"chaining" and Other Links Making Connections between American Sign Language and English in Two Types of School Settings

Can skill in a language in a visual modality such as American Sign Language (ASL) contribute to the development of literacy in a spoken language such as English? Are there ways that signing can be used to interact with printed text that helps deaf children make connections to print and consequently, learn to read? What specific practices might users of signed languages engage in to promote an environment for reading development in young deaf children? These are questions very much in the minds of educators, parents, and deaf people themselves. The development of English literacy has been a source of great concern to those with an interest in the education of deaf children. The importance of deaf children learning to at least read and write English in order to participate in the social and economic life of the United States is undisputed. But it is also well accepted that, for whatever reason, a large number of deaf children do not achieve a very high level of reading fluency. The historical focus of ideas about how best to foster the learning of English by deaf children has led to several predominant approaches in classrooms. One focus has been on learning English through speech input via the child's residual hearing or lipreading ability exclusively. Another has been on learning English via visible representations of English in sign, or in other words, creating sign equivalents of English words and, in theory, "signing English". A third theory has been that deaf children can learn English best by reading and writing it. With the primary focus on English input in whatever form above all else, the classrooms of deaf children have been places largely uninformed by knowledge about ASL and the cultural practices of its users. In recent years, there has been much public discussion of how ASL can be "used" to teach English and these ideas have found their way into some classrooms. Although there are a growing number of teachers who are themselves deaf and native users of ASL and teachers who hear but are fluent in ASL, little is known about the specific contexts and types of interactions of their use of ASL in their classrooms. Since a primary goal of schooling for deaf children is the learning of English and the development of reading and writing ability, the juncture between ASL and English in signing deaf children is of particular interest to educators. One reason for the interest in how ASL and English interact is the evidence of good English reading and writing skills among deaf children of ASL signing deaf parents (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000; Geers & Schick, 1988; Mayberry, 1989; Padden, 2000). The frequency of the success that deaf children of deaf families have in learning to read and write English suggests the probability that deaf families where ASL is the primary language must be doing something that provides productive access or experience with English text that enables their deaf children to learn to read and write English well. Regardless of whether this thesis is accepted, there is widespread experimentation with creating specific kinds of interaction between English and forms of sign behavior in classrooms for deaf children. In the past, examples of such experimentation include the use of the "Rochester method" (the exclusive use of fingerspelling without signing) and the heavy use of initialized signing (as in SEE I and SEE II, which impose signs on English syntax and invent "new" signs by using a handshape from the manual