Reading, Special Education, and Deaf Children
Supalla & Byrne
understand that fingerspelled words are unique and stand for themselves as a letter by letter
representation of English and not through phonemes or as part of a language. Several other
researchers make the same fundamental error (Andrews & Wang, 2015; Easterbrooks, Lederberg,
Antia, Shick, Kushalnager, Webb, Branum-Martin, & Connor, 2015; Haptonstall-Nykaza &
Schick, 2007). Any reference to "English decoding" must be limited to spoken words being written
and subject to reading (and with children who can hear, of course). For deaf children to experience
decoding, it must be achieved through signed words that are written and subject to reading.
Herzig and Malzkun (2015) provide a thorough review of the VL2 Center's recent release
of VL2 Storybook Apps (http://vl2storybookapps.com) and demonstrate the problem in having
ASL support resemble a reading instruction approach. This includes examples of the 'pseudo
decoding mechanism' of chaining. For the purpose of this article, one English story, The Baobab
is subject to critique for the purpose of this paper. Please understand that the text for this story will
be critiqued. With the VL2 Storybook App, if a deaf child encounters a word in print that is
unfamiliar, the child can click the individual word, and a video of an adult signer appears on the
screen. The chaining for the English word 'little' looks like:
1) Sign the ASL equivalent
2) Fingerspell the word (e.g., L-I-T-T-L-E)
3) Sign the ASL equivalent again
These steps are required for the deaf child to identify the unfamiliar words in The Baobab
story. According to the ASL support approach, all signs should be fingerspelled and chained to
ASL and serve as the decoding mechanism for deaf children. The problem is that the deaf child
understands the meaning of a word based on a translation, not on decoding. In this example, the
use of fingerspelling occurs after the word has been unsuccessfully read by the child. If a word is
not understood, it is then translated or signed in ASL, then fingerspelled and subsequently
translated into ASL again. This process hopefully enables the child to 'read' the word in print.
ASL gloss is the only avenue in which deaf children can experience a true form of word
decoding, as they have the opportunity to read signs written in the ASL-phabet. Imagine a deaf
child reading the glossed sentence example, DOG NOW CHASE>IX=3 RABBIT. This child
may recognize all sight words and sign them all except RABBIT. If the child does not recognize
the word, the act of reading is halted. The next step would be to click on the word RABBIT and
read the ASL equivalent IIde5. The child is then able to visually ‘sound out’ the written
sign and can connect it to the sign that he or she knows. The child is now able to comprehend the
sentence because of successful decoding.
What remains unevaluated is text manipulation in the context of ASL support. Gallimore
(2000) reported on the use of color cues imposed on English text to help deaf children navigate in
reading English. The text however, is still English with no way manipulating the English text to
make it ASL-like. According to Gallimore (2000), the teacher must color code the reading
materials in blue, green, yellow, and other colors depending on how the English text relates to the
ASL structure. The manipulated text represents the similarities and differences between ASL and
English at the word and phrasal levels (see Schimmel, Edwards, & Prickett, 1999 for a similar text
manipulation attempt with what is called "Fairview Learning").
To demonstrate this point, since there is no ASL equivalent, the phrase “By this time…”
would be coded in red as it needs an expansion. Deaf children reading the phrase and seeing this
cue will likely know that an expansion is needed, but it is the teacher who has control over the text
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No.1 – Spring/Summer 2018
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