Language and Reading Comprehension Abilities of Elementary School-Aged Deaf Children

Abstract

Bilingual education programs for deaf children have long asserted that American Sign Language (ASL) is a better language of instruction English-like signing because ASL is a natural language. However, English-like signing may be a useful bridge to reading English. In the present study, we tested 32 deaf children between third and sixth grade to assess their capacity to use ASL or English-like signing in nine different languages and reading tasks. Our results found that there was no significant difference in the deaf children’s ability to comprehend narratives in ASL compared to when they are told in English-like signing. Additionally, language abilities in ASL and English-like signing were strongly related to each other and to reading. Reading was also strongly related to fingerspelling. Our results suggest that there may be a role in literacy instruction for English-like signing as a supplement to ASL in deaf bilingual schools.

Predictors of Word and Text Reading Fluency of Deaf Children in Bilingual Deaf Education Programmes

“…Similar results have been found in deaf teenagers (Villwock et al 2021) and deaf adult readers (Morford et al 2011(Morford et al , 2017. This result is also in line with other recent studies showing positive correlations between sign language knowledge and reading abilities (Scott and Hoffmeister 2016;Crume et al 2021;Keck and Wolgemuth 2020;Holmer et al 2016). It remains unclear, however, why this variable only impacted word reading fluency at T3 and why it only affected word reading latency, not accuracy or text reading fluency.…”

“…Research with hearing children has established that vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness (i.e., ability to recognize and manipulate the sub-lexical structure of words), fluent word recognition, and phonological short-term memory are strong predictors of reading skills in hearing children (e.g., Castles and Coltheart 2004;Dickinson et al 2003;Verhoeven et al 2011). However, relatively few studies have examined multiple predictors of reading development in deaf children (e.g., Easterbrooks and Huston 2008;Harris 2010, 2011;Spencer and Oleson 2008), and an even smaller number of studies have examined predictors of reading development in deaf children enrolled in bilingual education in both sign language (SL) and the surrounding spoken/written language (e.g., Scott and Hoffmeister 2016;Crume et al 2021;Yiu et al 2019).…”

Sign language in d/Deaf students’ spoken/written language development: A research synthesis and meta-analysis of cross-linguistic correlation coefficients

“…Elementary school students demonstrated a medium effect (r = .468) and this effect was also significantly stronger than the small effect (r = .271) among secondary school students. While this finding may suggest stronger linguistic interdependence at the grammatical level in younger learners, it should also be interpreted with caution, because four of the five effect sizes on elementary school children happened to employ English-like signing (where semantic access was via ASL) to measure English receptive syntax (Crume et al, 2021;Lederberg et al, 2019).…”

“…This metalinguistic account, nonetheless, should perhaps be applied with reservation, because one should not ignore how morpho-syntactic/grammatical knowledge was measured in the included studies. Take two studies as notable examples where large correlations were reported: both Crume et al (2021) and Lederberg et al (2019) reported a correlation larger than .60. In both studies, "English receptive syntax" was measured using English-like signing such as "The little bird is eating (LITTLE BIRD EATING)" (Crume et al, 2021, p. 162), where there seemed to be active ASL-based semantic involvement in addition to the target focus on English word order (English morpho-syntactic information was not signed using any signed system).…”

Communication, Language, and Modality in the Education of Deaf Students

“…Since the review of the literature was published, two additional studies were conducted in sign bilingual settings that included a measure of participants' reading comprehension. Data for the first study were collected in two state schools for the deaf in the United States that "used ASL as the primary language of instruction and focused on teaching English derived from print without spoken English" [61] (p. 161). Participants were 32 students with severe to profound hearing loss ranging in age from 8; 6 to 12; 10 and enrolled in third through sixth grade, with 25% reported as having deaf parents.…”