Évaluer les compétences linguistiques des enfants en langue des signes française

Abstract

Devant l’absence de test d’évaluation des aptitudes linguistiques en langue des signes française (LSF) des enfants signeurs et les besoins exprimés par les nombreux professionnels et chercheurs concernés, nous avons tenté d’adapter à la LSF un test déjà validé pour une autre langue des signes. Notre choix s’est porté sur le test de BSL de Herman et al. (1999), car son usage est relativement simple et peut être utilisé tant pour les besoins de la recherche que par les professeurs de/en LSF. Les résultats obtenus auprès de 129 enfants sourds de parents sourds ou entendants, de différents niveaux de LSF, âgés de 3 à 14 ans, montrent cependant que notre adaptation du test anglais n’est pas valide : le test n’évalue pas ce qu’il était censé évaluer. Ce qui, à première vue, semble un échec offre cependant plusieurs enseignements sur une méthodologie et des pistes à explorer pour construire un test cette fois fiable et valide qui permettrait de revenir sur des questions essentielles telles que l’idée d’âge critique pour le développement linguistique ou cognitif.

Adaptation of the British Sign Language Receptive Skills Test into Polish Sign Language

“…The LSF RST’s authors (Courtin et al., 2010) also faced problems with the linguistic category of negation: LSF seems to contain fewer negation structures than BSL. Courtin et al. (2010) highlighted that in the BSL RST, negation features are assessed in 10 items out of 40 (25%).…”

“…However, no measure to assess deaf children’s knowledge of PJM is available. Analysing RST validity, Johnston (2004) and Courtin et al. (2010) suggested that it is possible that the RST does not measure sign language skills but instead more general visuo-spatial skills since there are a large number of items testing sign language features with high iconicity (Courtin et al., 2010).…”

“…A similar situation has been described for the BSL RST adaptation into LIS: LIS signers reported a greater variety of negation markers than BSL users (Surian & Tedoldi, 2005). The LSF RST's authors (Courtin et al, 2010) also faced problems with the linguistic category of negation: LSF seems to contain fewer negation structures than BSL. Courtin et al (2010) highlighted that in the BSL RST, negation features are assessed in 10 items out of 40 (25%).…”

“…The LSF RST's authors (Courtin et al, 2010) also faced problems with the linguistic category of negation: LSF seems to contain fewer negation structures than BSL. Courtin et al (2010) highlighted that in the BSL RST, negation features are assessed in 10 items out of 40 (25%). As negation is quite complex in PJM, a large number of items relating to negation is justified for the PJM RST (10 items out of 43 analysed items, 23%), whereas this may not be the case in other sign languages, such as LSF.…”

“…The BSL RST has been adapted to a number of other sign languages, including: LSF (French Sign Language; Courtin, Limousin, & Morgenstern, 2010), DSL (Danish Sign Language; Seiler & Larsen, 2005), LIS (Italian Sign Language; Surian & Tedoldi, 2005), DGS (German Sign Language; Haug, 2011a, b), Auslan (Australian Sign Language; Johnston, 2004), LSE (Spanish Sign Language; Valmaseda, Pérez, Herman, & Ramírez, 2013), and ASL (American Sign Language; (Enns & Herman, 2011). Adaptations of the BSL RST into other sign languages has opened discussions (e.g., Haug & Mann, 2008) on the adaptation of sign language tests more generally, emphasizing that adaptations are not simply translations from the source language to the target language.…”