Reading Methodology for Deaf Children
Supalla
argument in a 2002 paper about the existence of consonants and vowels in ASL words . The combined handshape and location information of a given sign falls under the consonant category while the movement information is considered the vowel category .
Recall that , with Mimography , Bébian treated the handshape information of French signs as the consonant equivalent and the movement as the vowel equivalent . While the distinction between consonants and vowels that contemporary scholars and researchers are pursuing is more refined ( by accounting for the combined handshape and location information , not just the handshape information ), the basic distinction between the handshape parameter and that of movement is still true for both systems , the ASL-phabet and Mimography . At the time when the ASL-phabet was developed at the Arizona charter school , educators and researchers were not aware of these details associated with Mimography . The consonants and vowels in signed words identified uniformly among the different educators and researchers during contemporary times stretching back to the early nineteenth century suggests that the credibility of such understanding for signed word structure is strong .
S . Supalla et al . ( 2014 ) provided additional insights on signed language reading at the word level . The data , this time , involves an older ( 9 years old ) deaf child . This child was a student at the Arizona charter school and participated in a tutorial during one summer . The child was required to look at a set of four flashcards held by the tutor . On each flashcard was the written sign for ‘ correct ’, ‘ on ’, ‘ day ’ and ‘ long ’. The written signs were unfamiliar to the child . The child was asked to read each word and tell what it was . The tutor explained to the child that he would only tell whether the response was correct or incorrect . If not correct , the child was encouraged to try to read the word again to hopefully come up with the correct sign . The choice for what sign to come up with was wide open . The task was quite challenging , but thought to be appropriate for the older child .
According to the data , this child was successful with the written sign ‘ long ’. She read the word and responded with the correct sign . In the process of decoding what the ASL word was , the child moved her hands ‘ in the air ’ trying to come up with the correct sign . One could tell that the child took into consideration the consonant and vowel information in print . With the three other written signs , the child was less successful . She responded with incorrect signs before signing the correct word . In the deaf child ’ s ‘ failed ’ responses , the signs were all close to the target sign phonologically . The child was trying her best to come up with the correct sign based on what she read on the card .
While the deaf child discussed thus far was not fluent with reading written signs , she did read all of the words written on the cards when given another chance :
The flashcard activity included one more stop , which was reviewing the four words with the child . When the tutor mixed the order of the four words and showed them to the child again , she responded correctly to all words . Regardless of the fact that the child had most trouble with [‘ correct ’]. She read it perfectly during the review of the four words . ( p . 15 )
The assessment method in the paper by Cripps and S . Supalla ( 2004 ) is somewhat different . This time , a well-known vocabulary test was given to deaf children participating in the study . The word items in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised ( Dunn & Dunn , 1981 ; Jongsma , 1982 ; Kipps & Hanson , 1983 ) were converted from spoken to print to allow deaf children to see the words ( instead of hearing them ). The two deaf children participating in the
SASLJ , Vol . 1 , No . 1 – Fall / Winter 2017 47