) children, for example, are at a higher risk for experiencing language deprivation due to limited access to language. Rather than waiting to introduce DL skills and advanced content, literacy skills can be taught within disciplinary contexts using tools that draw attention to students’ language and literacy needs. As an illustration, science writing of dhh adolescents was evaluated by individuals in deaf‐related fields and science‐related fields. This has implications for teachers of language learners, especially those who are dhh. For example, the students’ writing demonstrated that though these students are still developing their knowledge of English, they are using a number of features of DL to demonstrate their content knowledge.