American higher education must extend its notion of pluralistic recognition and inquiry to the language and culture of the deaf community and appreciate the individual gifts that this cultural group brings to the whole society. (CB)

Investigates the differences in the use of certain verbs of movement and location between native ASL learners and children of hearing parents exposed to signing outside the home. Describes the children's use of phonology, morphology, and syntax in repeating target utterances. Relates results to interaction of language acquisition and motor…

Suggests that certain teaching methods are successful in teaching both English to the deaf and English as a second language (ESL) to remote-language-base students. Presents characteristics of American Sign Language and guidelines for managing deaf students in an ESL classroom. (SED)

Concludes that differences exist in the classroom behavior of some deaf and some hearing teachers and that what defines the successful teacher is task persistence and clarity. (FL)

Describes code shifting study in communicative behavior of hearing child interacting with deaf child and mother, both of whom signed. Hearing child knew signing, but did not sign at home. Although communication change occurred, code shifting was influenced more by motivational variables and by hearing child's own flexibility with language than by…

A study was conducted to determine post-secondary coaches' perceptions of American Sign Language (ASL) and the level of involvement with ASL when coaching post-secondary athletes who are deaf and hard of hearing. Seventy-three hearing coaches of post-secondary athletes who were deaf and hard of hearing and twenty-two post-secondary athletes who…

This report discusses the outcomes of a practicum designed to address the lack of parent participation in American Sign Language (ASL) training by parents of children with hearing impairments. Using a pretest-posttest design, 46 parents of children who are deaf and receive services from a school for the deaf were surveyed. Based on the needs…

Demographic information indicates that 6% of the general population is hard of hearing or deaf; however, deaf people are significantly underrepresented in drug and alcohol treatment on any given day. Deaf people are a minority whose primary language is American Sign Language (ASL), and information about substance abuse is not easily represented in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate innovative performance assessments developed by the instructor in an American Sign Language (ASL) course at an urban undergraduate university. The performance assessments engaged students in higher order thinking skills as they demonstrated their learning. Course purpose, instructional objectives,…

Investigates sentence processing in a visual-gestural language by testing signers' recognition for American Sign Language sentences. Results indicate that signers decompose a complex sign into its lexical and inflectional components during sentence comprehension and remember the meaning expressed by these components rather than remembering the…

Reports on an experiment describing the lexical development of a hearing child with a deaf mother and hearing father. Data confirm previous findings that (1) sign emerges before spoken word, (2) acquisition stages are similar in ASL and spoken English, and (3) the child initially develops one lexical system. (Author/AM)

Reports data and observations from videotapes showing interaction in everyday activities between deaf parents and both hearing and non-hearing infants. Discusses the several modes of communication used and the strategies employed to increase two-way communication. (PMJ)

Reviews and compares two CD-ROMs designed to teach sign language skills: "The American Sign Language Dictionary on CD-ROM" and "Sign Language for Everyone." The first is seen to be the better reference tool whereas the second is judged the better choice for computer users wanting to learn sign language in a structured way. (DB)

Examined longitudinally the handshape aspect of American Sign Language signs in young children of deaf parents. Parents demonstrated on videotape how the children formed the different signs. Findings reveal that four basic handshapes predominated in early sign production, and that the part of the hand involved in contacting a sign's location often…

A teacher of deaf children responds to a treatise recommending expanded use of American Sign Language (ASL) in deaf education by addressing the immediate problems that parents, teachers, school authorities, and linguists will need to carefully consider in implementing an ASL-based bilingual approach to educating young children. (CB)