An outsider to the field of deaf education questions the seeming ambiguousness in terminology, lack of scientific research, continuing controversies, and lack of definitive answers. Questions concern such issues as the difference between "Deaf" and "deaf" and the feasibility of the American Sign Language/English-as-a-Second-Language proposal.…

This commentary reviews the articles in this theme issue and analyzes American Sign Language (ASL) bilingual approaches to supporting children with deafness in acquiring English text skills. Also discussed are theoretical explanations for how bilingual contexts may contribute to progress in English literacy and spoken English. Issues for the…

Suggests the in-house creation of graphics for orienting users to the library. (PF)

Explores the systematic arrangement of elements in American Sign Language and compares it with English syntax. (KM)

(Text is in French.)

Techniques for producing title slides are discussed. (HB)

A new deaf poetics has emerged, characterized by the focus on the centrality of the image in both American Sign Language (ASL) poems and in the international poetry community. A series of performances by ASL poets and other activities linking poets have provided new data to support the universal, i.e., poetic, phase through which language…

American Sign Language verbs have several ways to indicate time: 1)reference to a specific time; 2) extension at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate future time; 3) flexion at wrist, elbow, or shoulder to indicate past tense. (Author/LMO)

Two constantly appearing claims in most playground accident suits are improper supervision and lack of warning to the users. This article discusses legal implications of improper signage, explains use of symbols, and presents general sign guidelines to ensure proper safety measures. (MLH)

Five profoundly deaf adults were recorded reading lists of individual words under three expressive modes (speech alone, speech and signs, and speech with cues). Results indicated that speech with cues produced the highest level of intelligibility, speech and signs the lowest. (Author/CL)

Studies two groups of autistic children--good versus poor verbal imitators--within the context of a receptive label acquisition task. Both groups acquired receptive signs. However, good imitators acquired receptive speech whereas poor imitators typically did not. (Author/AS)

Introduces three papers (published in this issue) contrasting the development of gestures and sign language with spoken language in order to specify the nature of language plasticity (susceptibility to change) and robustness (invariance). Focuses on question of whether these are parallel systems or an integrated system with two forms of…

The gesture systems developed by 10 deaf children, each incapable of acquiring a conventional spoken language naturally and not exposed to a conventional manual language by their hearing parents, were compared and contrasted to both the speech and the gesture systems developed by three hearing children learning English. (Author/BE)

Introduce articles which were first presented at the Annual Forum for Ethnography in Education at the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. The articles try to analyze what happens in the education of the deaf, what is experienced by the different parties involved, and the impact of these experiences on deaf children. (SED)

Research is reviewed on the Makaton Vocabulary, a sign lexicon used with severely communicatively handicapped pupils. It is concluded that the lack of published teaching strategies tends to perpetuate an oversimplified teaching formula. (CL)