Reading Methodology for Deaf Children
Supalla
Some Indications of Signed Language Reading
To begin with, adequate signed language reading research has never been presented on
Mimography. Bébian did report on deaf children’s performance with reading in French Sign
Language when he described the writing system’s success as questionable. Rée (1999) wrote that
“...Bébian’s own claim that the 150 characters of [M]imography could be mastered by a deaf
signer within ‘eight or ten days’ had a quality of crazed desperation...” (p. 301). The earlier
discussion of the i nternal problems with the French Sign Language writing system suggests that
the French effort with signed language reading should not be pursued. The fact that multiple
research publications have been produced in regard to signed language reading at the American
charter school is most welcoming. This includes valuable data on how well deaf children
perform in reading gloss text, as it is unconventional and has no precedence in the general
literature on glossing. A variety of reading behaviors to follow that deaf children have
demonstrated are promising.
The first known publication on signed language reading with deaf children in the United
States is the S. Supalla, Wix, and McKee paper (2001). The data is descriptive in nature. Deaf
kindergarteners at the charter school learning to read their name signs written in the ASL-phabet
were subject to videotaping for later analysis. The description of the particular classroom activity
led by the teacher is:
The teacher showed one card at a time and asked the class who the written name
referred to. The students recognized their names by looking at the first two
graphemes (i.e., handshape and location information). They signed their names to
indicate that they recognized the written names. The students were clearly
engaged in the activity. (p. 9)
The authors of the paper went on to write:
…deaf students ‘read’ words with only partial information (i.e., handshape-
location/symbol relationships) and the context of a name-reading exercise. This is
comparable to the kinds of early success that hearing kindergartners get when first
identifying consonant sound/symbol relationships in the context of words they are
learning. At the [Arizona charter school], such activities show the beginning
development of metalinguistic awareness for ASL signs. [Teachers] start children
on the handshape and location graphemes in kindergarten and first grade.
Movement graphemes are mastered first through third grade levels. (pp. 9-10)
The detailed nature of how skills were taught at the charter school supported the Arizona
Academic Standards’ reading component, which dictates that kindergartners begin identifying
words in print through consonants (whereas vowels are more difficult to learn and master). It is
interesting to note that the teachers at the charter school were not sure how to teach deaf children
in reading signs at first. The children’s learning patterns ultimately shaped the instruction design
with the ASL-phabet. The handshape-location/symbol relationships were easier to learn as
compared to the movement/symbol relationships, thus the former was seen as involving
consonants and the latter vowels. There is support for such a signed word structure in the ASL
linguistics community. Diane Brentari, a well-known and highly reputable linguist presented an
SASLJ, Vol. 1, No. 1 – Fall/Winter 2017
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