Becoming Bilingual: Facilitating English Literacy Development Using ASL in PreSchool

Most deaf children are born into a unique linguistic situation. Their hearing loss prevents them from acquiring the naturally occurring spoken language of their homes. Since they cannot hear that language to some degree, they are unable to fully participate in the interactions with family members which are so crucial to language development. Consequently, they do not develop a strong linguistic base with which to express themselves and to make sense of the world. Generally, this group of deaf children enters school linguistically, cognitively and experientially well behind their hearing peers who have had the benefit of acquiring native language competence within their home environments (Griffith, Johnson, & Dastoli, 1985).

About 10% of all deaf children, however, have at least one deaf parent and are exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) as their first language within the family/home environment (Karchmer & Trybus, 1977; Woodward, 1990). The exposure to a language that utilizes the children's vision rather than their limited hearing provides them with the opportunity to participate in the dialogue of the home from which language acquisition emerges (Bruner, 1983; John-Steiner & Tatter, 1983; Vygotsky, 1962). They appear to acquire ASL fluency in the same way and at the same rate that hearing children master their native language (Maxwell, 1984; Rudser, 1988; Schlessinger, 1978). Development of conversational skills and pragmatics of language also appears to parallel that of hearing children (Meadow, Greenberg, Erting, & Carmichael, 1981). In other words, a small minority of deaf children grow up with the opportunity to develop language (ASL) naturally within their home environment. They enter preschool programs ready to participate in an age-appropriate curriculum.

Consequently, preschool programs which serve deaf children are faced with a population that has very different, yet somewhat similar, language development needs. The majority of the children need to develop competency in a language. Deaf children of deaf parents who enter preschool with age-appropriate ASL development need the curriculum delivered in the language that they understand. And they all need to develop literacy in English.

Given these parameters, the issues discussed in this paper will take a bilingual perspective in which ASL is the primary language for face-to-face communication and written English is the second language (Grosjean, 1992). In addition to providing language input that is comprehensible because it is visible, using ASL as the language of instruction affords deaf children many advantages. First, it provides the children with the linguistic foundation and background knowledge necessary to make the second language more comprehensible (Johnson, Liddell & Erting, 1989; Keatinge, 1984; Krashen, 1991). Second, it facilitates the ability to use language to solve problems and to participate in the types of interactions which promote higher order thinking (Krashen, 1991; Krashen & Biber, 1988). Third, it enhances the development of basic literacy.

However, here is where the application differs for deaf students. Since ASL does not have a written form, young deaf students cannot learn to read in their primary language. However, their knowledge and mastery of ASL serves as the conduit for learning to read and write English (Drasgow, 1993; Mahshie, 1995). The emergence of literacy, then, for deaf students becomes the process of becoming bilingual.

Since bilingualism for many deaf people involves learning a second language which they do not often use in face-to-face communication, the two languages have distinct and separate uses. ASL, which has no widely-accepted written form, is used as the primary language of face-to-face communication. English, since it is an auditory language that cannot be fully represented in sign (Baker, 1978; Marmor and Petitto, 1979), is taught and used in its written form. From this perspective, a bilingual deaf person is one who is a fluent signer and who is fully literate--reading and writing English proficiently (Hansen, 1990).

There are a number of approaches to bilingual education, of which the additive approach (Lambert, 1975), appears to be the most appropriate for deaf students. This approach focuses on enrichment by the addition of a second language while supporting the primary language as the language of instruction (Wolfe, 1990). One of the features of additive bilingual education that appears to be particularly salient for preschool deaf students is the emphasis on instruction using the child's primary language. This focus directly addresses the diversity in children's language development that exists among preschool deaf children. The children who enter school without a well-established primary language will have an opportunity to attain sufficient proficiency in their primary language (ASL) before they begin to formally learn to read (Cummins, 1981). Instruction delivered in ASL will provide deaf children of deaf parents with opportunities for the development of deeper cognitive and academic skills that predict school success as well as eliminate the possibility of a language difference between the school and home environment.