A sign bilingual approach to the education of deaf children was first introduced in the UK in 1990. This paper reviews the growth of sign bilingual education in the UK and documents significant milestones in the development of sign bilingual policy and practice since the 1980s. This overview demonstrates how key issues in sign bilingual education…

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…

Within education and social justice, the lenses of race, class, and gender are prevalent in analyzing multifaceted oppression, but there is a need to expand beyond those in order to obtain a more in-depth understanding of the intricacies of oppression. The autoethnographic approach enables me to use my experiences a Korean adoptee with a…

Speech-sign or "bimodal" bilingualism is exceptional because distinct modalities allow for simultaneous production of two languages. We investigated the ramifications of this phenomenon for models of language production by eliciting language mixing from eleven hearing native users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Instead of switching…

This study examined the effects of using signs in spoken language vocabulary training of hard-of-hearing children. Fourteen hard-of-hearing children participated in the present study. Vocabulary training with the support of signs showed a statistically significant effect in the participants' learning and retention of new spoken language…

Washoe, the chimpanzee pioneer who learned aspects of American Sign Language, died in October 2007. In reviewing her life and accomplishments, this article focuses on Washoe's status as an ape and a person, and on the role of emotion in language learning and language use. It argues that Washoe's legacy stems not from the number of ASL signs she…

This article reports on a comparison of lexical items in the vocabulary of Icelandic and Danish sign languages prompted by anecdotal reports of similarity and historical records detailing close contact between the two communities. Drawing on previous studies, including Bickford (2005), McKee and Kennedy (1998, 2000a, 2000b) and Parkhurst and…

Lexical access is concerned with how the spoken or visual input of language is projected onto the mental representations of lexical forms. To date, most theories of lexical access have been based almost exclusively on studies of spoken languages and/or orthographic representations of spoken languages. Relatively few studies have examined how…

Reading fluency in deaf children whose primary mode of communication is visual, whether English-like or American Sign Language, is difficult to measure since most measures of fluency require a child to read aloud. This article opens the discussion of a new construct, namely, signed reading fluency (i.e., rendering of printed text in a visually…

Describes the creation of "Sign Language Structure" and the "Dictionary of American Sign Language," including revisions of these publications and advances in the technology of recording signers conversing in American Sign Language. (five references) (JP)

We evaluated language development in deaf Italian preschoolers with hearing parents, taking into account the duration of formal language experience (i.e., the time elapsed since wearing a hearing aid and beginning language education) and different methods of language education. Twenty deaf children were matched with 20 hearing children for age and…

The purpose of this research is to describe and understand the ways in which deaf middle school students understood and solved compare word problems, and to examine their overall strategy use in learning mathematics. The participants in the study were deaf middle school students, attending a residential state school for the deaf. Most of them used…

Previous research on the reading abilities of Deaf individuals from various cultural groups suggests that Black Deaf and Hispanic Deaf individuals lag behind their White Deaf peers. The present study compared the reading skills of Black Deaf and White Deaf individuals, investigating the influence of American Sign Language (ASL), culture, family…

In the Netherlands, many educators and care providers working at special schools for children with severe speech and language impairments (SSLI) use sign-supported Dutch (SSD) to facilitate communication. Anecdotal experiences suggest positive results, but empirical evidence is lacking. In this multiple case study the changes that occur in the way…

In this paper we challenge designers, researchers, teachers, students, and parents to re-assess and re-envision the value of technology-mediated feedback and e-assessment by examining the innovative roles feedback and assessment played in the design of three contemporary web-based learning environments. These environments include 1) an…