In this article, we review the skills that have been found to be related to good story comprehension in novice readers with normal hearing and describe the relative weight each plays. The relationship between effective story comprehension and lower level skills (such as syntactic awareness and vocabulary knowledge) is considered, and the casual…

Linguistic complexity of test items is one test format element that has been studied in the context of struggling readers and their participation in paper-and-pencil tests. The present article presents findings from an exploratory study on the potential relationship between linguistic complexity and test performance for deaf readers. A total of 64…

In this paper, we will describe the theoretical underpinning of many bilingual education programs for deaf children: Cummins' Linguistic Interdependence theory. Then, we will review some of the studies that have been conducted on the relation between reading and signing skills, and discuss how difficult it is to interpret their findings within…

New positive attitudes towards language interaction in the realm of bilingualism open new horizons for sign bilingual education. Plaza-Pust and Morales-Lopez have innovatively reconceptualised a new cross-disciplinary approach to sign bilingualism, based on both sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics. According to this framework, cross-modal…

Learning a second language is very difficult, especially, for the disabled; the disability may be a barrier to learn and to utilize information written in text form. We present the SignMT, Thai sign to Thai machine translation system, which is able to translate from Thai sign language into Thai text. In the translation process, SignMT takes into…

This study explored the language skills of children with cochlear implants (CIs) compared to normal hearing (NH) peers. Standardized speech and language measures, including speech articulation, receptive and expressive vocabulary, syntax and morphology, and metalinguistics, were administered to 39 congenitally deaf children, ages 5 to 14, and a…

The study evaluated narrative production in seven severe to profoundly hearing impaired adolescents in an attempt to determine whether syntactic prowess would predict which subjects would be more adept at narrative production, in terms of the story grammar conventions used, and the cohesive devices used when narrating a story to a naive listener.…

The study evaluated characteristics of instructional bimodal communication in classrooms for the hearing impaired using Signing Exact English or Signed English. Findings indicated some teachers accurately and proficiently encoded semantic information in their instruction. A requirement of 80% or better voice-to-sign ratio ability is suggested for…

Argues that, although South African Sign Language (SASL) contains a high degree of lexical diversity, there exists an underlying common syntactic and morphological base on which all the different varieties are grounded. This common base provides a foundation on which future educational and language policy may be developed. (17 references)…

A computer-based method of communicating syntactic knowledge to deaf students was designed, building on the visual orientation of deaf students and employing such American Sign Language techniques as visualization and directionality. The computer-based instructional treatments were presented as an educational game called the "Yes-No Game," with…

This paper discusses the development of a criterion-referenced assessment measure for both written English and American Sign Language (ASL) that can be used with deaf elementary through secondary students. The measure is presented as well as the results of a trial use. Developed by the Cleary School for the Deaf, the Cleary Language Assessment…