Learning Sign Language - Annotated Bibliography Example

4- Fourth Annotated Bibliography: Hermans, D., Ormel, E., Knoors, H., &Verhoeven, L. (2008).The Relationship between the Reading and Signing Skills of Deaf Children in Bilingual Education Programs.Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 13(4), 518-530. The study examines if proficiency in signing skills can facilitate deaf students during bilingual education programs. The purpose of the study was to examine if there is a relationship between reading and signing skills (p.520, C.1, L.11-14). The theoretical framework of the study was constructed on the assumption that existing sign inventory is the only tool used by deaf children for interpreting meanings of new reading vocabulary (p.526, C.1, L.2-4). Several terms like lexical De.: The model assumes that children will initially understand the meaning of new written words within the preexisting language and conceptual systems., p.519, C.2, L.24), SLN De.: Sign Language of the Netherlands, p. 520, C.2, L.1), PHS De.: Parental Hearing Status, p. 520, C.2, L. 10) and LP De.: Language Preference, p. 520, C.2, L.11)were defined appropriately in the article. The sample consisted of 87 deaf children (50 boys and 37 girls). All the participants had a hearing impairment over 80 decibel, diagnosed with deafness before the age of 3 years, had normal nonverbal intelligence and had no other known impairments (p.521, C.1, L.1-6). The settings were five special schools for deaf children in Netherlands and information regarding students’ use of SLN, Sign Supported Dutch (SSD) and spoken Dutch was taken from their teachers in individual questionnaires (p. 521, C.1, L.2, 27). The research design comprised of two reading vocabulary tests and a written comprehension tests in spoken Dutch and SLN followed by questions appearing on computer screens open-ended questions (p.521, C.2, L.1-6; p.522, C.1, L. 4-8). The reliability of the sign language tests were administered with the help of Cronbach’s alpha coefficients. For tabulation purposes, various SPSS tools were used (p. 522, C.1., L.31). Further factors related to short-term memory were also considered in tabulating results. For treatment, TaaltestAlleKinderen (TAK-R) was used which is a test battery for the assessment of Dutch spoken language skills of hearing children and sign language tests were used (p.521, C.2, L. 22). The research findings indicated that there is a positive relationship between vocabulary in SLN and written Dutch (p. 525, C.2, L. 12). Another finding was that deaf children of deaf parents have an earlier and more intensive contact with SLN and, therefore, should score higher on the vocabulary and story comprehension tasks in SLN (p. 527, C.1, L. 11). As far as impact of LP is concerned, deaf children who exclusively prefer SLN will be more proficient in SLN compared to deaf children who do not exclusively prefer SLN (p. 527, C.1, L. 23). 5- Fifth Annotated Bibliography: Cawthon, S.W., Winton, S.M., Garberoglio, C.L., & Gobble, M.E. (2010).The Effects of American Sign Language as an Assessment.Accommodation for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 16(2), 198-211. The purpose of the research is to examine utility of ASL for deaf children during standardized assessments and tests (p.198, C.1,L.6). The theoretical framework supported the notion that use of ASL for oral tests provided valid and beneficial results; therefore its replication on standard tests needs to be explored (p.199, C.2, L.14-17). The research further indicates that factors like test subjects, student’s proficiency in the given area and matching the individual student’s needs with the type of accommodation and the content of the test play an important role in scores of deaf students (p.199-200, C.1-2). Since state assessment does not utilize non-written English testing techniques, therefore students well-versed with ASL sustain lower grades. The sample of randomly selected students included 64 students having severe to profound hearing loss but without disabilities that required additional test accommodation. The age of this selected sample ranged from 10-15 years with students enrolled in 5th to 8th grades (p. 201, C. 1, L. 28-37). All the major termslike SDHH (De: Students who are deaf or hard of hearing, C.1, P. 198, L.1) and accommodations (De: Accommodations are meant to make it easier for students with disabilities to gain access to test content without changing the difficulty of the test., C.1, P. 199, L. 34) were explained within the context. The settings were six schools for the deaf from the selected state however students were asked questions about their language experiences at home as well (p. 201, C.1, L. 28). For deciding research design, a pilot study comprising of two students was designed administered by deaf research members (p.202, C.2, L. 12.). The research procedure comprised of showing a DVD designed by deaf research members and showing it to deaf students on either individual computers or in group (p. 202, C.2, L.7). Later part of the test included standard test conditions with directions given in ASL but reading passages were given in Standard English whereas in ASL-accommodated test, directions, passages and test items both were given in ASL excluding mathematics test items (P.202-3, C.1, L. 32). The treatment included Iowa test of basic skills and mathematics were used along with questionnaire examining language background inventory (p. 203, C. 1, L. 13). Two separate pairs of t-test were used for reading and mathematics and regression analyses for selected variables. The findings of the research indicated that ASL accommodation does not have an impact on students’ performance in standard tests (p. 206, C.1, L. 13). Secondly, students’ proficiency in the subject area also plays a vital role in use of ASL (p. 206, C.2, L. 14). Also, there was only a subject area match in the predictors of ASL-accommodated scores (p. 207, C.1, L. 21). 6- Sixth Annotated Bibliography: LaSasso, C., &Lollis, J. (2003).Survey of Residential and Day Schools for Deaf Students in the United States that Identify Themselves as Bilingual-Bicultural Programs. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 8(1), 79-91. The purpose of this research was to examine how many residential and day schools in US are operating as bilingual-bicultural programs (p. 81, C.1, L.1). All the major terms i.e. BiBi (De: Bilingual-Bicultural, p. 79, C.1, L. 4) and MCE (De: Manually coded English, p. 79, C. 2, L. 6) were used and explained extensively within the text (pp.79-80). The theoretical framework was constructed on the premise that current educational system provides limited support to deaf students through appropriately designed curriculum resulting in failure and impairment of learning abilities of such students (pp. 79-81, C.1, L. 27). All participating schools were listed in American Annals of the Deaf (Ninety-one percent (n = 71) of the 78 day and residential schools listed in the 1998 Directory of the American Annals of the Deaf participated in the survey, with 19 schools identifying themselves as BiBi) (p. 79, C.1, L. 13). The research design included questionnaire designed for examining trends and issues in deaf education and BiBi instructions in US (p. 81, C.1, L. 14). As far as research settings are concerned, the survey was sent to principals and deans of 71 residential and day schools for deaf students (p. 81, C.1, L. 20). Only 19 programs considered themselves as BiBischools and had 4041 students enrolled. These survey were correlated with the findings of the annual survey of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and youth and annual report to congress (p. 81, C.2, L. 30). The treatment of BiBi programs was based on the assumption that these BiBi schools have considered major elements of BiBi programs i.e. relative roles of ASL and English in BiBi programs, bicultural and reading components and evaluation tools, and have implemented them in their educational settings accordingly(P. 83, C.1, L.9; P. 84, C.2, L. 13). Research findings indicated that linguistic theory and research findings influenced the decisions of these schools to convert to BiBi institution instead of regular school (p. 86, C.1, L. 6). Another major finding was that these schools lacked major BiBi curriculum and a whole language orientation was not considered for deaf students (p. 87, C.1, L. 42; p. 87, C.2, L. 22). Furthermore, only three schools used ASL as an instructional tool which indicates that most of the schools are not using educational tools that are consistent with ASL and are hence not facilitating disabled children appropriately (p. 88, C.1, L.15). 7-Seventh Annotated Bibliography: Meadow-Goldin, S. & Mayberry, R.I. (2001). How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read?,Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(4), 222-29. The research examines problems faced by deaf children due to incompatibility between two major capabilities required for learning and reading which are familiarity with a language, and understanding the mapping between that language and its printed version. The purpose of research is to examine why some deaf children tend to become a better reader than others and also if knowing a sign language helps deaf children in mapping it onto written language and further helps in enhancing reading skills (p.222, C.1, L.26).The theoreticalframework is designed on a hypothesis that it is important for children to be able to map already spoken language and words present in a printed version. Since deaf children are unable to learn phonology of the words; therefore it becomes difficult for them to capture meaning of printed words (p.222, C.2, L. 16). Relevant termslike mapping, signing skills, phonological code, manually coded English, pseudo-homophone etc, were explained well within the context of the research however it was difficult to find specific definitions for these terms. The research design was of qualitative nature and previous research conducted in terms of understanding phonological decoding by deaf children was explored extensively (p. 222, C.1, L. 21). The research itself began from exploring importance of phonological decoding in previous studies and then correlated it with mapping of language with its printed version. Due to qualitative research design, there were no actual participants in this study. As far as settings are concerned, most of the studies explored deaf students from educational settings (P. 224, C.2, L.27). Findings of the research indicated that ASL is more effective language for deaf children as compared to English itself and it may assist them in learning English language (p. 226, C.2, L. 14).Further findings explained that children cannot learn their first language through print whereas they need to be taught to read since it is not an adoptable skill like speaking (P. 227, C.2, L. 13). 8- Eighth Annotated Bibliography: Thompson, R.L., Vinson, D.P. &Vigilocco, G. (2009).The Link between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 35(2), 550-7. The purpose of the research was to explore relationship between iconicity and learning of American Sign Language by first and second-language signers (p. 551, C.2, L. 24). The research extensively uses terms like RTs(De: Fast reaction times, P. 551, C.2, L.2) and iconicity(De: the transparent relationship between meaning and form, P. 550, C.1, L. 1), and attempts to explain them with the help of supporting content of the article. Thompson, Vinson and Vigilocco have based their argument on the theoretical framework that all forms of language utilize iconicity however sign language utilizes it more due to its visual mapping properties and lesser dependence on phonology (p. 551, C. 1, L.11).For treatment, they used some of the iconic items from already available research conducted by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) and Szekely et al. (2004), and also designed some by combining visual phonics (p. 552, C.1, L. 12).The participants included 14 deaf ASL signers (5 exposed to ASL from birth and rest in early age), 17 hearing proficient ASL signers and 17 hearing nonsigners in the research (began signing at age 16 and knew it since 8 years) (p. 551, C.2, L.40). All these participants were working as interpreters at the time of research. Research design comprised of combination of a picture and an ASL sign that referred to the same object (p. 552, C.1, L. 1 (Procedure). The experiment comprised of experimental and filler items consisting of mismatching and matching combinations of picture and ASL sign. For control, no picture or sign was repeated in different combinations. Research methodology used variance analyses to identify factorial combination of selected sample with picture salience and block (P. 552, C.2, L. 32). There was no mention of settings within the text. researchfindings indicated that English monolinguals were faster in sign processing than any of the ASL signers whereas there was a limited difference among native and L2 deaf signers (p. 552, C. 2, L. 11 (Results)). Furthermore, iconicity is only one aspect of language processing and has an impact on its speed if not corroborated by other features of language including phonology (p. 554, C.1 L. 32). Read More