Cued Speech is a visual mode of communication in which mouth movements of speech combine with "cues" to make the sounds (phonemes) of traditional spoken languages look different. Cueing allows users who are deaf, hard of hearing, or who have language/communication disorders, to access the basic, fundamental properties of spoken languages…

Teachers and speech-language specialists at New York's Early Childhood Center, Rochester School for the Deaf, gather regularly to talk about their students and discuss strategies for expediting students' language development. These communities of practice meeting offer a collaborative approach to understanding students and helping improve their…

Signalong Indonesia (SI), a key word signing approach, was created to support the development of Indonesian inclusive schools. A mixed methods approach collected data about teacher's beliefs and experiences regarding SI from the first two schools to pilot it. Thirty-two teachers completed questionnaires, followed by interviews with nine teachers.…

Languages typically express semantic components of motion events such as manner (roll) and path (down) in separate lexical items. We explore how these combinatorial possibilities of language arise by focusing on (i) gestures produced by deaf children who lack access to input from a conventional language (homesign); (ii) gestures produced by…

This article provides an analytical overview of the different types of explicit legal recognition of sign languages. Five categories are distinguished: constitutional recognition, recognition by means of general language legislation, recognition by means of a sign language law or act, recognition by means of a sign language law or act including…

Technology has opened up avenues for deaf and hard of hearing students that were previously inaccessible. No longer dependent on such equipment as chalkboards and filmstrip projectors, tools such as Smart Boards, computers, and even iPads have become part of the standard educational experience for many children. For teachers at the Washington…

Sign language test development is a relatively new field within sign linguistics, motivated by the practical need for assessment instruments to evaluate language development in different groups of learners (L1, L2). Due to the lack of research on the structure and acquisition of many sign languages, developing an assessment instrument poses…

How are lexical representations retrieved during sign production? Similar to spoken languages, lexical representation in sign language must be accessed through semantics when naming pictures. However, it remains an open issue whether lexical representations in sign language can be accessed via routes that bypass semantics when retrieval is…

For d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing prereaders who communicate predominately in spoken and/or signed English (DHH-English), Teachers of the d/Deaf (TODs) read books aloud to increase English skills, auditory-verbal comprehension, sequencing skills, verbal reasoning, background knowledge, and sight word recognition. Teachers struggle to select…

This article presents selected research on applied linguistics published in New Zealand, following "Language Teaching's" commitment to showcase more broadly local research that would not otherwise be easily accessible to an international audience. It covers research conducted and published in New Zealand from 2013 to 2017, following on…

Is the right to sign language only the right to a minority language? Holding a capability (not a disability) approach, and building on the psycholinguistic literature on sign language acquisition, I make the point that this right is of a stronger nature, since only sign languages can guarantee that each deaf child will properly develop the…

This study investigates how critical intercultural pedagogy, creative arts methods, inspired by new materialism, can support new forms of language and intercultural learning in contexts of conflict. Columbian university scholarship recipients in pre-service English language education from disadvantaged backgrounds, co-research alongside the…

Research shows that teaching sign language to all young children has a wide range of benefits, from enhancing social-emotional and preliteracy skills to supporting positive parent-child relationships. With "Sing & Sign for Young Children," early childhood professionals will have a fun, easy, and highly effective way to teach and…

Fingerspelling and its relationship with literacy skills among deaf and hard of hearing children who use American Sign Language is an increasingly popular research topic. However, there is limited research on whether reading interventions that systematically include fingerspelling are more effective for improving literacy skills than reading…

Albuquerque Sign Language Academy (ASLA), a charter school in New Mexico, is a dual language English-American Sign Language (ASL) school, and half of the students at ASLA are deaf or hard of hearing, while the other half are hearing. Many students at the school also have disabilities other than or in addition to being deaf or hard of hearing, with…