Personally I feel that the deaf need not be entangled to learn the hard rules of grammer as they entail time and energy.They should be taught to master spoken English which would automatically enhance their writing skills.

It is not at all different than teaching any other language to a non native. The medium of education should be the sign language that the students are skilled in. Traditional grammar is rarely been taught nowadays for any language - spoken or signed - especially to beginners; the curriculum is often based on functional grammar.

BUT - why is it relevant? Shouldn't there be sign interpreters?

Also, sorry Zahid Khan, but learning any spoken language would NOT "automatically" enhance one's writing skills; especially in English where pronunciation is far from regular (e.g. yacht /ˈjɒt/).

I agree with you Mr.Gerasimos Chatzidamianos.

In IT field , the availability of interpreters is very limited and communication is very important. If one lacks spoken English he should be skilled in written communication. Thus we find it difficult to make our students employable

Have you tried using Assistive Technology for your students? When Deaf people write in English, frequently they are still thinking in sign language. Since the grammar of sign language differs from English, this is what can make their written English hard for others to fully comprehend.

Barbara, can you please explain about the assistive technologies which you think useful for dhh

I would suggest contacting t the Department of Foreign Languages at the Rochester Institute of Technology (NY, USA). They are associated with the National Institute for the Teaching of the Deaf and regularly have deaf students in their foreign language classes. While this doesn't include ESL, I am sure they could give good practical advice.

Our little experience within a bilingual deafs school has taught as that deaf students can learn the oral (writen) language spoken in their country (in ours, Portuguese) by the Direct Method. It is an evolution of Paulo Freire's (Brazilian Educator socially compromised) method. The focus is on the reality around the sudents, on their genuine interests, and it does not pass par the oralization at all. They learn by motivating tasks, together with grammar rules - yes! - that make language concrete for them. The method accepts any gender of text, and, in the case of deaf children, begins by storry-telling in sign language. By the way, this method is applicable to people in general and has been well succeeded specially in cases where the traditional (oral) one has failed...

I think that if they learn Portuguese they can learn any other - at list roman - language.

(The answer will probably not be completely the same for school children and adults.)

I leave out on purpose the methods trying to make HoH learners pronounce sounds in a foreign language or train auditory skills, and I focus only on non-oral methods.

So what do we have mainly nowadays (if foreign languages are taught at all to Deaf children, for often they just don't get the right to learn foreign languages as other children do)? Foreign languages are taught only in their written form, focus is on reading and writing skills, and the class language is either lipreading in the national language(s) or the national sign language(s).

We can compare this with classes of latin or ancient greek. One assumes that there is no need for "living" foreign communication.

Yet, as a modern language teacher, I'm frustrated with this.

I would like to teach my German or English classes using also German or English "oral" communication (which is not vocal, as I already highlighted at the beginning). So I personally argue for foreign sign language teaching.

What I'm currently trying to find out, is whether one should introduce both new languages in parallel (with the risk to make things more complicated, cause additional kind of mistakes, etc.), or when + in which order & proportions both should be handled...

Dear Raji,

There is not much available on Deaf foreign language learning, but there is some.

I suggest that you first look up the following source on the Internet:

Deaf and multilingual: A practical guide to teaching and supporting deaf learners in foreign language classes by Mole, McColl and Vale.

It is a short but very useful booklet available both in print and electronic form.

Secondly, in case you do not know it, I would also like to suggest you take a look at the following book of various articles on the subject:

English in international deaf communication by Kellett Bidoli & Ochse (eds.)

You can take a look at the content page on the Internet. I am sure you will find it useful. One of the chapters is on teaching English as a written language to Deaf students by Joan Fleming. Check it out.

I can also highly recommend checking out Hilary McCall's webpage Languages without limits: Teaching a second language to learners who are deaf.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes, Edit

This post gave me the idea of starting a collaborative reading list on the topic, so I gathered some additional references on the link below.

Feel free to complete the bibliography!

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Foreign_language_learning_by_Deaf_Sign_Language_People_who_wants_to_share_a_reading_list?

When I worked with deaf students I prefered to put it everything the most simple as possible. Look for patterns, key words, interesting topics. Don't hesitate to integrate other subjects. Follow your heart! There is a cool software called ARAWORD. check it out

Hello Everyone,  

Great discussion so far, with many interesting points and questions!  I work with deaf students at the college level, and have faced a lot of what you write about here.  At the college where I work as a sign language (ASL) interpreter and as a tutor in English, with a Masters certificate in TESOL, we offer our students a choice of taking a foreign language and requiring only the written mode assignments (at their preference), or taking a course from a list of approved culturally-oriented courses in its place. 

That being said, every spoken language is a foreign language to the Deaf.  Because of lack of exposure to the spoken word, (most deaf babies are born into hearing families who do not know sign language), they face the first couple to several years with only gestural language and what words they can pick up on the lips as their language base.  So, basically, they begin their L1 formative years with no language, but rather a hodgepodge of coping measures.  

There are a rare few deaf babies who are born into deaf families/signing families where ASL is their language.  They begin life with a full exposure to a real language, and end up doing well in learning English as a foreign language, or whatever other foreign language is spoken in their country.  

I have found that a deaf person with no real early language base has a harder time learning any foreign language. So ASL is learned when they go to school and is their L2. By the time they get to the college level, written English is L3,  they are set in their ways of writing in ASL mixed with a dose of English phrases and structure.  It is difficult to get through college courses and to get jobs if one does not have decent written English and/or comprehension.  

For this age group, I have found it best to increase exposure to the right way to produce English in written venues such as emailing back and forth, and using other students' writing as samples.  The more exposure, the better.  A bombardment of grammar rules is very overwhelming at times, so I like to teach as opportunities come up in their writing, explaining the basic rule, then showing it many times and correcting their errors in light of ASL grammar.  I would say, "In ASL, it is appropriate to sign MAN TALL, but in proper English, we have to add "articles" and change the syntax to "The man is tall."  That's just an example, but using teachable moments leads to many "AHA!" moments as deaf ELLs make the connection between their L2 and L3.  

Thank you for reading, and I hope this helps someone as they work with deaf ELLs or EFLs.  

Cathy Metcalf

Hi!

We have had success in teaching deaf children by the Direct Way, what means, not from the oral - arbitrary - perspective by which they are usually obligued to "learn", but from socio-interactionist perspective. We have included 4 children about 9 y-o of a bilingual school in the reading and writing world. This was done firstly by nice literature for children and, then, incorporanting social texts. the metodology we used, indeed, was learnt with the Association Française pour la Lecture et le Ecrit (AFL0, offitial site: www.lecture.org. They are wonderfull people!

Dear Hilary,

Thank you for the link to Workshop 9; excellent!

Kind regards, Edit

Have a look at REF-N-WRITE scientific paper writing tool. This tool allows you to import text from previous papers relevant to the subject area in MS word. While you are writing your paper, you can just search for similar statements from other authors and inherit their vocabulary and language to improve your paper. It also comes with a library of academic phrases that you can readily use to polish your paper. Here is the link for the site.

http://www.ref-n-write.com

They have some nice tutorials here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf7qyyKtbyQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6hlXzqO3r4

Good Answer Laura Sánchez García

Hi this is what we are doing in Iran

The effectiveness of nonverbal working memory on English writing skills of students with hearing impairment