Students acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2) struggle with fingerspelling comprehension more than skilled signers. These L2 learners might be attempting to perceive and comprehend fingerspelling in a way that is different from native signers, which could negatively impact their ability to comprehend fingerspelling.…

In this paper, we explore the connections between a linguistic landscape and language ideologies in an elementary school in a village within the Hungarian region of Szeklerland in Romania. This "schoolscape" is analysed as a display or materialization of the "hidden curriculum" regarding the construction of linguistic and…

Why should second and foreign language teachers tune into instructed second language acquisition (ISLA)? There are many reasons, several of which have already been addressed in this forum. This paper examines one important benefit of keeping abreast of the field, namely, the opportunity for classroom instructors to extract pedagogical insights…

Sign language comprehension requires visual attention to the linguistic signal and visual attention to referents in the surrounding world, whereas these processes are divided between the auditory and visual modalities for spoken language comprehension. Additionally, the age-onset of first language acquisition and the quality and quantity of…

This paper shows the results of a study that described how people in Medellín, Colombia are using English as a communicative resource. Relying on an ethnographic approach, the research team discovered that English appears as an element that helps enrich the complexity of the messages that one finds in urban spaces in the city. These findings…

The Innovative Language Pedagogy Report presents new and emerging approaches to language teaching, learning, and assessment in school, further education, and higher education settings. Researchers and practitioners provide 22 research-informed, short articles on their chosen pedagogy, with examples and resources. The report is jargon-free, written…

Linguistic landscape (LL) research seeks to account for the visible displays of multilingualism on public signage. While surveys of signage in the LL produce quantitative descriptions of language contact in a given area, such analyses shed little light on people's interpretations of multilingual signs. Moreover, even within more qualitative…

The present article introduces a special issue of the "American Annals of the Deaf." Students who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing and come from homes where a language other than English or American Sign Language is used constitute 19.4%-35.0% of the U.S. d/Dhh population (Gallaudet Research Institute, 2013). The authors propose moving…

The present study implemented a sign-repetition task at two points in time to hearing adult learners of British Sign Language and explored how each phonological parameter, sign complexity, and iconicity affected sign production over an 11-week (22-hour) instructional period. The results show that training improves articulation accuracy and that…

This article contextualises and presents to the academic community the full dataset of the Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme's (ICMRP) multilingual signage survey. The ICMRP is a four-year European Union co-sponsored project in Northeast Thailand. This article focuses on one aspect of the project, four surveys each of 1,500…

There is growing interest in learners' cognitive capacities to process a second language (L2) at first exposure to the target language. Evidence suggests that L2 learners are capable of processing novel words by exploiting phonological information from their first language (L1). Hearing adult learners of a sign language, however, cannot fall back…

Background: Children who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) may start school with smaller vocabularies than their monolingual peers. Given the links between vocabulary and academic achievement, it is important to evaluate interventions that are designed to support vocabulary learning in this group of children. Aims: To evaluate…

Deaf students are visual learners, and technology should be part of every bilingual classroom. However, deaf students need to learn to manipulate the hardware and software that allows them to express themselves and to advance their knowledge. Students need to understand what is meant when they are referred to "ASL text" or…

A study was conducted to examine production variability in American Sign Language (ASL) in order to gain insight into the development of motor control in a language produced in another modality. Production variability was characterized through the spatiotemporal index (STI), which represents production stability in whole utterances and is a…

This article addresses the debate about the status of American Sign Language (ASL) as an example of ideological beliefs that impact linguistic judgments and policies. It also discusses the major challenges to the status of ASL with respect to formal legislative recognition, its utility as a medium of instruction, and its status as a legitimate…