A survey of 222 educational sign language interpreters from K-12 public school systems found a lack of certification and adequate training for the majority of respondents and an underrepresentation of males and interpreters from minority groups. Recommendations for providing educational programs and services for students with hearing impairments…

A study of three adults with profound mental retardation examined the effectiveness of functional communication training in reducing self-injurious behavior (SIB) and in shaping an alternative (communicative) response while SIB continued to be reinforced. Results found when extinction was added to the training procedure, SIB decreased and manual…

A study involving 152 college students with deafness found students who had at least one parent with deafness and signed scored significantly higher on self-esteem measures than those with hearing parents who could or who could not sign. Overall, self-esteem scores for all respondents were high. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study of 27 students with deafness raised by hearing parents who advocated a strict oral approach, 22 students with deafness who used Israeli Sign Language, and 39 controls, found both the controls and participants with prelingual deafness who were trained to communicate orally recoded visually presented target words phonologically. (Contains…

Longitudinal study of a deaf child's (with deaf signing and speaking parents) speech functions revealed that the child, before age three, rarely attempted speech imitation. By age five, the child had acquired new words through speechreading and had adjusted language modes to listener needs for flexible communication, and speech behavior assumed…

The study compared scores of 2 groups of hearing-impaired students ages 5 to 12 years on a literacy battery. Subjects (n=73) were receiving instruction which either completely encoded spoken English or incompletely encoded spoken English. Those receiving completely encoded English instruction tended to score higher on achievement tests especially…

Explores how the ENFI (Electronic Networks for Interaction) computer method for teaching written English to deaf students can help these students bridge the gap between conversational and written language forms, and between the use of two different languages. (CB) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education)

Eleven elementary-school hearing-impaired students were shown pictures and asked to make up a story; and were presented stories in speech and signs, with and without pictures, and asked to retell the stories. Results indicated that the students made use of story grammars in organizing retellings and in constructing stories; pictures enhanced…

Written apologies of deaf students were examined from data obtained from a discourse completion test. Results show that both word choice and word order give a routinized feel to the apologies, in part attributable to American Sign Language; and that strategy choices may reflect a culture-specific view of social offenses. (Contains 44 references.)…

Examination of the simultaneous communication for two secondary and two elementary school teachers showed high exact and essential equivalence between signed and spoken portions of utterances (92 percent). Although over 90 percent of the utterances contained at least one morpheme mismatch between English and signed main verbs, subjects,…

This study examined the correspondence between spoken English and Australasian Signed English when used simultaneously by four teachers of deaf Australian students. The teachers were more than 90 percent accurate in reproducing on their hands what they were saying but at some cost to the oral aspects of the simultaneous communication. (Author/JDD)

Describes a multicultural inclusive preschool program in which children with and without disabilities communicate by using English, Spanish, and sign language. How students were taught a cross-cultural language lesson by making tostadas during International Foods Week is reviewed. Lists additional lessons with language-based and cultural themes.…

Describes the Shared Reading Program, a home-school effort of Gallaudet University's Pre-College National Mission Programs. Under the program, mentors teach parents and caregivers how to read to deaf children using American Sign Language. Describes a family with six young children includes 12 tips for reading to a deaf child. (DB)

A hearing teacher for whom American Sign Language is a second language identifies nine strategies developed for reading and telling stories to deaf children. These include: ask obvious questions related to the story, portray written dialog as conversation, emphasize points by saying the same thing with different signs, and adapt the story to…

This reprint of a 1970 article examines some emergent concepts of psycholinguistics and relates them to the development of a language-training program for children with deafness. It discusses the stages and process of language development, and the advantages and disadvantages of the total-communication approach, oral communication, and the…