Using the known to teach the unknown.

Abstract

I· often mentioned principle of good teaching is to use what a student knows to teach what is unknown. One of the major goals of aU educational programs for deaf students is to develop English language skills. If English competence is the goal, what is the known information that a deaf student can bring to the English language classroom? For many deaf students, contact with other deaf peers and teachers brings about language competence which is rich in its communicative abA1⁄4ity. Students can share personal experiences that are rich with description, feeling and detaA±. Students can relate experiences from the past, comment on the present and project about the future. AU of this rich communication occurs in American Sign Language, or a more ASL-like variety of Pidgin Signed English. The known information that a deaf student can bring to the English language classroom is this very functional language through which the student can express knowledge, ideas and thoughts most freely. A language program was developed for junior and senior high school deaf students which attempted to explore the question, Can competence in American Sign Language be used to teach English language skA±ls? The program was developed out of the teachers' sense of frustration in dealing with students who were successful sign language communicators, but felt like language faA1⁄4ures, and had very low levels of competence in English writing tasks. The first goal of the program was to facilitate the students' awareness of themselves as competent communicators and language users. Tacit linguistic knowledge of ASL, a functional part of the students' current communicative competence, was drawn out through conceptual activities. Students acted out and discussed the mechanisms which they use in sign to indicate information such as tenses, pronouns, or adverbs of manner. The goal of the English instruction portion of the program was to utilize this tacit linguistic knowledge as a mechanism for teaching English language constructions.