Keys to English Print:

As published in Odyssey, Fall 2003
Fingerspelling Ain't Easy (But I Use It Every Day) in PDF (13 pages, 385 kb)

Fingerspelling Ain't Easy (But I Use It Every Day)

By David R. Schleper

Like a lot of teachers, I often ask deaf adults about certain signs I plan to use. How do you sign “cake?” How do you sign “budget?” I will ask, hoping that the adult will give me a sign. Almost every time they say just one thing: Fingerspell.

I hate fingerspelling. I am sure that the majority of hearing teachers—and maybe some deaf teachers—feel the same. But over the last few years, I have come to realize how important fingerspelling is—not only for communication, but because it connects directly to reading and writing. In fact, I’ve come to believe that the use of fingerspelling and reading and writing with deaf children is the same as the use of phonics with hearing children. Here is what the research says:

Fingerspelling should be used very early, before the child can read or write. Parents and caregivers who are deaf fingerspell to their deaf children from the time they are born. Deaf children of deaf parents spontaneously produce fingerspelling as part of their expressive communication by their second birthday (Padden & LeMaster, 1985). In Kelly’s study (2003), the child started fingerspelling at age 2.

I used to think that fingerspelling should not happen until children started school. In addition to this research, my own experience helped me change that idea. I do not have a name sign. When I introduce myself, I fingerspell my name, D-A-V-E. A short time after I left a friend’s home, his 2-year-old child said to his mom, “Where is...” and his fingers moved in handshapes that resembled the fingerspelling for my name. The mom said, “D-A-V- E left. He will be back later.”

About two weeks later, when I left again, the child said, “Where is E?” Again, the mom explained that D-A-V-E had left, and would be back later. Two weeks after that, the child said, “Where’s V-E?” Once again, the mom said, “D-A-V-E is gone. He will be back later.”

Finally, three weeks after that, when I again visited and left, the child had mastered the whole sequence of letters that form my name. “Where is D-A-V-E?” he asked his mom.

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Just like young hearing children develop spoken language, deaf children can develop fingerspelling by using it.

TUTORIAL IN A TEAPOT After Wolfgang Staley returned from the display of teapots at the Botanical Gardens, his drawings reflected his joy—and his experience of language. 1. Wolfgang was determined to count each of the 100 teapots on display. 2. He showed his feeling by incorporating the “I love you” handshape into his work. 3. With his teacher’s cue cards and his own writing before him,Wolfgang is pleased. 4. In Wolfgang’s completed work, a story unfolds. His first line—in alphabetic print, signs, and handshapes from American Sign Language—reads:Wolfgang goes-to [the] museum.” Underneath, he shows the meaning for count by writing out each numeral, 1 through 10. He circles 10 as this was his favorite teapot.Then he adds “teapot 10 I love you!” He concludes by noting that his teapot was number 10 out of the 100 teapots on display.

The alphabetic basis of fingerspelling does not appear to be essential for its acquisition
Just like the child who learned my name, deaf and hard of hearing children learn to fingerspell names before they start school, without knowing the ABCs. The word is performed in fingerspelling almost as a single unit. For my 2-year-old friend, D-A-V-E was a sign. A few years later, he would learn the alphabet and then connect the letters to print.

Children can and should play with fingerspelling
Dennis and Sharon Berrigan have read to their deaf daughter, Bridget, from the time she was born. At 30 months old, their daughter loved books, including Franklin is Lost and Franklin in the Dark by Paulette Bourgeois. While reading, the Berrigans fingerspelled many words, including F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N, the main character in the stories. Bridget recognized both the fingerspelled and printed name and frequently fingerspelled it back to her parents. Here is how Bridget spelled the word over a two-week time period:
F-L-N
F-R-L-N-I
F-R-K-L-N-I
F-R-A-N-K-L-N-I
F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N-I
F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N

According to the Berrigans, “Just before Bridget’s final mastery of Franklin’s name, she spelled it with an extraneous I (i.e., F-R-A- N-K-L-I-N-I). “We never corrected Bridget’s fingerspelling, teaching her instead through modeling,” they noted.

But on one occasion, when Bridget attempted to correct her father as he spelled the turtle’s name without its phantom I, he offered an explanation. “There’s no I at the end of Franklin,” he told her. He pointed to the word in the book, and then he fingerspelled it again. Bridget watched intently. The next time she fingerspelled Franklin, the extraneous I was gone. It never resurfaced on her fingers again.

According to Dennis, Bridget, now 6 years old, “…fingerspells a lot more than I ever fingerspelled during my first 10 to 15 years of life.”

Another great way to develop both fingerspelling and the alphabetic knowledge in a playful way is through sharing ABC stories. In ABC stories, a story is signed using successive handshapes of the finger alphabet. Here is a beginning example:
A-handshape—I clean (a flat surface)
B-handshape—I open it up
C-handshape—I look for something inside

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Fingerspell! Don’t Invent Signs.

Above: This child from El Salvador copied the text from the morning message, Teapots our teapots, then added his name Cristhian. Finally he added the O. When asked about the O,he said that it signified Cristhian home. The sign for home uses an O handshape. Below: The student who drew and captioned this illustration is a twin. He said that his illustration shows¸ “two babies. Twins.” He also explained that“Inside Mommy’s tummy. That’s my house. Drive to the doctor’s house,” and that the three name tags were for himself, his twin, and their Mommy.

It is easy to invent new signs instead of fingerspelling the words. But it is not necessary, it offends people with a strong allegiance to American Sign Language, and it does not help students develop skills that connect to writing.

Once I observed a class of 5-year-olds in the midwestern United States where students extended the sign for car by applying it to a variety of vehicles, with a T for truck, a B for bus, and a V for van. I asked the teacher to fingerspell “van,” instead of using the invented sign. At first she was reluctant because “a lot of the children are just starting signing, and it might be too hard.” I told her to go ahead and try it. When I returned to the class a few weeks later, I noticed that the children—and the adults—were signing V-A-N. The children have great minds and they C-A-N do it!

Personal importance, rather than length, drives fingerspelling.
Andrews and Mason (1986) note that most young children begin their spontaneous fingerspelling with short words. However, some children begin with longer words. According to Ruiz (1995), her child fingerspelled many words that were eight letters long, but highly meaningful to her. In first grade, her child spelled “Clifford.” A week later, she spelled “Hollywood” and “Christmas.” If the word was important to her, or if she needed that word for writing, she would fingerspell it, no matter how long.

When writing, students may focus on a “first handshape equals first letter” concept.
As children learn sign language and fingerspelling, they notice that some words—like blue, pink, uncle, aunt, or yellow—are formed by the letter in the finger alphabet that represents the first letter of the word in print. They may apply this pattern— first handshape equals first letter—when they begin writing (Padden, 1996; Ruiz, 1995; Schleper, 1992; Schleper, 1994).

For example, Padden (1996) noted that children may spell words with the first and perhaps last letter in place while guessing at part of the middle sequence, i.e., B-L-U-K-E for blue, P-I-K for pink, or Y-P-E-W for yellow.

At the same time, the children do what all beginning language learners do and over-generalize the rules they learn, initializing signs that are not in this morphological category (Padden, 1996; Ruiz, 1995; Schleper, 1992; Schleper, 1994). I noticed this when my 7-year-old student, Jamie, wanted to write the word ‘patient’ (Schleper, 1992).

He began by making the sign for patient, the A-handshape drawn down on the lips in a double movement. He wrote the letter A. Knowing the word had several letters, he added a few more. Finally, Jamie repeated the sign again, looking at what he had written. It wasn’t quite right. He noticed the double movement, the repeated A-handshape. Of course! He added a final letter. To Jamie, it was obvious that the word‘patient’ began and ended with the letter A.”

Ruiz (1995) notes that through age 7, her child continued to use the first handshape-first letter process and favored it over any other visual memory or sound-based strategies for determining the first letter of an unknown spelling. In Padden’s research (1996), a 4-year-old deaf child wrote Y-O-B for airplane. According to Padden, the use of O-B for the remainder of the word is probably a repertoire of either a favorite letter or letters that resemble in some way their recollection of the spelling of the word.

Above: This child used the smart board to write about two children.When asked, he explained that the message reads,“Sam love Karonn.” Note that love starts with the right letter. It also correctly includes 4 letters, showing the visual focus of the writing.

Ruiz (1995) believes that deaf children learning to write use a number of letters that correspond to the size or age of the person or thing. When her deaf child, Elena, learned that one of her older friends, Lisa, had a name that is spelled with only four letters, she had a hard time accepting it—after all, Elena, who was younger, knew her own name spanned five letters.

Once the child learns the rules of American Sign Language, he or she stops using invented spelling inspired by ASL.
Padden (1991) notes that as young signers learn more about American Sign Language, they realize that certain aspects of invented spelling do not “make sense” and they stop using it. Instead, the children learn the rules governing the selection of letters, the order that letters appear in a fingerspelled word, and how fingerspelling is linked to English vocabulary.

I can remember one student who asked, “How do you spell‘B-A-N-K’?” It seemed strange to have him ask how to spell a word that he already spelled with his fingers. But as he began to understand the concept of matching letters to the words, this kind of query would no longer appear. This is why so many children, when writing, fingerspell, watch their own hand, and write down what they see. The kinesthetic and visual process is key.

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Once children discover the alphabetic principle of fingerspelling, they begin to explore connections between fingerspelling and writing.
In Padden’s research, children sometimes used fingerspelled handshapes on the written page. A child knew the letters of the alphabet, but wanted to represent fingerspelled handshapes on the paper (Padden, 1991).

One student once wrote in a journal, “I will make the honor roll. RRR.” When I asked what the RRR meant, the student showed keep your fingers crossed. Of course! Crossed fingers look like the fingerspelled letter R (Schleper, 1994).

English orthography is accessible through visual, rather than phonemic, means.
With children, this can be seen when watching how people write words. Hearing children, using a phonemic means of writing, may delete letters. Deaf children often have the right amount of letters, but may either transpose or substitute letters. With words that have double letters, they may double letters, but sometimes not the right ones.

For example, in Padden’s research, a child wrote “hosue” for house. While a hearing child writes “hapy” for happy, a deaf child will write “hapyy.” The number of letters is correct, but instead of deletions, deaf children will make substitutions (Padden, 1991), an action that reflects visual, instead of auditory, processing.

Clarity of fingerspelling is important. A friend of mine, Nancy, is friends with a 5-year-old child who is deaf. The child learned my friend’s name sign first, and then eventually fingerspelled her name, N-A-C-Y. The child continued to spell my friend’s name N-A-C-Y, both in fingerspelling and in writing, even if my friend modeled the correct spelling back to her. This went on for several months. Then one day the two of them had a discussion about names that started with the letter N. My friend told the child that her name had two Ns and asked how she would spell that. The child spelled N-A-N-C-Y correctly. After that one explanation, the child now always spells N-A-N-C-Y instead of N-A-C-Y.

Deaf children use morphology—words within words—to help remember spelling.
As an educator, I often read to students. With one group of students, I was reading the book The Dancing Fly by Joy Cowley. I always try to spell the name of the author in order to expose children to a variety of authors. After reading the book, I read it again the next day. Right away, one student said, “It is by Joy Cow-ley,” using the sign for cow.

Since that time, I often look at how deaf children remember spelling. Even older students use the strategy of words within words. One student used the word “reduce” in his writing. I asked him later how he remembered how to spell that word, and he told me, “Simple…I just remember RED + ICE, take away the I and put in a U” (Schleper, 1994).

Many deaf children called my friend B-E-S-T-Y, despite her efforts to have them correctly call her B-E-T-S-Y. Then, one day, a student figured it out. He said, “It is B-E-T as in making a bet!” From that time on, they remembered that it was B-E-T-S- Y, not B-E-S-T-Y.

Above: Asked to explain his drawing, the student explained that it showed “Wolfgang (his name).” Then he pointed to the NN and said,“That’s a building,” reflecting that the sign for building uses the N handshape. Then he pointed to the R and said that it was a rock.The next symbol, P , was supposed to be combined with R to mean a “rock building.” Then, the M showed “that you can climb it.” As he pointed out the next stream of letters that go across the page in an S form, he said,“We walk around to watch the movie.” Notice the added Ns and Rs to show more buildings and more rocks.

So Much More to Learn
As an educator, I continue to go into classrooms and look at how deaf and hard of hearing children use fingerspelling when they compose. I try to kid-watch, and take time to ask the students to tell me what their writing means. I also try to encourage other educators to do the same. I see that many of the deaf students I work with use visual strategies.

Ruiz (1995) notes that when her child did not use sound-based strategies to write, many researchers of emergent literacy put her child at an early period in writing development. Yet by all indications, says Ruiz, her child was well on her way to managing the forms of print that encompass the broad range of purpose for her writing.

Although much of the research with hearing children emphasizes the need for phonemic awareness activities and direct phonics instruction, the use of various visual strategies with deaf children makes me wonder if the use of fingerspelling regularly, clearly, and often will develop skilled reading and writing.

With this knowledge, I hate fingerspelling a little less—and use it a lot more.

Thank you to Dennis Berrigan, Nancy Eades, Betsy Meynardie, Lisa Pershan, and Nancy Topolosky for suggestions and feedback.

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References

Andrews, J. F., & Mason, J. M. (1986). Childhood deafness and the acquisition of print concepts. In D. Yaden and S. Templeton (Eds.), Metalinguistic awareness and beginning literacy: Conceptualizing what it means to read and write (pp. 277-290), Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Berrigan, D., & Berrigan, S. (2000, Summer). Bridget & books: Fingerspelling, reading—and sleeping—with print. Odyssey, 1(4), 6-9.

Blumenthal-Kelly, A. (1995). Fingerspelling interaction: A set of deaf parents and their deaf daughter. In C. Lucas (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in deaf communities (pp. 62-73). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University.

Erting, C. J., Thumann-Prezioso, C., & Sonnenstrahl Benedict, B. (2000). Bilingualism in a deaf family: Fingerspelling in early childhood. In P. E. Spencer, C. J. Erting, and M. Marschark (Eds.), The deaf child in the family and at school (pp. 41-54). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kelly, A. B. (2003, Fall). Fingerspelling acquisition: What happened since then? Odyssey, 4(3).

Padden, C. A. (1991). The acquisition of fingerspelling by deaf children. In P. Siple & S. Fischer (Eds.), Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, 2 (pp. 91-210). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Padden, C. A. (1996). Early bilingual lives of deaf children. In I. Parasnis (Ed.), Cultural and language diversity and the deaf experience (pp. 99-116). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Padden, C. A., & LeMaster, B. (1985). An alphabet on hand: The acquisition of fingerspelling in deaf children. Sign Language Studies, 47, 161-172.

Ruiz, N. T. (1995, November). A young deaf child learns to write: Implications for literacy development. The Reading Teacher, 49(3), 206-217.

Schleper, D. R. (1992, September/October). When “F” spells“Cat”: Spelling in a whole language program. Perspectives in Education and Deafness, 11(1), 11-14.

Schleper, D. R. (1994, Fall). Does your F want to Y? How deaf children use invented spelling. Talking Points, 5(2), pp. 16-17