The effects on metalinguisticawareness of an experimental bilingual program for deaf children

Abstract

This article reports on an investigation of the effects of an experimental bilingual ASL/English syllabus on metalinguistic awareness for young deaf children. A special curriculum was created, centering on the telling of stories first in ASL only, and later in both ASL and English. The purpose was to improve metalinguistic awareness as represented by an ability to distinguish between the two sign language varieties of ASL and signed English. The curriculum was piloted 2 to 5 hours a week for 14 months with a group of kindergarten children at a residential school for the deaf. Each subject was matched with a control child at another school where the experimental program was not taught. The children were given pre- and posttests for metalinguistic ability. Results indicated that the exposure to the syllabus increased metalinguistic skills significantly for the experimental group, but that the control group experienced no such increase.