Purpose: The aim of the study was to describe the expressive sign vocabularies of a group of children learning Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Method: The spontaneous signs of 44 children aged 3.0-6.8 years enrolled in one early-years bilingual-bicultural educational program were documented using a new approach, the Handshape Analysis Recording…

Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that members of the First Nations Deaf community experience more barriers when engaging with the criminal justice system than those who are not deaf. Therefore, our purpose for writing this article is to highlight legal and policy issues related to First Nations Deaf people, including perspectives of…

Around the globe, beginner sign language programs have seen surging enrolments in recent years. Yet relatively few learners progress to higher-level sign language study. In this article, we explore factors shaping retention and attrition among a cohort of 70 beginner Australian Sign Language (Auslan) students studying in a vocational education…

This study is a follow-up to previous research conducted in 2012 on computer-assisted language testing (CALT) that applied a survey approach to investigate the use of technology in sign language testing worldwide. The goal of the current study was to replicate the 2012 study and to obtain updated information on the use of technology in sign…

For the past 12 years I have been involved teaching music at a deaf school in Melbourne, philanthropically supported by Musica Viva's Equal Music program. The students use Auslan as their primary language and prior to the residency there had not been a music program in the school for more than a decade. Students now participate fully in the…

English vowels are phonologically and orthographically more difficult than consonants when learning to map speech to print. We sought to determine if teaching young at-risk readers and spellers to use a visual vowel hand sign system to segment spoken words into their component phonemes contributed to improved grapheme-phoneme correspondence…

To date, studies that investigate lexical overlap in signed languages have mainly considered the relationships between deaf community signed languages. The alternate sign languages of Indigenous Australia provide an opportunity to take another perspective -- they are perhaps amongst the oldest known sign languages in the world, their main users…

Recent years have seen an explosion in video content available online. Yet there is relatively scant research on if, how, and why second language (L2) learners engage with videos in their target language as part of their self-directed study--especially for languages with a smaller media footprint. This paper presents qualitative findings from a…

Purpose: There are well-established guidelines for the recording, transcription, and analysis of spontaneous oral language samples by researchers, educators, and speech pathologists. In contrast, there is presently no consensus regarding methods for the written documentation of sign language samples. The Handshape Analysis Recording Tool (HART) is…

Naturalistic studies show that children can create language-like communication systems in the absence of conventional language. However, experimental evidence is mixed. We address this discrepancy using an experimental paradigm that simulates naturalistic sign creation. Specifically, we tested if a sample of 6- to 12-year-old children (52 girls…

Purpose: In recent years, digital projects have created tools for learning languages, such as mobile applications (apps). In contexts where the language has low prestige, innovative digital learning tools can support language revitalisation. This article takes the Australian Kaytetye Indigemoji app as a case study in community resource…

In this article, we provide an overview of the last twenty years of research on Indigenous sign languages, deaf community sign languages, co-speech gesture, and multimodal communication in the Australian context. From a global perspective, research on sign languages and on the gestures that normally accompany speech has been used as the basis for…

Little is known about the nature of fingerspelling during sign language interpretation. In this small-scale, exploratory study, we examined the fingerspelling of interpreters working in five different sign languages: American Sign Language (ASL), Australian Sign Language (Auslan), British Sign Language (BSL), Irish Sign Language (ISL), and Italian…

As a response to the ban on singing and playing woodwind and brass instruments, and with the heightened exposure of Auslan interpreters in the media due to COVID reporting, many music teachers considered Auslan choirs to be a safe singing-replacement activity for end-of-year performances. Auslan holds deep cultural significance to the Deaf…

Embracing and embedding the rich cultural knowledge, languages, concepts and skills that Aboriginal families and children bring to playgroup is key to empowering families as their children's first teachers and strengthening young children's self-esteem, pride, confidence and identities. In this article, we share our story of how we have explored…