Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
Empirical Article
Teachers’ Perceptions of Promoting Sign Language
Phonological Awareness in an ASL/English Bilingual Program
Peter K. Crume*
Georgia State University
Received July 24, 2012; revisions received March 19, 2013; accepted April 7, 2013
The National Reading Panel emphasizes that spoken language
phonological awareness (PA) developed at home and school
can lead to improvements in reading performance in young
children. However, research indicates that many deaf children
are good readers even though they have limited spoken language PA. Is it possible that some deaf students benefit from
teachers who promote sign language PA instead? The purpose
of this qualitative study is to examine teachers’ beliefs and
instructional practices related to sign language PA. A thematic
analysis is conducted on 10 participant interviews at an ASL/
English bilingual school for the deaf to understand their views
and instructional practices. The findings reveal that the participants had strong beliefs in developing students’ structural
knowledge of signs and used a variety of instructional strategies to build students’ knowledge of sign structures in order to
promote their language and literacy skills.
A focus of many early childhood educators in the United
States is to help children develop a deeper understanding
of spoken English and develop literacy skills. One strategy that many teachers use to develop these abilities is
to promote phonological awareness (PA) of English. PA
is the knowledge of sublexical structures of words used
in language, and it helps children understand how words
are produced and formed separately from their meanings (Pullen & Justice, 2003). Studies have found that
PA helps children develop an explicit understanding of
their primary language, and it contributes to vocabulary
growth and language proficiency (Leonard, 1998; Nash &
Donaldson, 2005). Studies also suggest that PA promotes
* Correspondence should be sent to Peter K. Crume, Department of
Educational Psychology and Special Education, Georgia State University,
P.O. Box 3979, Atlanta, GA 30302-3079 (e-mail: [email protected]).
the normal acquisition of reading (Adams, 1990; Snow,
Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Stanovich, 1992; Wagner &
Torgesen, 1987), and others even assert that PA has a
causal role in reading development (Ball & Blachman,
1988; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1994). Moreover,
the National Reading Panel reviewed the large body of
research on PA and concluded that promoting PA at
home and school can lead to improvements in reading
performance for young children (National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, 2000).
Given the relative importance and benefits of
PA of English with hearing children, researchers and
educators in deaf education have long debated whether
PA is necessary to develop reading skills among deaf
readers. To date, there seems to be no clear consensus.
Some believe that PA is necessary for deaf readers
(Paul, Wang, Trezek, & Luckner, 2009; Wang, Trezek,
Luckner, & Paul, 2008) and argue that higher levels of
PA and processing are found among some proficient
deaf readers (Conrad, 1979; Hanson & Fowler, 1987;
Hanson, Goodell, & Perfetti, 1991; Hanson & McGarr,
1989; Leybaert & Alegria, 1993). Conversely, others
argue that PA of English is not necessary for some
proficient deaf readers (Allen et al., 2009) and cite studies
that have found many signing deaf children who have
higher levels of reading proficiency even though they
have very low levels of PA (Chamberlain & Mayberry,
2000; Izzo, 2002; Mayberry, del Giudice, & Lieberman,
2011; McQuarrie & Parrila, 2009; Miller, 1997, 2006;
Miller & Clark, 2011; Olson & Caramazza; 2004; Olson
& Nickerson, 2001; Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1983).
© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: [email protected]
doi:10.1093/deafed/ent023
Advance Access publication May 15, 2013
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 465
Although the body of research seems to contradict each
other, one potential explanation is that deaf children can
become successful readers through multiple pathways.
Some deaf children may use spoken language–based PA
to develop reading skills, whereas other deaf children
could potentially use a sign language–based PA.
To date, there has only been limited research conducted on the potential use of American Sign Language
PA (ASL PA) in deaf education. Little is known about
how teachers might promote ASL PA in deaf education
or how its use may parallel and contrast with PA used
with hearing children. It would be crucial to understand
if ASL PA is an effective means to build students’ ASL
proficiency or enhance their literacy skills in English?
The purpose of this study is to examine the potential
use of ASL PA in deaf education by investigating how
early childhood educators in an ASL/English bilingual
school for the deaf perceive the ways that they use and
promote ASL PA.
Challenges of Promoting Sign Language PA in
Deaf Education
A review of the literature indicates that there seems
to be little emphasis in promoting ASL PA in schools.
There are documented efforts of teachers who promote ASL PA, but these efforts seem to be minimal.
One potential form of ASL PA in deaf education is
the handshape story that has long been used to highlight sign language structure. As the name implies,
handshape stories incorporate a group of ASL-based
handshapes in a certain order that conveys a story,
such as alphabet handshape story that goes from A to
Z or a number handshape story that may go from 1 to
10. Handshape stories force the storyteller to blend
sign language structure and signs in entertaining and
creative ways and have long been used in deaf education since the 1900s (Bahan, 2006). Supalla, Wix, and
McKee (2001) also described an approach at ASL/
English bilingual education program where they
focused on teaching ASL phonological structures as a
means to identify signed structure in signed illustrations and learn an ASL graphemic system as a bridge to
help students acquire words in English. Although the
approach was innovative, its use appears to be limited.
Other than these areas of development, there seems to
be little else that has documented the use of sign language PA in deaf education.
It is interesting that so little has been documented
about ASL PA in deaf education. There could be many
potential reasons, but there seems to be three reasons,
in particular, that could explain the limited use of ASL
PA in deaf education. The first reason is because of
the challenge of modality, the second reason is because
of the challenge of handshape representation in sign
forms, and the third challenge is because of terminology. The remaining portion of this section will describe
each challenge and explain its potential significance on
limiting the role of ASL PA in deaf education.
Challenge of Modality
The first challenge that seems to affect the use of ASL
PA is that of modality of sign language. Educators and
researchers have long believed that it is not possible
to use ASL in schools because it is very different language than English (Mayer & Akamatsu, 1999, 2003;
Mayer & Wells, 1996). ASL is a language of visual gestural modality and it has a grammar and phonological
structure that is distinct from spoken English. Whereas
the basic minimal linguistic unit in spoken English is
the phoneme, ASL has four minimal linguistic units
(handshape, location, movement, and palm orientation)
that are collectively referred to as parameters.
The difference in the number of elemental units is
not necessarily problematic in terms of describing the
phonological structure of the conversational language,
as these forms represent the different ways that ASL
and English are structured and represent lexical items.
Where ASL PA seems to have a considerable limitation
in education is in literacy. Native structures of ASL are
non-alphabetic, whereas the phonological structure of
English is alphabetic. Individual phonemes in spoken
English map onto corresponding graphemes in written
English, providing an alphabetic correspondence that
forms the basis of the alphabetic principle, which many
educators and researchers consider to be an important
realization for children in early stages of literacy
development (Foorman & Torgesen, 2001).
However, even though the phonological structures of native signs in ASL are non-alphabetic, it has
not been clear if deaf readers form a correspondence
466 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
between parameters in ASL and whole words in written
English. Interestingly, cross-linguistic activation studies
have found evidence that there is some level of ASLbased phonological processing in reading (Morford,
Wilkinson, Villwock, Piñar, & Kroll, 2011; Treiman
& Hirsh-Pasek, 1983). These studies have found that
deaf adults seem to have longer reaction times than
hearing non-signing adults when they were forced to
process semantically unrelated words in English that
shared similar ASL phonological features. Moreover,
McQuarrie and Abbott (2008) found a strong positive
correlation between ASL PA and a word recognition
task (r = .47) in a study of 50 deaf children between
7 and 18 years of age, suggesting that ASL phonology
may have some role in literacy development. Although
difficult to draw broad conclusions about the potential
effect of ASL PA related to literacy based on these studies, they do suggest that there may be more influence
of ASL phonology on reading than previously thought.
Challenge of Handshape Representation
A second area where there seems to be considerable
challenge to using ASL PA in deaf education relates to
how educators and researchers categorize the phonological structure of native and non-native or “borrowed”
signs in ASL. Some researchers have considered nonnative forms such as fingerspelling as English and not
ASL (Bornstein, 1978; Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Tweney,
1978). There is certainly justification for this perspective
as native signs use handshapes that are non-alphabetic
to represent lexical items that originated from ASL.
Conversely, non-native signs use the manual alphabet as
the handshape in the sign to represent elements of words
that originated from English. However, a crucial point
that must be addressed is if the manual alphabet English
or a part of ASL. The manual alphabet has been difficult
to characterize as a phonological structure because it is a
hybrid between ASL and written English. Wilcox (1992)
described the manual alphabet used in fingerspelling as a
“tertiary” or third-level representation system because it
was based on a secondary representation system (written
English), which itself was based on a primary representation system (spoken English) (see Figure 1).
Even though the manual alphabet represents letters used in lexical items in written English, the
manual alphabet did not originate in the United States.
Historically, the origin of manual alphabet can be traced
back to Spain, where initially it was used to represent
spoken Spanish in the 1500s and 1600s. Subsequently,
the manual alphabet was adapted into French Sign
Language in the 1700s and then into ASL in the 1800s
(Lane, 1984; Padden & Gunsauls, 2003). Thus, based
on its history, the manual alphabet could be described
as a manually based system that represents the Latin
alphabet used in the writing systems of Romance languages such as Spanish, French, and English, and even
a non-Romance language such as Swahili.
What makes the manual alphabet a challenge
to characterize is that it is a true hybrid of a signed
language and an alphabetic writing system. In ASL,
the manual alphabet is not used to represent the
English language manually, such as it was with the
Rochester method or even another manual system
such as Cued Speech, but it is highly integrated as a
phonological structure within ASL. The handshapes
of the manual alphabet use the same handshapes that
form native handshapes. There are more than 40 hand
configurations or handshapes native to ASL, and 22
of the same handshapes form the 26 letters of manual
alphabet (Klima & Bellugi, 1979), as the letters for
G and Q , I and J, K and P, and D and Z use the
same handshapes but different movement or palm
orientation. The 22 shared handshapes that are used
in native hand configurations and the manual alphabet
produce a dual representation that signing children
begin to realize as they get older.
When children are first exposed to sign language,
they do not perceive a difference between the structure of native and non-native signs. Sign language
acquisition studies show that children acquire native
and non-native sign forms in very similar ways. In
general physical development, children initially
become more adept at manipulating joints closer (or
proximal) to the body than manipulating joints further (or distal) from the body (Newell & McDonald,
1994). Studies have found that children under the age
of two are about 70–80% accurate in their location
of signs, followed by about 50% for the movement of
signs, and about 25% for their production of handshapes in signs (Bonvillian & Siedlecki, 1996, 2000;
Boyes-Braem, 1990; Conlin, Mirus, Mauk, & Meier,
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 467
Figure 1 Comparison of representation systems of ASL and spoken English to written English. Phonemes in spoken English
form a direct alphabetic correspondence to graphemes in written English. ASL signs correspond to English print through nonalphabetic parameters. However, fingerspelling provides a manually based alphabetic correspondence to graphemes in written
English. Figure based on Wilcox (1992) description of fingerspelling as a third-level representation system.
2000; Marentette & Mayberry, 2000; Meier, Mauk,
Mirus, & Conlin, 1998; Siedlecki & Bonvillian, 1997).
Children’s acquisition of fingerspelling also follows a
proximal-to-distal trend of development. Studies of
2-year-old deaf children show that they are more accurate in producing their fingerspelling in the appropriate location and produce movements that are rough
approximations of the up-and-down movements of a
fingerspelling form (Akamatsu, 1982; Wilcox, 1992),
or what Akamatsu termed as “movement envelope.”
However, young children are limited in their ability
to incorporate handshapes until they gain more motor
control of their fingers, and gain more experience with
fingerspelling.
What is striking about children’s early use of fingerspelling is how they perceive its representational
form. Padden (2006) suggests that children initially
perceive fingerspelling as a whole form and more like
a sign and not a string of manual letters that represent
a word in English. In fact, Padden states that it is not
until children are about four or five when they begin
to learn to “fingerspell a second time” and realize that
is a direct correspondence between the manual alphabet and graphemes in English. Thus, young children
perceive fingerspelling and non-native sign forms as
just part of the overall lexicon of sign language, and it
is only when they are consistently exposed to English
print that they learn that there is a structural form in
ASL that represents non-native sign forms.
One potential argument against categorizing the
manual alphabet within the phonological structure of
ASL relates to how it fits within the rules that govern
the formation of the ASL phonological form. Like all
natural languages, signs native to ASL follow a distinct
set of rules that dictate how the signs are formed
(for review, see Brentari & Padden, 2001). However,
there are a high number of non-native signs that are
commonly used as a part of the lexicon, such as widely
accepted initialized signs (e.g., FAMILY, CLUB,
DEPARTMENT), sign–fingerspelling compounds
(e.g., WATER F-A-L-L), abbreviations (e.g., APT),
and fingerspelling forms such as regular or “neutral”
fingerspelling (Haptonstall-Nykaza & Schick, 2007) and
lexicalized fingerspelling (Battison, 1978). The rules
that govern the phonological form of non-native signs
can be different than those for native signs. However,
does this mean that non-native signs are not part of ASL
phonology because they “violate” the rules that govern
the formation of native signs? Brentari and Padden
(2001) examined the rules governing the formation of
native and non-native signs, and from their analysis they
believed that non-native signs should be considered
within overall lexicon of ASL. In their findings, they
concluded that although non-native signs do not share
all standard phonological rules governing the formation
of native signs, non-native signs also have their own
standardized and regularized pattern and phonological
structure of rules that are “constrained, systematic, and
468 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
expressed within the grammar of ASL” (p. 117). Thus,
there seems to be some support that non-native forms
can be considered to be within of an overall spectrum of
ASL phonology, because there are standardized rules
that govern their form.
Challenge of Terminology
Lastly, one of the most significant limitations of promoting sign language PA in learning to read is that
there is currently no widely accepted term in sign
language phonology that characterizes the connection between alphabetic handshapes (i.e., the manual
alphabet) and graphemes in written English. ASL linguists do not refer to minimal linguistic units in ASL
as phonemes, but use the term parameter instead. As a
term, parameter is effective for characterizing the basic
linguistic structure of conversational sign language and
for describing a sign-to-word connection that exists
between ASL and written English. Most educators
and researchers also seem to prefer the term manual
alphabet instead of a manual “phoneme” to characterize how handshapes can map to graphemes in print.
Although using the manual alphabet is sufficient as a
term, it seems to limit the complexity of describing
how alphabetic handshapes are used and integrated in
very sophisticated ways in ASL, and have an alphabetic
connection to print. Thus, what might be beneficial is
a term that can describe an alphabetic handshape as
a basic sign language structure and signify the alphabetic connection that exists between handshapes and
graphemes. One solution is the term “chereme,” which
was originally coined by Stokoe (1960). Stokoe used
the term chereme to provide a psychologically and
functionally equivalent term to characterize a manual
form of a phoneme in spoken language. Although there
seems to be resistance to the term chereme among
some educators and researchers, the term chereme or
some similar term like it would provide deaf educators
with a means to show that there is a parallel form of
a manual “phonemic” to graphemic connection that
exists in ASL.
There is also support in the research that educators utilize alphabetic forms in ASL to make a strong
connection between sign language concepts and print.
Several studies have found a strong positive relationship
between fingerspelling knowledge, ASL proficiency,
and reading skills (Emmorey & Petrich, 2012; Hile,
2009; Hirsh-Pasek, 1987; Padden & Ramsey, 1998,
2000). A study by Humphries and MacDougall (2000)
found that deaf teachers in their study were more likely
than hearing teachers to pair signs to words in English
through fingerspelling, a process they termed as chaining. Furthermore, an empirical study by HaptonstallNykaza and Schick (2007) found that deaf children
were more likely to learn words in English if the sign
was paired to a word in print through lexicalized fingerspelling, rather than just from an ASL sign to a
written word. They suggested that children seemed
to be able to use their knowledge of handshapes and
movement to develop articulation patterns to make a
connection between signs and print.
Rationale for the Study
The challenges that seem to limit the potential
widespread use of ASL PA in deaf education exist, but
these are partially a product educators and researchers
still trying to understand how sign language can be
developed as a primary language and used as a means to
promote literacy. Despite what is currently understood
about ASL PA, its use and practice may exist in
deaf education in various forms, but may not yet be
appropriately documented. Teachers are a potential
source to uncover ASL PA in schools because they
have to develop their students’ ASL and English skills.
Teachers may also use their own intuitive understanding
of language structure to promote structural forms of
both languages to facilitate their students’ language and
literacy growth.
This study used a qualitative approach to examine
teacher beliefs and practices of ASL PA in deaf education from teacher self-reports. A group of early childhood educators was interviewed to understand how
they promoted sign language PA with their students,
with a particular focus on how they may have promoted
the difference between non-alphabetic and alphabetic
handshapes. The aim of the study was to develop a
theoretical framework of ASL PA that could be tested
in subsequent studies. With this goal in mind, this
research study sought to answer the following research
questions: (1) How do teachers conceptualize the role
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 469
of developing children’s knowledge of the structure of
ASL? (2) What strategies do teachers use to promote
children’s handshape awareness? (3) How do teachers
promote children’s understanding of the representation system of handshapes? (4) How do teachers promote a connection between ASL and English?
Methods
The study uses a constructivist approach to understand how each of the participants constructs meaning and action through a collaborative effort with
the researcher (Charmaz, 2001). The constructivist approach posits that data analysis is situated in a
time, place, culture, and context and thus reflects the
researcher’s worldview. Teachers were interviewed and
then had the opportunity to respond to a follow-up survey. Analysis was conducted using a grounded theory–
based approach (Glauser & Strauss, 1967), which is an
approach that aims to explain social and psychosocial
processes (Charmaz, 2001).
Setting
The study was conducted at an ASL/English bilingual
school for deaf children located in the United States. The
school emphasized ASL as the primary language and
written English as the second language. According to the
school’s website, the emphasis on ASL stemmed from the
belief that, for most deaf students, ASL is the accessible
and dominant language for communication and thinking.
By promoting competencies in both ASL and English, the
school gives deaf students opportunities to develop skills
and attitudes that help them function effectively with
members of both deaf and hearing communities.
Participants
The participants in this study included nine teachers
and one ASL specialist. Four teachers taught in
preschool, two in prekindergarten, and three in
kindergarten. Teachers typically worked in teams for
the specific age level they taught. All the participants
were Caucasian women and they were all fluent in
ASL. Seven participants were deaf (six teachers
and the ASL specialist) and three participants were
hearing. The years of instructional experience varied.
Some participants taught for less than 5 years, whereas
others taught for more than a decade. Each participant
was assigned a pseudonym to protect her identity (see
Table 1).
It is noteworthy to mention that many teachers at
the school received training from the Center for ASL/
English Bilingual Education and Research (CAEBER).
The aim of CAEBER is to provide professional development for teachers of the deaf all over the United
States in order to promote understanding of bilingual
educational theory and principles and in how to apply
bilingual principles to ASL/English teaching and
learning. A majority of the teachers completed a 2-year
ASL/English Bilingual Professional Development
(AEBPD) in-service training given by CAEBER, which
was training designed to help them promote better academic proficiency in both ASL and English.
Table 1 List of participants in the study
Name
Teaching role
Jennifer
Preschool (1st year)
Lisa
Preschool (1st year)
Cathy
Preschool (2nd year)
Elisa
Preschool (2nd year)
Amanda
Prekindergarten
Katie
Prekindergarten
Stacy
Kindergarten
Jane
Kindergarten
Linda
Kindergarten
Carol
ASL Specialist
Student totals
Hearing
status
Years
teaching
AEBPD
training
Students,
deaf parents
Students,
hearing
parents
Students,
class total
Deaf
Hearing
Deaf
Deaf
Hearing
Deaf
Hearing
Deaf
Deaf
Deaf
10
7
12
13
14
7
2
9
4
2
Completed
Completed
Completed
Completed
Completed
Completed
In 2nd year
Not taken
Not taken
N/A
2
2
3
6
1
4
3
4
3
0
28
2
3
2
1
5
1
2
2
4
0
22
4
5
5
7
6
5
5
6
7
0
50
470 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
Students were not involved in the study, but
teachers were asked to briefly describe their students
to understand their potential communication and
instructional choices. Each participant reported that
she had between four to seven students with the exception of the ASL specialist, who rotated between all the
classes and provided assistance as needed. Many of
the teachers had more students with deaf parents than
with hearing parents. A total of 28 of the 50 students
had deaf parents, or 56% of the students. Teachers
described a wide variability of language proficiency
among their students. Some students had high levels
of ASL skill, whereas others had more beginning level
abilities because they were just learning sign language
or they had additional special needs.
Materials
Two types of materials were used for the study, interview questions and a follow-up response form. A list of
interview questions was used to guide the interviews (see
Appendix A). The interview questions were clustered
around two interconnected themes to assist with the
thematic analyses. The first thematic category focused
on the teachers’ philosophical beliefs about teaching in
an ASL/English bilingual program. The second thematic category focused on the teachers’ instructional
practices related to developing the basic structure of
ASL to promote language and literacy skills.
A follow-up response form was also used (see
Appendix B). The form was divided into four sections: ASL hand configuration (handshape), Manual
Alphabet, Emergent Literacy, and Decoding English.
Within each section there was a listing of the different types of instructional strategies associated with that
section that had emerged from the analysis of the interviews. Teachers were asked to rate the frequency with
which they used each instructional strategy. Teachers
could add an additional instructional activity they may
have used that was not listed (see Appendix B).
Data Collection
The teacher interviews were conducted using a semistructured format. The semistructured format was beneficial because it allowed participants to respond freely
to interview questions and explain their perspectives
and beliefs. The participants were interviewed individually or with another teacher from their grade level
(e.g., first or second year of preschool, prekindergarten, or kindergarten). The preschool teachers, Jennifer
and Lisa, a kindergarten teacher, Stacy, and the ASL
specialist, Carol, were interviewed individually. In
addition, the second-year preschool teachers, Elisa and
Amanda, the prekindergarten teachers, Amanda and
Katie, and two of the kindergarten teachers, Jane and
Linda, were interviewed together. One teacher, Stacy,
was interviewed via a web-based video chat program,
and the rest of the teachers were interviewed at the
school. The researcher, a hearing native signer fluent in
ASL (with RID CI/CT certification), conducted the
interviews and then transcribed the interviews from
oral English or ASL into printed English transcript.
Each participant had the opportunity to review the
transcript, discuss any discrepancies, and approve the
accuracy of the transcript.
The items used in the follow-up response were
developed from the teachers’ self-report data in the
interviews. The follow-up response form served two
purposes. The first was to corroborate the findings in the
interview as teachers had to identify whether they used
an activity and report its frequency. A second purpose
of the follow up was to understand the trajectory
and frequency of use of an instructional activity.
This information helped identify what instructional
strategies teachers used more with children of certain
age levels.
Data Analysis
The analysis of the data was conducted on the interviews with the 10 participants and on the follow-up
response that was filled out by 6 of the 10 participants.
The analysis was performed according to the constant comparative method (Charmaz, 2001; Strauss
& Corbin, 1990). Analysis using the constant comparative method was done at several different levels
in order to identify relevant categories and themes
that occur within the data. The first level of analysis
used action coding, which identified what was happening and what people were doing (e.g., words that
end in “-ing,” such as teaching, making) in each line
of the transcript. Next, focused coding sorted and
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 471
categorized large portions of data and identified ways
that the action codes fit together. Memo writing helped
define categories and describe how each category was
developed, maintained, changed, and related to each
other. The next level of analysis, theoretical sampling,
provided a deeper level of analysis and defined how
a category functioned and compared and contrasted
to other categories. Lastly, the integration of findings
helped synthesize how the findings represented the
participants’ experiences. The themes reported in the
results represent the common beliefs and processes
described among the participants in the study. The
quotations selected represent those that illustrate the
themes found in the data analysis.
In order to ensure validity and reliability of the
findings, the data were triangulated from multiple sources of information, an approach common in
qualitative research (Greene, 2007). The comments
of the participants were compared to their responses
on the survey and/or responses of other participants
to ensure accuracy and consistency of the data. Any
significant inconsistency was not included in the
analysis.
Figure 2 Overarching themes and grouping
Results
The analysis of the interviews focused on two overarching themes: teaching beliefs and instructional
strategies. The teaching beliefs theme described the
views the teachers used to guide their instructional
practices and highlighted what teachers believed contributed to their students’ development. The instructional strategies theme described the approaches
that teachers used to build ASL and English literacy
skills. The instructional strategies theme was further
divided into two sub-categories. These are shown in
Figure 2.
Teaching Beliefs Theme
The teaching beliefs theme detailed the teachers’
perspectives about teaching and learning. During the
interviews, teachers described beliefs that formed
the basis for how they interacted with their students
and educated them. The teachers’ views, regardless if
they were hearing or deaf, were similar and consistent
with each other. Three major perspectives emerged
from the Teaching beliefs theme and these include
472 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
(1) incorporate an additive bilingual philosophy; (2)
build basic awareness of sign language structure; and
(3) repeat and reinforce sign language, and these three
areas will be described next.
Incorporate an additive bilingual philosophy. All the
teachers’ instructional beliefs were grounded in an
additive bilingual philosophy. An additive bilingual
approach seeks to build on the native and primary
language of students and then use the school language
to complement and add to what the students already
know (Cummins, 2000). The teachers’ additive view
contrasted with a subtractive bilingual view that is
prevalent in some bilingual programs where the primary
language of society is used to replace the students’
primary language (Baker, 2001). The teachers believed
that ASL served as the native and primary language
for students and provided students with a foundation
that promoted their social, emotional, and language
development. The teachers were also aware that the
students lived in a society where English was a daily
part of the students’ lives. Lisa, one of the teachers in
the first-year preschool, stated a common sentiment
among teachers, “English is everywhere, we can’t get
away from it, they’re seeing it, they’re using it.” The
teachers felt that it was important to balance ASL
and English instruction simultaneously to promote a
persistent development of both languages. This belief
was supported by Cathy, a teacher in the second-year
preschool class who stated:
When I teach throughout the day, I try to make sure
that there’s a similar proportion between ASL and
English. I will sign stories in ASL, we will also use
the LCD, and project the text of the stories and will
point to the words in English. We will show that. So
there is a balance.
The teachers also stressed English because they felt
that it was vital to the students’ academic success and
their future job prospects. However, in order to learn
English effectively, the teachers felt that students
needed intense exposure to ASL to build a strong primary language. With a strong primary language intact,
the students could acquire English as a second language more effectively.
It is interesting that one teacher described that
the school had shifted to a more balanced focus from
an approach that used to emphasize developing ASL
first before English. Lisa, one of the preschool teachers, had a son that went through the preschool at the
school a decade before. During her son’s time, she
recalled that the school focused exclusively on developing a strong foundation in ASL and began teaching English after students had a strong grasp of ASL.
She felt that this approach may have limited her son’s
acquisition of English because it was introduced much
later than it should have been. It may be that the teachers at the school changed their approach based on
personal observations or because many of the teachers
learned through their AEBPD training that a balanced
approach was more effective. Lisa stated that AEBPD
training helped her understand that, although ASL
was important part of student’s development, early and
consistent exposure to English was equally important
for the students’ development.
Build basic awareness of sign language structure. Another
underlying belief that served as a basis for the teachers’
instruction was a focus on the progressive development
of their students’ knowledge of sign language structure.
The teachers felt that developing awareness of language
structure helped highlight consistencies in sign
language that made language learning more concrete.
The teachers stressed that promoting knowledge of
ASL structure also helped students make connections
between words in language and provided them with
roots to grow and develop. Elisa, a teacher in the
second-year preschool class, described in the following
excerpt why they promoted an awareness of sign
language structure:
It’s like teaching the letter A, then making the connection to the sound /a/ and pointing out how
it’s the same in other words. It’s the same in sign
language, where you show the A-HS (handshape)
and then describe how it’s used in the sign HUG,
or you can describe the C-HS, and how it’s found
in the sign COP. The C is in the English word for
cat, but it’s also in the sign POLICE or DRINK (in
ASL). These things help the students help think
about the language and continuously build to it.
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 473
Teachers were also asked to comment about the
potential benefit of having an awareness of handshape structure. Cathy, the other teacher who taught
in the second-year preschool class, described handshape awareness as “sort of like a ‘pre-guide’ to an
advanced understanding.” Her comment reflected
a common belief among the teachers that students
needed to understand the basic uses of handshapes
before they could develop a more sophisticated
understanding of the ways that handshapes could be
used within in ASL.
S-HS is used in the sign. The kids learn things
based on their interest.
The benefit of this approach was that it was relevant to
the students’ lives. Teachers used the students’ interests to motivate and help them identify ways that a specific phonological structure, such as handshape, could
be used in multiple ways in sign language. This gave
students a means to understand different ways that
signs could express ideas and increase their knowledge
of sign structures in ASL.
Instructional Strategies Theme
Repeat and reinforce sign language. The third belief
espoused by the teachers was a desire to make the
acquisition of ASL as effective and efficient as possible.
The teachers seemed to feel that it was not enough to
promote just a basic knowledge of structure, but it was
also vital to increase the depth and breadth of students’
awareness of ASL by repeating structures in a variety
of informal and formal contexts. The teachers felt
that as students became more familiar with recurring
structures they increased their ability to manipulate
and form connections with the structures and become
more creative with it.
The teachers also exposed students to structures in
signs across content areas. Part of this practice reflected
the project approach used in the school, where the
teachers followed the students’ lead and developed lesson plans that focused on a theme for a short period
of time (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998; Katz &
Chard, 2000). Jennifer highlighted this practice in the
following excerpt:
For example, when we talk about wheels or maybe
driving. I will discuss the S-HS or the 1-HS, like
in the sign for WHEEL, or the S-HS in the sign
for DRIVING. That kind of thing is student based
and student centered. I expose them to it and try
to understand what they like and give them some
handshapes. For example, from teaching them the
concept of cars backed up traffic, I would use the
5-HS. This shows them how to use the 5-HS within
the sign (CARS BACKED UP IN TRAFFIC).
Some kids get it (does sign for CARS BACKED
UP IN TRAFFIC). Perhaps, I’ll do the sign for
CARS CRASH so the students can see how the
The instructional strategies theme was broken into
two sub-categories, developing linguistic structure and
connecting to English print. The developing linguistic structure Subcategory described how teachers promoted students’ knowledge of handshapes that were
used in the structure of ASL, and these were further
divided into two approaches, promote native handshapes awareness and promote manual alphabet awareness. The connecting to English print Subcategory
described how teachers sought to establish a relationship between ASL and English to develop literacy skills,
and this Subcategory was divided into two approaches,
promote emergent literacy and promote word decoding
(see Figure 2).
Developing Linguistic Structure Subcategory
Promote native handshape awareness. This approach
highlighted the ways that teachers sought to enhance
students’ knowledge of how signs incorporated
handshapes as a part of the structure of signs. Overall,
preschool classes emphasized handshape awareness
the most, and the teachers aimed to build a strong
ASL foundation by focusing on the basic structure
and function of handshapes in ASL. As students
transitioned into prekindergarten and kindergarten,
the teachers in these classes focused less on handshape
awareness because many students had already developed
a strong foundation in a variety of handshapes, and
teachers began to focus on other areas of sign structure.
One of the most prominent activities that teachers
used to promote handshape knowledge was the “ASL
handshape of the week” activity. The preschool
474 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
teachers routinely used this activity to highlight
different signs that used the same handshape structure.
Teachers asked students to bring in an object or picture
that incorporated the use of a handshape in the sign
for the item. For example, when the A-Handshape
(HS) was featured, students brought in items such
as a hairbrush or a picture of a hug, because these
incorporated the A-HS in the sign (i.e., BRUSH and
HUG). The teachers felt this activity had several
benefits. First, it encouraged parent involvement and
helped parents learn more about ASL, especially the
hearing parents of the deaf students. Second, it helped
students understand that certain signs shared the
same handshape. Lastly, it made PA more concrete for
students because they could apply their understanding
of handshapes in ASL to their daily environment.
Jennifer: I feel that [the ASL handshape of the
week activity] helps [students] develop a fuller
understanding and it helps them develop sign language. This is especially true of the deaf students of
hearing parents. This really helps them a lot. This
is still true too for the deaf (students) of deaf (parents). I can see this from those years where I taught
the letter of the week when the kids were three years
old, I really had to repeat myself again and again. It
didn’t really make a connection. For example, for
the sign DOLL (X-HS moving up and down on the
tip of the nose), they would bring a doll to school
and they wouldn’t understand the connection with
the D in doll because they couldn’t hear the letter
D in the spoken word doll because of English. It
was too abstract for them.
Jennifer felt that switching from the Letter of the week
activity to the Handshape of the week made a significant
difference in her preschool students’ ability to acquire
and retain new sign vocabulary. The Handshape of the
week activity helped her students make connections
between signs that used the same handshape because
they could use their emerging knowledge of the language they used daily. By comparison, Jennifer felt that
the Letter of the week activity forced her students to
identify structural features of words of English, a language that many of them had limited experiences with
in their daily lives. Furthermore, Jennifer observed
that the Handshape of the week activity promoted her
students’ interest in learning about handshapes as her
students loved to review and discuss the chart with
each other during downtime in class.
In addition, teachers also incorporated instruction of ASL handshape awareness through a variety of
language play activities. One popular activity teachers
used was handshape stories built on students’ knowledge of handshapes taught in class. For example, one
teacher developed a handshape story that used handshapes that were taught in class (A, B, S, C, O, 1, 5,
and F-HS). Translated literally, the handshape story is
about a person who KNOCKS [A-HS] (on a) DOOR
[B-HS], ENTERS [B-HS] (the) WALLS (of a building) [B-HS], (feels) COLD [S-HS], SEARCHES
[C-HS] (around for something), (sees) NOTHING
[O-HS], (and then is) SURPRISED [1-HS] (and)
SCARED [5-HS] (by a) CAT [F-HS]. The students
loved this activity and wanted their teacher to retell it
repeatedly, and then students also retold the story to
others.
In addition, some teachers described language play
activities that they used individually or with another
teacher. Lisa described a Sign rhythm activity she used
with the younger preschool students. This activity featured one or two basic handshapes with rhythmic movement to develop a basic foundation for understanding
handshapes. Similarly, both teachers in the second-year
preschool class also reported using a Handshape tracing activity for language play. The teachers had students trace and cut out an outline of their hand in the
form of a handshape and then encouraged students to
use the handshape to form signs based on objects in the
room. The teachers were amazed that students came
up with ways to make signs in very creative ways. For
example, Elisa described an instance when one of her
preschool students cleverly used a tracing of a 5-HS
to form the sign of a WEBCAM that he spotted on a
teacher’s desk.
Teachers also used a variety of resources to develop
handshape knowledge. Almost all the teachers described
using a poster of ASL handshapes. The teachers used
the poster to give students a running total of ASL
handshapes they learned in class that they could use
as a reference. Teachers also used an ASL–English
dictionary in a variety of formats. Many of the preschool
teachers created their own dictionary from a compilation
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 475
of handshapes used in the ASL handshape of the
week. The prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers
reported using a formally published ASL/English
dictionary (i.e., Tennant & Brown, 1998), and the ASL
specialist used an ASL/English dictionary computer
program. The ASL/English dictionary served as an
important resource for students because they could use
their knowledge of ASL phonology to look up signs in
the dictionary in order to learn words in English.
Promote knowledge of the manual alphabet. This
category details the instances in which teachers
promoted knowledge of the manual alphabet with
their students. As described earlier, the manual
alphabet serves two functions in ASL: (1) a handshape
structure of fingerspelled forms and signs in ASL, and
(2) as a manual representation of letters in English
orthography. The teachers sought to develop both
aspects simultaneously to help students understand
how the manual alphabet was used in ASL.
The most basic way that teachers exposed students
to the manual alphabet was through direct instruction.
Teachers reviewed letters of the manual alphabet in
class and used an illustrated manual alphabet chart as
a visual aid to support their instruction. The teachers
believed that direct instruction provided students with
a basic understanding that handshapes could represent letters in words in their environment. Although
this insight was beneficial, the teachers felt that many
of the preschool and prekindergarten students had a
limited understanding that the manual alphabet actually represented a language that was very different
from ASL.
Teachers provided students with a significant
exposure to the manual alphabet through regular and
lexicalized fingerspelling in their daily conversation
conducted in ASL. Teachers exposed their students to
fingerspelling early and often in order to provide them
with consistent exposure to fingerspelling, though they
knew they were limited in their ability to spell words.
The teachers felt that students, even at the preschool
level, were capable of producing the overall fingerspelling movements, even if they were not yet able
to produce the individual letters in the fingerspelled
word. Jennifer, one of the preschool teachers, shared a
poignant example of one of her students who, a novice
signer, began to express his understanding of different
sign forms through play:
Once I finished (my lesson) I was amazed by something a student did. The student got up and pretended to play teacher, and went up to the board
and started signing the names of the animals. He
signed COW (the sign was a close approximation
of COW with using the 1-HS on the location of
cow, instead of the proper Y-HS), and I signed to
the student YES. The student then made fingerspelling-like movements while trying to fingerspell
the word cow. That example is really fascinating.
The teachers also noticed variability when their students used lexicalized fingerspelling. The preschool
teachers observed that the youngest preschool students
rarely used lexicalized fingerspelling forms other than
basic letter combinations, such as B-U-S. The prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers reported that their
students made greater use of lexicalized fingerspelling
and produced forms with more letters, such as B-E-AC-H, which seemed to reflect on their increasing level
of physical dexterity and experiences with ASL.
The teachers stressed that exposing children to
regular and lexicalized fingerspelling was crucial to their
students’ language and literacy development. The teachers felt that providing students with continuous exposure to handshape and movement forms allowed them
to see recurring structural patterns that would become
more refined as they got older. Carol, the ASL specialist,
felt strongly about exposing students to fingerspelling
and believed that it was vital to students’ language and
literacy development. She described a weekend when
she provided a workshop to a group of teachers for the
deaf in her state. Carol was taken aback by a teacher’s
comment and her response indicated just how deeply she
believed in the power of early fingerspelling exposure:
Then one of the participants asked me, you mean
you fingerspell to the children? And I said, “Well,
Yes.” She looked at me and said “I thought it was
too hard.” I said that’s not the point. Suppose
you’re talking about the park, and you produce a
sign code for PARK (produces a sign with P-HS
in the outline of a square), why would you do that?
You shouldn’t do that because you think they can’t
fingerspell. They will learn eventually.
476 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
They might do something like PK or PRK, and
eventually make it more of a lexicalized PRK. It’s
the same with spoken English. At first the child
might say da, and then they’d increase it to dad, and
then eventually to daddy. It’s the same as spoken
language. Why would you decide to take that from
them, and decide you think you know best and give
them a sign instead? What business do you have!
They looked at me embarrassed. Don’t you hurt
their English reading! Don’t you recognize how
there’s a connection? Don’t do that. If you see a word
and there’s no sign, and it’s lexicalized, go ahead and
use it. Don’t think because I’m not comfortable and
I’m not skilled, I’m not going to do it. So be it. You
wanted to become a teacher of the deaf. I expect that
you are the expert. You are THE language role model
for these children. They were really shocked.
This excerpt reveals several important connections
between fingerspelling and language and literacy development. First, Carol believed that teachers of deaf children should incorporate fingerspelling in their signing,
whether they were comfortable with it or not, because
many deaf children needed to learn to fingerspell and
were often dependent on their teachers as a significant
language model. Second, Carol’s comments also conveyed a belief among the teachers that it was important
to be consistent in the use of fingerspelling because its
development was an ongoing and emergent process.
Lastly, Carol’s comments indicated that she believed
that there was a relationship between early exposure to
fingerspelling and reading proficiency. She argued that
without early exposure to fingerspelling deaf children’s
acquisition of reading could be severely limited.
As students progressed in their understanding of
the handshapes in ASL, the teachers in prekindergarten and kindergarten shifted their focus to helping
students understand the representational uses of handshapes. The teachers exposed students to ways that
handshapes could represent words in conversational
sign language and written English through a compareand-contrast technique. For example, if teachers were
focusing on the letter F during their Letter of the week
instruction, they might highlight that there is sometimes a correspondence between the F-HS between
signs and the letter F in words, such as FAMILY,
FRUIT, and FRIDAY, but no correspondence at other
times, such as FISH and FIX. Conversely, teachers
could also point how the F-HS was used in the signs for
CURIOUS, EARRING, and CAT, which did not have
the letter F in the word in English. A goal of the activity
was to help students understand that there was difference when the F-HS represented a sign used in ASL
from one that could be used to represent a letter in a
word in English. The teachers reported that students
in their classes often struggled to make the distinction.
Students did seem to make the connection eventually.
Jane, one of the kindergarten teachers, observed in her
experience that students often struggled with the distinction until they were in second grade.
Connecting to English Print Subcategory
The last two approaches—promote emergent literacy
and promote word decoding—represent the teachers’
efforts to make a connection between ASL and written English. The teachers exposed students to English
print in many ways that are consistent with the current
understanding of emergent literacy development (Clay,
1991; Williams, 2004), but with more of an emphasis
on maximizing students’ sign language abilities to make
a connection to print. This section will first describe
teachers’ efforts to expose students to print to build
their awareness of the structure and combination patterns of graphemes in English and then describe how
they tried to help students bridge their knowledge of
ASL to English print.
Promote emergent literacy. The teachers exposed their
students to ASL and English print and believed that
students would eventually learn to decode words in
English. Teachers provided a connection between signs
and print to help students understand that written
English uses orthographic symbols to express ideas
and concepts in similar ways that signs represented
ideas manually. Ultimately, the goal was to establish
a connection between ASL and English, and this was
indicated in this comment by Jennifer, “If I introduce
the [text] word blue, and sign BLUE, and sign it
repeatedly, then they will start to understand. They
should remember it.… I have to make a connection
first. The key is to make the connection.”
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 477
The teachers wanted to make written English accessible to their students and develop their appreciation
for it. The teachers in the preschool and prekindergarten classes translated storybooks in ASL and incorporated sociodramatic elements to allow students to
assume the role of the characters in the book. Teachers
also highlighted words and passages in the text to help
students make connections between signs and words in
print. Teachers also wanted to make English personal
to students and they promoted emergent writing activities. They encouraged students to “write” in their journals by drawing pictures and writing letters or words
based on their experience. The teachers wanted to create a positive writing experience for their students. The
goal was to let students express themselves in whatever
means that could be successful for them. As Jennifer
stated, “You feel confident when you write. When the
children paint or do artwork, I encourage them to write
even if they write the letter J-O.… even if it’s not perfect I’ll leave it. The students get excited, and it builds
their self-esteem. I really encourage them to write.”
Teachers also let students sign their stories and then
wrote down their ideas in English. Elisa described that
this was important because it allowed the students to
“see it in ASL, and then (look) down at the print on the
page. They are able to understand it is the same because
the English is there and then they can look up and get
the communicated message in ASL.”
Promoting word decoding. Teachers reported that they
helped students use their knowledge of ASL as a bridge
to understanding similar concepts that were expressed
in English. What distinguishes this section from
the previous section is that teachers sought to target
students’ understanding of the sublexical structure of
words and word combinations in English, rather than
just exposing students to letters and words in English.
A highlight of the interviews occurred when several teachers described a golden moment when some
of their students began to understand that fingerspelling was more than just as a whole signed form,
but instead was the sum of individual parts that represented letters in English. The teachers reported
instances of this occurring when students asked the
teachers to spell out the lexicalized fingerspelling
they were using, without realizing they were already
spelling the word. For example, Stacy described
a moment when one of her kindergarten students
seemed to make the connection between the manual
alphabet and print, “He asked me how do you spell
‘bus’ and I told him that he knew. He looked at me
and said, ‘I don’t know!’ Then, I told him to sign it
slow, and he made the letters in the lexicalized fingerspelling, B-U-S, and then he looked his hand again
as he spelled B-U-S, and then he said ‘Wow!’ and he
had gotten it.” Linda estimated that her kindergarten
students with advanced language proficiency began
to make the connection between the manual alphabet and English print, “Probably around November,
December, to January.” Although there are many factors involved, this suggests that children with more
advanced sign language proficiency are cognitively
ready to make the connection between the English
print and fingerspelling forms approximately around
their fifth birthday. A key insight of this is that deaf
students also began to understand that there is a
correspondence between the manual alphabet onto
graphemes in written English, thus achieving a manual version of the “alphabetic principle.”
One vital instructional strategy that served an
important role in connecting ASL to English was
“chaining.” In chaining, teachers linked words in
English to ASL signs through the use of fingerspelling,
and pictures if available (Humphries & MacDougall,
2000). Stacy felt that chaining was beneficial for
some of her kindergarten students who were better at
kinesthetic and visual forms of memory.
With chaining, I think that helps some. Those who
seem to benefit are those who are tactile learners. They’re more physical and benefit from the
manual fingerspelling movements—the feel of
it. Some kids might not understand the [printed]
spelling, but then remember the fingerspelling….
Vocabulary words have contours to them, like the
outline of the height of the word—the word shapes.
The kids can recognize the letters.
Carol felt that most of the students who benefitted
from chaining were those in kindergarten with good
language skills, but that it could take students longer
before they start to realize the connection between fingerspelling and English print.
478 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
(Chaining) can happen in kindergarten, if they have
a strong language I think they’ll respond. If they
don’t have that, then it’s perhaps in the first grade
when they respond. Yeah, I’ve noticed that happening between the kindergarten and first grade
in my analysis. I know one kid he just seemed to
get it immediately in kindergarten. It’s like his eyes
were opened, and his mind was just receptive to the
possibilities, and he just made lots of connections
(between signs and print).
The teachers reported using other activities that
were directed toward developing students’ knowledge
of how to use and decode words in English. These
included instructional activities that focused on comparative and contrast analysis and instruction that
exposed students to phonological patterns of fingerspelled words commonly used in English. One of the
uses of the compare-and-contrast analysis was beginning reader books. These books incorporated highly
repetitive phrases and structures (e.g., the boy is walking, the boy is running) with pictures, which gave students the opportunity to learn the different structures
of English.
Two kindergarten teachers reported using a formalized approach to teach frequent words in English.
The teachers used spelling tests to expose their students to words that were commonly used in English
and not in ASL, such as articles, pronouns, and prepositions. The teachers used high-frequency word lists
in English and chose words that they felt their students did not know in order to boost their familiarity
with the words.
Finally, collaborative guided reading was a comparative and contrast analysis technique that was
used mostly in kindergarten. The ASL specialist
reported she regularly used collaborative guided
reading with some students. In these sessions, she
read books with the students to give them an understanding of the story and then helped them analyze
morphosyntacic structures in English and then used
fingerspelling as necessary to make a connection to
signs in ASL. This personal interaction seemed to
provide students with the ability to conduct a deeper
level of word analysis of structure beyond just a
semantic connection.
Follow-up Response
The purpose of the follow-up response was to understand how frequently an instructional strategy was
used in a teacher’s classroom. In the interviews,
teachers reported using various instructional strategies and approaches, but it was difficult to know if
the teachers used a particular activity, daily, monthly,
or even not at all. The rating scale in the responses
was as follows: 0 = never, 1 = monthly, 2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly, and 4 = daily. A teacher’s score of 4 indicated that she used a strategy daily, whereas a score of
0 meant she never used the strategy. With six teachers responding, the total score for each item could
range from 0 to 24.
The results of the response corroborated the
majority of the responses provided by the teachers
during the interviews. A relevant finding of the
response was that there were five instructional
strategies that received a score of 23 or 24, which meant
these strategies were used daily by all the responding
teachers, and these activities included (1) natural
conversation in ASL, (2) display of manual alphabet
in the classroom, (3) use of (regular) fingerspelling in
signing, (4) use of lexicalized fingerspelling in signing,
and (5) chaining. Conversely, there were three activities
that received very low overall scores, and these include
(1) student video self-critique, (2) the computerized
ASL dictionary, and (3) tracing handshapes on paper,
which reflected that only a limited number of teachers
used the activity.
Although it was difficult to draw broad generalizations from such small sample, the information
provided by the participants revealed that some
instructional practices seemed to be more prevalent
in certain classes and not in others. The preschool
classes made more use of the ASL handshape of the
week and referred to posters of ASL handshapes
more than the other classes. The prekindergarten and
kindergarten classes used more direct instruction of
the manual alphabet and emphasized book reading
activities more than the preschool class. Moreover,
the kindergarten teachers focused much more on the
frequent English word list and collaborative guided
reading than preschool and prekindergarten classes.
The teachers’ responses in the follow-up response
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 479
were consistent with what they described in the
interviews.
Discussion
The goal of this study was to understand how teachers
of the deaf in an ASL/English bilingual school conceived of and promoted PA of sign language to develop
students’ language and literacy abilities. Overall, the
findings suggest that the teachers at the school did use
activities to promote PA of sign language as a means to
facilitate their students’ language and literacy abilities.
The teachers used a variety of approaches to build their
students’ understanding of native ASL structure and
promote students’ awareness of the manual alphabet.
The goal of this study was to answer four questions.
First, how do teachers conceptualize the role of developing children’s knowledge of the structure of ASL?
Second, what strategies do teachers use to promote
children’s handshape awareness? Third, how do teachers promote children’s understanding of the representation system of handshapes? Fourth, how do teachers
promote a connection between ASL and English?
In regard to the first question, the teachers’
responses indicate that they viewed developing students’ knowledge of the structure of ASL as important and as a part of an overall language strategy that
would contribute to their proficiency in sign language.
The teachers felt that promoting knowledge of sign
language structure helped students build a stronger
understanding of their native language. The teachers
also felt that it provided a strong foundation that would
serve as a “pre-guide to an advanced understanding.”
It was noteworthy that teachers did not seem to
explicitly label their efforts as promoting “sign language
PA” even though they all espoused a strong belief in
building their students’ knowledge of sign language
structure and provided an array of instructional
activities to build this awareness. This view seems to be
in stark contrast to educators of hearing children who
often focus heavily on promoting PA. The difference
seems to be a reflection of the relative lack of emphasis
placed on sign language PA in deaf education. Although
a significant amount of research on sign language
phonology has been done by linguists (e.g., Brentari,
2010; Brentari & Padden, 2001; Liddell & Johnson,
1989; Stokoe, 1960), there has been a limited amount of
translational research of ASL PA in deaf education that
is used to promote standardized practice for teachers.
With minimal standards to guide them, the teachers
seemed to develop their own intuitive practices based
on their knowledge and experiences with ASL and of
visual learning, which has also been documented in
other studies (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Crume
& Singleton, 2008; Humphries, 2004). The teachers
also seemed to use their training from AEBPD and
the resources and expertise available to them, like
the ASL specialist. The teachers felt that the ASL
specialist was valuable in helping them understand the
benefits of promoting the awareness of sign language
structure. It was also apparent from the interview that
the ASL specialist was very knowledgeable about ASL
phonology and believed that there was much more that
could be done. At one point during the interview, she
stated that there was “1,000 different ways to promote
sign language phonological awareness.” Thus, it seems
that ASL PA is used in deaf education to some degree,
but its use has been underutilized in deaf education.
The second question this study has sought to
answer is what strategies teachers used to promote
children’s handshape awareness. These strategies have
been outlined in detail in the Results section and will
be briefly mentioned here. What is revealing about the
instructional strategies is that the teachers used these
strategies to help native signers convert their implicit
awareness into an explicit awareness. For the students
with delayed language, the teachers’ strategies were
geared toward providing them with basic handshapes
awareness to build their sign language PA in order to
help them acquire and learn new vocabulary.
The third question this study has sought to answer
is how teachers promoted children’s understanding of
the representation system of handshapes. First, teachers provided exposure to build awareness of structural
forms in sign language. Once a strong foundation of
basic handshape awareness was in place, the teachers
focused on how handshapes had different functions in
ASL. The most essential function of handshapes was to
serve as a basic element of the structure of signs used
in conversation. As teachers increasingly exposed students to English print, teachers provided a compareand-contrast approach to highlight when structures in
480 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
signs were used solely in ASL, or when they could also
be used to make a connection to English print. This
exposure to English print highlighted an important
metalinguistic function. It promoted an understanding that handshapes could be used to represent ASL
and English orthography in different contexts. In some
instances, handshapes were only non-alphabetic and
were used primarily in conversation. However, in other
instances, handshapes were alphabetic and could be
used as a means to map onto English print.
The fourth question this study has sought to
address is how teachers promoted a connection
between ASL and English. The teachers appeared to
use a combination of signed forms to establish a connection from ASL to English. The teachers used signs
to provide semantic information, but also used regular
and/or lexicalized fingerspelling forms to establish an
alphabetic connection, in essence, establishing a manually based linguistic bridge between ASL and written
English. When paired together, students had the means
to utilize an efficient and effective means to transfer
semantic information from ASL to written English
that would not be possible with either sign or fingerspelling forms alone (see Figure 3). Mapping signs to
print may provide only a limited connection initially
because there is a non-alphabetic correspondence,
whereas mapping fingerspelling to print provides an
alphabetic connection to print, which may be limited
because readers may have limited access to semantic
information of the word.
Recent studies also suggest that fingerspelling may
have other important contributions in the early acquisition of reading with deaf children. Haptonstall-Nykaza
and Schick (2007) found that deaf children were more
effective at acquiring vocabulary in written English
when a sign was paired with a lexicalized fingerspelling
and English print. This approach was much more
effective compared to other conditions where a sign
was just paired with a word in English and when no
signed forms were paired with a word in English. They
argued that a lexicalized fingerspelled form, in particular, may be more effective because its form is more
sign-like and may include additional semantic and/or
syntactic information that is not available only on the
regular or “neutral” fingerspelled form.
Emmorey and Petrich (2012) also found strong
correlations between fingerspelling and reading ability.
They suggested that fingerspelling patterns seemed to
be more reflective of orthographic patterns in written
English, and that fingerspelling and print seem to share
a functional relationship because “both systems are
used to represent the words of English via alphabetic
Figure 3 Signed pathways to English print. Part A shows a limited connection between sign forms and English print when
they are used separately. Part B shows that chaining a sign to a fingerspelling form provides deaf readers with a more robust
connection to written English because they can utilize both alphabetic and semantic connections to words in print.
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 481
symbols” (p. 202). Interestingly, they also found that
syllable boundaries for fingerspelling production with
older deaf children seemed more closely related to
phonological patterns of mouthing words in English.
Emmorey and Petrich suggested that deaf children are
routinely exposed to mouthing during fingerspelling
exposure from adults, such as teachers, parents,
and interpreters, and learn to incorporate this as an
additional layer of information as a visual phonological
link.
Implications for Teachers
What does all of this mean for teachers who work in
deaf education and promote early literacy and language
development? For one, there seems to be a great need
for daily ASL classes. For many deaf students, school
is the place where they have the most access to ASL,
so their exposure should be maximized as much as
possible. Informal conversations are vital to acquiring
knowledge about the world as well as gaining implicit
knowledge about ASL structure; however, students
also benefit from formal ASL instruction. The teachers in this study provided numerous examples where
they used formal activities to focus on ASL phonology
and grammar to improve their students’ knowledge of
sign structure and enhance their students’ metalinguistic awareness of ASL. Their activities were aimed
at improving students’ proficiency in ASL and there
seemed to be many activities that could be done, especially with the guidance of the ASL specialist at the
school.
Another take-home message from the study is that
teachers of the deaf need to serve as both educator and
language model for their students. This may be difficult
task because it requires that teachers critically analyze
their educational practices and beliefs about language
development. These practices may be inconsistent with
what students need to grow linguistically and succeed
academically. For example, Jennifer adjusted her
teaching practice after she noticed that her 3-year-old
students struggled to learn and retain vocabulary when
she taught them the Letter of the week. She realized
through reflective practice that the activity was too
abstract and switched to the Handshape of the week
to make learning more concrete for her students. Thus,
by becoming more student-centered in her practice,
her students became more efficient and effective in
their learning and seemed to improve in their ability to
acquire new sign vocabulary.
A very important point from the teachers was that
one of the most important ways to increase literacy abilities is to use fingerspelling early and often with young
children. This may be challenging for many teachers of
the deaf because, as Carol stated, teachers may be reluctant to fingerspell with their students because they feel
it is hard. Developing high levels of fingerspelling proficiency can be difficult, especially for adults who are
second language learners of sign language. According
to studies by McIntire, Rathmann, and Meier (1988)
and Mirus, Rathmann, and Meier (2001), adults also
go through their own proximal-to-distal developmental
trend when they are learning new physical tasks. For
many adults who are second language learners of ASL,
they often struggle with fingerspelling; it requires fine
motor physical development of fingers that are one of
the most distal structures from the body. To become
proficient in fingerspelling requires many hours of
training and experience. Therefore, it is vital for teachers (and sign language interpreters) working with deaf
children to make a conscious effort to fingerspell and
chain early and often, even if it is difficult. This should
enhance their fingerspelling proficiency and provide
students with potential literacy benefits that seem to
occur with children that have higher levels of fingerspelling proficiency (Hile, 2009; Hirsh-Pasek, 1987;
Padden & Ramsey, 1998, 2000).
Lastly, until there is more evidence-based research
showing the effectiveness of sign language PA, educators need to continue to rely on available resources
and their own understanding of effective teaching
practices and effective learning. Both deaf and hearing teachers in this study offered valuable insights
based on their own experiences with language and
literacy development. Deaf teachers and staff also
brought their own intuitive understanding about how
to promote visual language and learning. These visually based practices are often subtle, but can impact
learning and teaching (Crume & Singleton, 2008;
Lederberg & Everhart, 1998; Mather, 1987, 1989).
Deaf and hearing teachers can work together to discuss these subtle differences and use current practices
482 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
and beliefs to develop a comparable approach that can
be tailored to fit deaf children’s need to process information visually, such as how teachers in this study
used a sign language–based approach to promote PA
with their students.
Future Directions
The findings of this study reveal that teachers did
promote sign language PA with students, but there is
still much more that needs to be done. One issue that
needs to be addressed is how to better understand what
can be done to incorporate more translational efforts
of notions of sign language phonology from the field
of linguistics into deaf education. Although linguists
have investigated sign language PA from a linguistics
framework, how can other research efforts be applied to
providing educational benefits for deaf children? Sign
language linguists, researchers, educators, ASL specialists, and policy makers need to meet and devise ways to
maximize the potential benefits of sign language PA for
deaf children.
One of shortcomings of this study is that it did not
investigate how students responded to teachers’ efforts
to promote their structural knowledge of ASL. It is not
known how the students responded, and a naturalistic
study that examines the interaction could provide some
answers. Similarly, a study could investigate if the students actually benefitted from teachers exposing them
to sign language phonological structure. An empirical
study comparing the potential benefits of ASL PA versus traditional instruction without ASL PA would provide another set of answers.
Another study that is greatly needed is one that
measures the longitudinal effect of sign language PA.
This could include a predictive study that examines if
earlier awareness of sign language PA is an indicator
of future word decoding ability in English. Similar
studies have been done with hearing children and show
that early levels of PA in spoken language are beneficial
for future success.
However, the benefits of spoken language PA are
not as evident with deaf children because there is significant variability in the level of benefits that they
receive from spoken language PA (Mayberry, del
Giudice, & Lieberman, 2011). Many deaf children
seem to become successful readers without spoken
language PA, potentially suggesting that they could
have benefitted from sign language PA. Although
there seems to be little documented evidence of sign
language PA, this study found that teachers promoted
a broad range of sign language PA activities to build
their deaf students’ knowledge of sign structure in lexical signs and fingerspelling forms. However, it is not
clear if this was isolated incident in one school, or if
there is more widespread use of sign language PA than
previously thought. The findings of this study paired
with previous studies that show a strong relationship
between higher levels of sign language proficiency and
fingerspelling ability to reading (Emmorey & Petrich,
2012; Haptonstall-Nykaza & Schick, 2007; HirshPasek, 1987; Hoffmeister, 2000; Padden, 2006; Padden
& Ramsey, 2000) suggest that there is great promise in
promoting sign language PA to build language and literacy skills in deaf education. More studies are needed
to document how sign language PA may be used in
deaf education and to find out its potential benefits for
deaf children.
Funding
This was supported by the Science of Learning
Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2;
NSF grant number SBE-0541953) and the Institute
for Educational Science Post-Doctoral Research
Fellowship.
Conflict of Interest
No conflicts of interest were reported.
Acknowledgments
Conclusions
There is a strong belief among educators, researchers,
and policy makers that spoken language PA is necessary
for children to become successful at reading.
I would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of Jenny Singleton and Amy Lederberg with
their support and feedback they provided for the
development of the manuscript.
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 483
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Appendix A
Teacher Interview Questions
Philosophy Questions
1. As you see it, what is the current philosophy
of the ASL/English bilingual approach at the
school?
2. What are theories in which you base your teaching practices?
Curriculum Questions
1. Do you use a formal curriculum? If not, have you
developed a guiding framework of some sort?
2. What guides your curriculum decisions?
3. What are the learning goals in the curriculum?
4. What age group do you work with?
Instructional Activities
1. What is your approach to building ASL
proficiency?
2. How do you incorporate reading activities?
3. How do you incorporate writing activities?
4. How do you balance the use of ASL and English
literacy in instruction?
5. What do you do to bridge ASL to English text?
6. How do you build ASL and English vocabulary?
7. How do you build metalinguistic awareness of
ASL and English?
a.What is the value of building ASL PA?
b.How do you feel ASL phonology contributes
to written English?
c.How do you build awareness of ASL phonology?
d.How would you characterize initialized signs
and fingerspelled words and signs and their
potential connection to developing English
literacy?
486 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
8. How do you incorporate literacy development
in different activities throughout the school
day? (e.g., play, snacks/meals, center time, art)
9. What materials do you put up in the classroom,
and do you use them with a specific purpose in
mind? (e.g., materials with printed English with
pictures of static forms of ASL fingerspelling
and ASL handshapes)
Peer Interaction
1. How do you promote literacy building through
peer interaction?
2. Do you see any benefits of peer interaction in
building literacy?
Student Abilities
1. What is the range of linguistic and academic
abilities of your students with deaf parents and
with hearing parents?
2. What benefits does an ASL/English bilingual
program provide students? (e.g., language,
social and cognitive development, increased cultural awareness and parent involvement)
Training and Development
1. Where and when did you receive training in
ASL/English bilingual teaching practices?
2. How much do you incorporate your own intuitive practices with your training?
3. If you previously taught with a different
approach to deaf education (e.g., total communication), what were your experiences in changing to the ASL/English bilingual approach?
4. How long did it take you to feel comfortable teaching in the ASL/English bilingual
approach?
5. What training do you feel is important for novice teachers?
Appendix B
Follow-up Response
Activities/Displays that Promote Knowledge of ASL Hand Configurations
Rating of use:
0 = never,
1 = monthly,
2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly,
4 = daily
Instructional strategy
Description
Natural conversation
Signing with students to get them to express ideas
and expand their language
Have students bring in objects or pictures that
begin with the handshape in ASL (e.g., A-HS
for BRUSH)
Teach signs and emphasize how it is formed
0 1 2 3 4
Stories with signs that incorporate one handshape
or a set of handshapes
ASL stories incorporating signs with repetitive
movements
Students view themselves on video and analyze
what they sign
0 1 2 3 4
ASL handshape of
the week
Sign vocabulary
instruction
Handshape stories
Sign rhythm activity
Student self-video
critique
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Comment
(e.g., use by
students,
effectiveness)
Promoting Sign Language Phonological Awareness 487
Appendix
Continued
Instructional strategy
Tracing handshapes
on paper
Poster of ASL
handshapes
ASL dictionary
(made in class)
ASL dictionary
(published book)
ASL dictionary
(computer program)
Other activities
Description
Students trace their handshape on the paper and
use the drawings for activities, such as labeling
objects
Poster in the classroom that highlights the
different handshapes used in ASL signs
ASL dictionary with signs organized by
handshape and made in the classroom
Formal published ASL dictionary with signs
organized by handshape
Computer program, with signs grouped by how
they are formed (e.g., location, handshape)
Rating of use:
0 = never,
1 = monthly,
2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly,
4 = daily
0 1 2 3 4
Comment
(e.g., use by
students,
effectiveness)
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Activities/Displays that Promote Knowledge of the Manual Alphabet
Instructional strategy
Description
Rating of use:
0 = never,
1 = monthly,
2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly,
4 = daily
Direct instruction of
the manual alphabet
Display of manual
alphabet in
classroom
Use fingerspelling in
signing
Use lexicalized signs in
signing
Handshape comparison
chart
Teaching students manual alphabet from A-to-Z
0 1 2 3 4
Poster display of the manual alphabet in the
classroom
0 1 2 3 4
Use of fingerspelling within your ASL use
0 1 2 3 4
Use of fingerspelling that has become sign-like
(e.g., B-U-S, B-E-A-C-H, J-O-B)
Charts that compare signs that use overlapping
handshapes used in ASL signs with the manual
alphabet used in initialized signs (e.g., A-HS in
BRUSH, compared to the A-HS in AUNT)
Discuss handshape used in widely accepted
initialized signs in ASL (e.g., BLUE, GREEN,
KING, FAMILY) and its connection to English
0 1 2 3 4
Instruct initialized sign
vocabulary
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Other activities
0 1 2 3 4
Comment
(e.g., use by
students,
effectiveness)
488 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:4 October 2013
Activities that Promote the Emerging Understanding of English Print
Rating of use:
0 = never,
1 = monthly,
2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly,
4 = daily
Instructional strategy
Description
Group storybook reading
Signing storybooks to your class or
combined class, while pointing to
words in English
Signing storybooks to one or two
students, while pointing to words in
English
Students trace over letters or practice
writing letters
Focus on words & ASL equivalent signs
that use a specific letter of the week
(e.g., cat, cake, couch)
Students sign stories and then you
write them down for the student
0 1 2 3 4
Students write letters or words in their
own journal (in addition to pictures)
0 1 2 3 4
Individualized storybook
reading
Tracing + printing letters
Letter of the week
Writing down the
student’s stories in
ASL
Writing in journals
Comment
(e.g., use by
students,
effectiveness)
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Other activities
0 1 2 3 4
Activities that Promote the Decoding of English
Instructional strategy
Description
Read beginning reader
books
Using easy reader books with highly
repetitive phrases and structures (e.g.,
the boy is walking, the boy is running)
Review the common words in English
that may not be used in ASL, such as
articles and prepositions in English
(e.g., the, a, an, this)
Reading books with students to give them
understanding of the story and then go
through the book to point out specific
structures in English (e.g., “is” needs
to connect with “-ing”)
Connecting signs and pictures with
English print through fingerspelling
Frequent English word
lists
Collaborative guided
reading
Chaining
Rating of use:
0 = never,
1 = monthly,
2 = biweekly,
3 = weekly,
4 = daily
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
0 1 2 3 4
Other activities
0 1 2 3 4
Comment
(e.g., use by
students,
effectiveness)