Reading and Writing for Deaf Students

Deaf lag far behind their hearing peers in reading, in a task that seems to be essential for succeeding in education, in professional life and in contemporary society. Researchers have examined whether deaf readers necessarily need to use phonological skills in reading, however studies have produced ambiguous results; other possible correlates of reading ability in deaf have been investigated and it have been discovered that language ability, independently of modality (sign or spoken language), have a great infl uence on reading development in deaf. A great number of deaf are bilingual: sign language is their fi rst language and written form of spoken language is their second language; several studies have reported relation between sign language and reading in deaf and that sign language may serve as a bridge to the reading skills; this fi nding bring out to a sign-spoken (written) bilingual approach in the education of deaf children in general and in teaching deaf children to read in particular. K e y w o r d s: deaf, reading, bilingualism, sign language

Starters writing assessment is a systematic process by using appropriate instruments in order to determine learning behavior, placement, and learning in starters writing. Therefore, certain difficulties could be detected early. This study aims to conduct initial assessment to find deaf students with barriers in starters writing at State Elementary School for Exceptional Children of Kendalrejo, Talun, Blitar. The study is qualitative descriptive with 6 deaf students of 1st grade as samples. Data collection procedures of the study are in-depth interview with teacher by using structured interview guide, classroom observation, individual assessment analysis and documentation. The data are then verified and analyzed through theoretical interpretation to identify the barriers, needs, and recommendations in treating each student based on the writing process. Study results of the starters assessment show that there is a deaf student who has problem in eye-hand coordination and fine motoric. At last, the study offers solutions of needs and recommendations on writing skills through the fine motoric practice needs, training the students to continue writing, involving the students gradually, choosing the strategies that fit their difficulty level in the writing tasks, building confidence of the students, and arranging parenting class by the school.

Literacy is the ability to read and write, speak and sign, and understand and communicate in accordance with need. It is also the ability to engage in critical thinking and exchange information with different people in a variety of settings. It is a continuum of skills necessary for everyday life in the home, at work, in education and in the community. Nine literacy development practices are delineated and applications in the home are shared.

Spanish language writing by Hearing-impaired students has often been judged on the same scale as peer monolingual hearing students’ productions, overlooking the fact that it involves a bicultural bilingual writing process. This article provides a description of written Spanish as a second language by four bilingual hearing-impaired students, who are themselves Colombian sign language users in their last year of high school in the city of Cali, Colombia. The descriptive study involved interviews with the students and a collection of their written texts. This input allowed us to analyse both the students’ sociolinguistic background and the roles performed by different words. In order to do that, we turned to Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics classification of words in groups, phrases and categories. Findings showed late acquisition of both languages and writing in non-standard Spanish, with highly frequent occurrence of varied noun phrases, verbal groups and prepositional phrases; and with low frequency use of adverb groups, conjunction groups, and prepositional groups. It was noted that some linguistic variations might be related to an interlanguage and to a transference from Colombian sign language, which is similar to what happens with hearing bilingual learners, with the difference that the Deaf community is a minority in language use, with different modalities and social status. Finally, findings included a reported absence of experts in bicultural bilingual education.