Reading, Special Education, and Deaf Children
Supalla & Byrne
capable of affording clear, complete visual access to English" (p. 447). Making English "visual"
for deaf children is too simplistic as cognition continues to be the driving force for shaping the
language. ASL is also visual, but it is because ASL is a signed language that it becomes real and
meaningful to deaf children.
Returning to Trezek, Wang, and Paul (2010), they addressed another system called Visual
Phonics, again as if it were a viable option for the education of deaf children (see also
Abdulghafoor, Ahmad, & Huang, 2015). This system is somewhat different from Cued
Speech/Language. Narr (2008) provides some details on Visual Phonics as follows:
Visual phonics [constitutes] the visual, tactile, and kinesthetic input related to the
phonemic structure of [English] words. Using visual phonics, complete information
[emphasis added] about the phonologic code is provided at the isolated phoneme
and word level, not in communicative contexts. As used with students who are
communicating in sign language, visual phonics can be used as a supplemental tool
in literacy instruction...The language of instruction can remain manual (via ASL),
and the previously inaccessible or partially accessible features of spoken English
are rendered accessible. (p. 414)
Narr (2008) recognizes ASL as the best fit for the role of a language of instruction for deaf
children, however, the treatment of Visual Phonics as a "tool in literacy instruction" is not correct.
For one thing, a written form for ASL could be the long elusive tool for reading instruction,
especially with what ASL gloss has to offer. The description of Visual Phonics as providing deaf
children with “complete information” is not clear and can be misleading. McQuarrie and Parrila
(2009) clarify what is involved with the phonologic code that works for deaf children:
…the children in [their] study communicate via natural sign language and thus have
complete access to the sublexical (sign phonemes) structure of a natural language.
This provides an alternate means of coding words and establishing fully specified
phonological representations of words as they are learned. (p. 151)
What this suggests is that deaf children are primed for learning to read in ASL. If an
alphabetic system is created and provided for the signed language, deaf children will experience
learning that is comparable to hearing children with English. This is precisely why the ASL-phabet
was developed in tandem with ASL gloss.
Narr (2008) and other deaf education experts need to understand that deaf children are
primed to learn a signed language. Deaf children cannot connect to Visual Phonics as a system
with 45 hand and symbol cues (that theoretically represent the phonemes of spoken English).
Although Narr (2008) demonstrates that deaf children successfully mimicked what hearing
children did in phonological awareness and decoding tasks. What is key seems to be the
observation that imitating hearing children’s reading performance and is critical for interpreting
the study's results. Narr (2008) believes that deaf children performed reading, but they did not. In
reality, the deaf children in Narr's study memorized the English phonemes and succeeded in
duplicating them, which misled the researcher in a variety of tasks.
Another consideration is how teachers of the deaf who use Visual Phonics in the classroom
unwittingly 'teach to the test' (e.g., a statewide assessment that includes phonetic skills in English).
This results in a false demonstration of teachers thinking they are teaching English literacy to deaf
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