Sign bilingual deaf children's approaches to writing: individual strategies for bridging the gap between BSL and written English

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores ways in which individual bilingual deaf children approach the task of writing in English in response to a British Sign Language (BSL) source. Individual case studies are presented of deaf children's approach to a translation task. An analysis is made of the ways in which they prepare for writing and of their final written version of specific BSL phrases which present particular translation problems. The diverse ways in which the children approach the task and move between the two languages is reported, and it is found that the children mediate between the two languages using either spoken English or a written gloss of the BSL depending on their individual spoken and sign language abilities. The findings point to a need to develop literacy teaching approaches which respond to individual sign bilingual language profiles. In particular, the roles of BSL and of manually coded English need to be clarified so that their combined or separate use maximizes deaf children's literacy lear...