THE SOMEWHAT BACKWARDS
BILINGUAL EXPERIENCE OF
A DEAF CHILD IN AMERICA
Meghan Eckerson
SOME BACKGROUND
Bilingualism – what does it mean?
 Deaf children – what do you do?

Education
 Communication

Research focuses on knowledge and
understanding of English
 What about education?

EDUCATION

Merriam-Webster defines education a few ways,
one of which is the following:

“to develop mentally, morally, or aesthetically
especially by instruction.”
What else do we want to teach deaf children
other than English?
 What is the most effective way to do that?

SIDE A: BILINGUAL-BICULTURAL
 American
Sign Language (ASL) has its
own structure and grammar
 The Deaf culture associated with it is very
unique.
 Most deaf children grow up in families
where the parents and siblings are
hearing so they are not exposed to Deaf
culture in their home, and often times are
not exposed to the language either.
 Most of the exposure to ASL and Deaf
culture comes from outside the home.
BI-BI EDUCATION


“all of these factors – the fact that most deaf children do not
learn English as a true native language; their ability to
learn ASL as a native language; and the existence of a deaf
community, to which most prelingually (and many
postlingually) deaf youngsters and adults belong – have an
important bearing on the education and language
development of deaf children in North America.” (Veda R.
Charrow and Ronnie B. Wilbur The Deaf Child as a
Linguistic Minority. 354)
Bilingual-Bicultural Education (Bi-bi). It “involves
exposure to and acquisition of two languages, American
Sign Language (ASL) and English. It also involves
exposure to and involvement in two cultures, the Deaf
culture and the Hearing culture . . . Bi-bi involves using
ASL as the primary, and often sole, language of interaction
in the first 6-7 years of life with children who are deaf and
exposing children to all aspects of Deaf culture.” (qtd in
Huefner, 2001 pg 187)
SIDE B: SIGNING EXACT ENGLISH




Signing Exact English (SEE II) is a manual code of
English developed from Seeing Essential English (SEE I)
in the 1970s. SEE II is used in the education of deaf
children today to help them learn English grammar and
structure.
“unlike American Sign Language, these codes follow
English word order, and contain specific signs for bound
morphemes to signify English verb tenses, adverbs, and
function words. They were also designed so that they
could be presented in coordination with spoken
language.” (Barbara Luetke-Stahlman A History of
Seeing Essential English (SEE I), 29)
The idea is that if a deaf child can read and write
English well, they will be able to understand more at
school and around them and therefore succeed more
academically.
By teaching a child SEE (II) before they enter school, the
child may develop an understanding of the syntax and
grammar of English similar to that of the hearing
children their age. English will become their native
language.
METHODOLOGY

Lack of research

Focuses on English skills
Longitudinal study
 Observe both sides for ten years

Academic success
 Critical thinking skills
 English proficiency


Why age 8-18?
THE TEST . . .
A
standardized test will be created for all
twenty children and given at the end of
every year.
 The English skills test – the Utah ELP
standards
 Academic success – performance evaluations
in school (i.e. report cards, teacher
evaluations, etc)
 critical thinking test – based on Bloom’s
taxonomy of education objectives.
 A final test will be given prior to graduation
of high school, at which time the results will
be analyzed and a conclusion decided on.
BLOOM’S TAXONOMY . . .
THE HYPOTHESIS
 Side
A:
English skills may develop slower but
eventually will catch up.
 Critical thinking skills will develop faster.
 Will be proficient in both languages.

 Side



B:
English skills will develop faster.
Critical thinking skills may be delayed.
Will be proficient in English (will be their
native language).
IF . . . THEN

What if the hypotheses are true?
We’ll have twenty smart, critically thinking deaf
children!
 We’ll have ten bilingual children.
 We will be able to know which of these methods of
educating a deaf child, if not both, is effective in
developing thinking skills.
 We will know the strengths and weaknesses of each
program and can identify ways to improve each.

FURTHER RESEARCH
 Does
the ability to lip read and speak
make a difference in the education of a
deaf child?
 Why is it that some deaf children can lip
read and voice but others can’t?
 What role does family involvement play in
the education of a deaf child?
 Can English be a fully-developed native
language for a deaf child?
 Are there other ways to educate deaf
children that are just as effective as the
two evaluated here?
 What about psychological effects?