The authors present a perspective on emerging bilingual deaf students who are exposed to, learning, and developing two languages--American Sign Language (ASL) and English (spoken English, manually coded English, and English reading and writing). The authors suggest that though deaf children may lack proficiency or fluency in either language during…

Our research sought to identify the most common movement patterns and postures performed by sign language interpreters and the frequency and severity of any pain that may be associated with the movements. A survey was developed and mailed to registered sign language interpreters throughout the state of Illinois. For each specific upper extremity…

In this article, we will describe the development of an assessment instrument for Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) for deaf children in bilingual education programs. The assessment instrument consists of nine computerized tests in which the receptive and expressive language skills of deaf children at different linguistic levels (phonology,…

The English Language Institute at Gallaudet University participated in the Electronic Networks for Instruction (ENFI) Project in 1989. The purpose of this paper is to do a literature review of the ENFI Project within the scope of Gallaudet University and to contribute content that is specific to the English Language Institute. The research…

We examine the hemispheric organization for the production of two classes of ASL signs, lexical signs and classifier signs. Previous work has found strong left hemisphere dominance for the production of lexical signs, but several authors have speculated that classifier signs may involve the right hemisphere to a greater degree because they can…

High illiteracy rates among the Argentine deaf population, even after long years of schooling, point to the need to revise certain approaches to deaf literacy, particularly in school settings. Qualitative change in deaf literacy requires the use of multiple conceptual tools if learners are to be able to tackle its complexity without reductionism…

Commenting on perceptual similarities between objects stands out as an important linguistic achievement, one that may pave the way towards noticing and commenting on more abstract relational commonalities between objects. To explore whether having a conventional linguistic system is necessary for children to comment on different types of…

Linguistic diversity provides even greater challenges for our educational system. English Language Learners (ELLs) are a diverse population of students who are learning English in school. They come from numerous cultural and economic backgrounds, and live throughout the country. The task of the classroom teacher is to find a way to reach these…

An instructional strategy was investigated that addressed the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students through a conceptually based sign language vocabulary intervention. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was used to determine the effects of the vocabulary intervention on word recognition, production, and comprehension. Six students took…

There is an exponential growth in the number of schools that offer American Sign Language (ASL) for foreign language credit and the different ASL curricula that were published. This study analyzes different curricula in its assumptions regarding language, learning, and teaching of second languages. It is found that curricula vary in their…

A sign bilingual approach to the education of deaf children was first introduced in the UK in 1990. This paper reviews the growth of sign bilingual education in the UK and documents significant milestones in the development of sign bilingual policy and practice since the 1980s. This overview demonstrates how key issues in sign bilingual education…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

Within education and social justice, the lenses of race, class, and gender are prevalent in analyzing multifaceted oppression, but there is a need to expand beyond those in order to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the intricacies of oppression. The autoethnographic approach enables me to use my experiences a Korean adoptee with a…

Speech-sign or "bimodal" bilingualism is exceptional because distinct modalities allow for simultaneous production of two languages. We investigated the ramifications of this phenomenon for models of language production by eliciting language mixing from eleven hearing native users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Instead of switching…

This study examined the effects of using signs in spoken language vocabulary training of hard-of-hearing children. Fourteen hard-of-hearing children participated in the present study. Vocabulary training with the support of signs showed a statistically significant effect in the participants' learning and retention of new spoken language…