American Sign Language and English bilingualism: educators’ perspectives on a bicultural education

ABSTRACT

Teaching a second language to students who are Deaf and hard-of-hearing is unique because language learning techniques often disrupt spoken/phonocentric models of bilingual language learning that require speech before learning to read and write. Balanced bilingual educational strategies in education of Deaf and hard-of-hearing students include chaining concepts using American Sign Language (ASL) rather than relying on speech and lip-reading. Rather than focusing on speech as an initial step to learning English, ASL is used to teach reading and writing of English. Five face-to-face interviews with educators at a large Deaf residential school serve to explore issues and prescriptions for teaching language to Deaf students. Five themes are used for discussion: understanding ASL–English bilingualism, the significance of technology in Deaf education, the goals of bilingual language models, how identification plays a role in language learning, and suggestions for ideal ways to teach Deaf students. Limitations and suggestions for future research are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Sign language
• US English
• bilingual education
• bicultural
• balanced bilingualism
• American Sign Language

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The convention to use the capitalized version of Deaf (often reserved for indicating cultural/language status) has been chosen throughout to honor that Deaf children have a right to Deaf culture and their own accessible language, American Sign Language, even in cases where they have not yet been exposed to it (Cripps, 2000; Snoddon, 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Darrin J. Griffin

Darrin J. Griffin is an assistant professor and the director of the C&IS Human Communication Research Laboratory in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Alabama.