Vocabulary Use by Low, Moderate, and High ASL-Proficient Writers Compared to Hearing ESL and Monolingual Speakers

Abstract

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare" story (previously viewed on video) in a writing activity. Writing samples were later scored for total number of words, use of words known to be highly frequent in children's writing, redundancy in writing, and use of English function words. All deaf writers showed significantly lower use of function words as compared to their hearing peers. Low-ASL-proficient students demonstrated a highly formulaic writing style, drawing mostly on high-frequency words and repetitive use of a limited range of function words. The moderate- and high-ASL-proficient deaf students' writing was not formulaic and incorporated novel, low-frequency vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. The moderate- and high-ASL students' performance revealed a departure from findings one might expect based on previous studies with deaf writers and their vocabulary use. The writing of the deaf writers also differed from the writing of hearing ESL speakers. Implications for deaf education and literacy instruction are discussed, with special attention to the fact that ASL-proficient, deaf second-language learners of English may be approaching English vocabulary acquisition in ways that are different from hearing ESL learners.

A description of ASL features in writing

“…While this particular sample is not representative of all d/hh students in the report, the syntactical structures used by this deaf elementary student are illustrative of the linguistic phenomenon of topic. Consistent with Singleton et al (2004), the content words are strong, much more than functional words. For example, in these statements, ''People need respect.…”

“…Some trends identified in the literature involve text that is typically shorter, less complex, and sentences that are comprised of repetitions of basic grammatical patterns (Marschark et al, 2002(Marschark et al, , 1994Mayer, 2010;Singleton et al, 2004;Spencer et al, 2003). New topics are introduced without producing fully developed ideas, and content-oriented vocabulary is employed over functional words (Singleton et al, 2004;Wilbur, 2000).…”

“…In English, a possible translation would be ''There were many different colors'', whereby ''many different'' precedes the noun. Singleton et al (2004) conducted a study on the quality of written text based on ASL proficiency. Although not the focus of that research, ASL features could be identified in associated writing samples produced by d/hh elementary students with various levels of ASL and English proficiencies.…”

Marcação de tempo por surdos sinalizadores brasileiros

“…The fact that all subjects began the educational process without an established language should be taken into account. According to the literature, the overall delay in language acquisition may slow the process of acquiring written language12, [14][15]19.…”

How hearing and hearing-impaired children differentiate emergent writing from drawing.

“…Hearing-impaired children's reading and writing skills have been investigated extensively in the school-aged population, consistently revealing low levels of proficiency (Alamargot, Lambert, Thebault, & Dansac, 2006;Antia et al, 2005;Arfé, 2003;Arfé & Boscolo, 2006;Arfé & Perondi, 2008;Banks, Gray, & Fyfe, 1990;Dyer, MacSweeney, Szczerbinski, Green, & Campbell, 2003;Fabbretti, Volterra, & Pontecorvo, 1998;Singleton, Morgan, DiGello, Wiles, & Rivers, 2004;Wauters, van Bon, & Tellings, 2006). However, by comparison, fewer studies have focused on hearing-impaired children's emergent literacy skills or on their early exploration and discovery of the writing system (see Williams, 2004).…”