This paper describes Seeing Essential English (SEE), which is a manual code of English designed to specifically reflect English, and signed in English word order. The paper attempts to clear up misconceptions concerning SEE and confusion between SEE and Signing Exact English, provide some historical background about its development, and review…

This paper stresses the importance of developing phonological awareness to foster reading skills in hearing and deaf learners. It reviews the research on stages in acquisition of phonological awareness and phonological awareness and deafness. Suggestions for phonological assessment of deaf students include use of formal and informal phonological…

The study compared comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL) between 12 deaf subjects in a program using Signing Exact English (SEE-2) and 14 deaf subjects in a residential program using Signed English, Pidgin Signed English, and ASL. Students exposed to SEE-2 could comprehend ASL as well as residential school peers. (Author/DB)

This article explores the relationship between communication skills and social integration of preschoolers who are deaf or hard of hearing; examines facilitation and evaluation of social integration activities; and describes several components to assist adults who wish to facilitate the social integration of preschoolers who are hearing, deaf, or…

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…

A special set of skills is essential for interpreting for mainstreamed deaf preschool students. Eleven issues in clarifying the job of the preschool interpreter are discussed, such as whether hearing children should learn to sign and how to encourage communication among hearing and deaf children. (JDD)

The article offers 10 questions to aid in integrating hearing-impaired preschoolers into a child care program. Questions address such concerns as staff and children learning to communicate with the deaf child, interpreting, social integration, group size, and helping the deaf child achieve status. (DB)

Performance of 31 deaf students (ages 7-17) on 15 language and literacy measures found that students scoring highest on a passage-comprehension measure also demonstrated greater proficiency on specific skills (such as reading more listed words). In addition, students who used Signing Exact English (SEE) for 5 years or more scored better than those…

This report describes activities and accomplishments of a four-year project to develop a doctoral program at the University of Kansas Medical Center to prepare teacher educators, researchers, supervisors/managers, and clinicians in programs in either deafness or learning disabilities and in a combined deafness and learning disabilities program.…

Four steps in facilitating pragmatic language development in young hearing-impaired students are discussed, including identifying communication behaviors, coding a child's conversation, putting the school environment to work, and charting progress. A pragmatic communication skills taxonomy and a grid of age-linked pragmatic communication skills…

This study evaluated a method of adult mediation with a deaf second grader which involved identification of language needs through transcription and analysis of the child's retellings of weekly basal stories, followed by targeted adult-mediated conversations. Evaluation indicated the student's performance on targeted semantic and syntactic…

A review of the research literature on teaching deaf or hard-of-hearing students to read led to identification of 10 recommended practices for adults reading to these children. Practices include: focusing on the purpose and enjoyment of reading, using the child's dominant language in interactive dialogue, relating the child's life to the text, and…

Problems faced by deaf students developing social skills are discussed, and suggestions are provided for what teachers can do to specifically cultivate these skills. Teacher modeling, cooperative learning, and the integration of social skills lessons into other class lessons and activities are recommended, with sample activities and references to…

This article reports a study of the communication development (especially concerning effect of context on content and mean length of utterance) within a family consisting of hearing parents, two hearing daughters, and a newly adopted deaf daughter (aged 2:8-3:0). Findings suggested that play contexts were more conducive to language acquisition…

Study indicates that hearing impaired residential students are more proficient users of American Sign Language than are hearing impaired children enrolled in local, public school programs, and older such residential students are more proficient in the language than are younger students. (SL)