Focus-on-form instructional methods promote deaf college students' improvement in English grammar

Focus-on-form English teaching methods are designed to facilitate second-language learners' noticing of target language input, where "noticing" is an acquisitional prerequisite for the comprehension, processing, and eventual integration of new grammatical knowledge. While primarily designed for teaching hearing second-language learners, many focus-on-form methods lend themselves to visual presentation. This article reports the results of classroom research on the visually based implementation of focus-on-form methods with deaf college students learning English. Two of 3 groups of deaf students received focus-on-form instruction during a 10-week remedial grammar course; a third control group received grammatical instruction that did not involve focus-on-form methods. The 2 experimental groups exhibited significantly greater improvement in English grammatical knowledge relative to the control group. These results validate the efficacy of visually based focus-on-form English instruction for deaf students of English and set the stage for the continual search for innovative and effective English teaching methodologies.     

Documenting English syntactic development in face-to-face signed communication

The authors explored the face-to-face English competence of five students who were participating in a larger study of teachers' use of English-based signing. Using case studies, the authors report on the students' development of English-based signing at the beginning and end of their involvement in this 4-year study. Grammatical forms similar in English and American Sign Language (ASL) were initially more readily produced when tested for in English, and showed consistently higher attainment levels across all the students, than grammatical forms that are different in English and ASL. The authors found emerging English forms that could be documented (a) between prompted and imitated utterances and (b) within blocks of test items examining the same grammatical constructions. The authors conclude that teachers' concerted efforts to use English-based signing as a language of instruction enhance deaf students' English acquisition. Such signing helps build a bridge between native sign language and the development of English skills necessary for literacy.     

Implementing a successful writing program in public schools for students who are deaf.

A 2-year project to improve the writing skills of children who are deaf included instruction for teachers in the process approach to teaching writing. The project encompassed 10 public school programs for students who are deaf and included 325 students in Grades 4-10 and 52 teachers. The project included specific training goals for teachers, a self-report procedure for the teachers, and a data-collection and analysis phase to assess short-term effects on students' writing. Teacher self-reports indicated widespread involvement in the project, and pretest and posttest results showed dramatic improvement in students' writing--particularly in grammatical skills. Scoring systems for students' papers are included.     

Semantic and pragmatic factors influencing deaf and hearing students' comprehension of english sentences containing numeral quantifiers

This research contrasted deaf and hearing students' interpretive knowledge of English sentences containing numeral quantifier phrases and indefinite noun phrases. A multiple-interpretation picture task methodology was used to assess 305 participants' judgments of the compatibility of sentence meanings with depicted discourse contexts. Participants' performance was assessed on the basis of hearing level (deaf, hearing) and grade level (middle school, high school, college). The deaf students were predicted to have differential access to specific sentence interpretations in accordance with the relative derivational complexity of the targeted sentence types. Hypotheses based on the pressures of derivational economy on acquisition were largely supported. The results also revealed that the deaf participants tended to overactivate pragmatic processes that yielded principled, though non-target, sentence interpretations. Collectively, the results not only contribute to the understanding of English acquisition under conditions of restricted access to spoken language input, they also suggest that pragmatic factors may play a broad role in influencing, and compromising, deaf students' reading comprehension and written expression.     

第二课堂对聋生心理健康状况的干预研究

聋生的心理健康问题是长期以来受社会关注的重要问题之一,聋校开展的心理健康教育虽取得一定成效,但也存在一些问题。采用为期一年的第二课堂活动的研究结果表明,聋生的心理健康水平较低,较严重的症状表现依次是强迫、人际敏感、偏执;团体干预活动对聋生的心理健康水平的提升有积极的促进作用,但未达到显著水平。聋童的心理健康教育需要长期不懈的坚持。     

应用行动研究法提高英语口头交际能力之探讨

应用行动研究方法，探讨提高中国成年学生英语口头交际水平的途径。研究通过诊断性测试（笔试和面谈），找出中国成年学生英语口头交流困难的原因，即口语语法能力偏差。在英语功能语法和结构语法的理论指导下，使用行动研究法，为受试“量身订做”一套改善和提高其英语口语语法能力的方案，对被试的弱项和问题进行针对性的训练和提高。实验结果证实了研究假设：英语口语语法能力的提高，可以促进英语口头交际水平的提高。     

Using immediate recall to assess language proficiency in deaf students.

We used an immediate recall paradigm to study the effects of list organization and semantic and grammatical features of printed stimuli on working memory capacity in deaf students with differing English language abilities. Thirty lists of five organizational types (random words, semantically related words, semantically paired words, scrambled sentences, and grammatical sentences) were presented to two groups of deaf students who differed in their proficiency in the English language. The students were required to recall the lists in writing. The results indicate that, overall, the students with higher levels of English language proficiency recalled significantly more than those with lower levels. Additionally, semantic and syntactic organization of the lists had different effects on the two groups of students. Semantic pairing aided the low-level group significantly more than the high-level group, whereas the syntactic organization of the grammatical sentences aided the high-level group significantly more. Implications for assessing language ability in deaf students are discussed.     

Student Evaluations as Effective Indicators of Learning Outcomes:Evidence from Japanese University Students in English Language Courses

The term"student learning outcomes"refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilitiesthat students achieve during a course, and is typically assessed based on student evaluations conducted at the end of the semester. Previous studies in this area have investigated the effects of instructional quality and academic demands separately and have been limited primarily to examining findings using student samples fromthe United States. With Japanese college students' perceptions of self-improvementin English language courses as the dependent variable, the present study directly tests the hypothesis that students who perceive instructional quality to be higher, andcourse demands to be greater, also estimate higher levels of self-improvement in English language skills. The analysis provides strong support for this hypothesis.Higher ratings of instruction and academic demands have already beenshown to increase levels of student learning(Greimel-Fuhrmann and Geyer 2003;Nois and Hudson 2006; Mc Fadden and Dart 1992). The present study is the first toprovide direct evidence of the relative importance of student evaluations ofinstructional quality and academic demands as predictors of student learning and thefirst ever to do so with a sample of Japanese college students enrolled in a required English as a foreign language course. Our hypothesis is that Japanese students whoperceive instructional quality to be higher, and course demands to be greater,estimate higher levels of self-improvement in English language skills. Thus we test Japanese students' attitudes toward instructional quality and course demands asindependent variables predicting their perceptions of self-improvement in English language courses. The research focuses on Japanese students' improvement in English language skills because English education in Japan is an arena in which thedebate over limited English proficiency rages on, and because other research suggests reconsideration of English education in light of the demands of the rapidly expanding global era(Amaki 2008).     

Promoting social competence in deaf students: the effect of an intervention program

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of a social skills training program on the social skills and social behaviors of deaf children in a mainstream setting. The study used a pretest/posttest design. The participants consisted of 18 severely and profoundly hearing-impaired children (ages ranged from 9;1 to 13;6) who were enrolled in three elementary schools in the Canary Islands. Results indicated that the intervention succeeded in improving students' social problem-solving skills, especially in making comprehensible the steps implied in the solution of interpersonal problems; the intervention also led to significant improvement of deaf students' assertive behavior as rated by their teachers and by themselves. Significant differences in social or academic integration as judged by companions in a sociometric questionnaire were not found.     

Codeswitching techniques: evidence-based instructional practices for the ASL/English bilingual classroom

The authors present a perspective on emerging bilingual deaf students who are exposed to, learning, and developing two languages--American Sign Language (ASL) and English (spoken English, manually coded English, and English reading and writing). The authors suggest that though deaf children may lack proficiency or fluency in either language during early language-learning development, they still engage in codeswitching activities, in which they go back and forth between signing and English to communicate. The authors then provide a second meaning of codeswitching--as a purpose-driven instructional technique in which the teacher strategically changes from ASL to English print for purposes of vocabulary and reading comprehension. The results of four studies are examined that suggest that certain codeswitching strategies support English vocabulary learning and reading comprehension. These instructional strategies are couched in a five-pronged approach to furthering the development of bilingual education for deaf students.     

Using online glossing lessons for accelerated instruction in ASL for preservice deaf education majors

Teachers of deaf and hard of hearing students must serve as language models for their students. However, preservice deaf education teachers typically have at most only four semesters of American Sign Language (ASL) training. How can their limited ASL instructional time be used to increase their proficiency? Studies involving deaf and hard of hearing students have revealed that glosses (written equivalents of ASL sentences) can serve as "bridges" between ASL and English. The study investigated whether glossing instruction can facilitate hearing students' learning of ASL. A Web site was developed in which ASL glossing rules were explained and glossing exercises provided. Posttest scores showed the experimental group improving from 39% to 71% on ASL grammar knowledge. These findings indicate that online glossing lessons may provide the means to obtain ASL skills more readily, thus preparing deaf education teachers to serve as ASL language models.     

A national perspective on teachers' efficacy beliefs in deaf education

Teachers' sense of efficacy, or the belief that teachers have of their capacity to make an impact on students' performance, is an unexplored construct in deaf education research. This study included data from 296 respondents to examine the relationship of teacher and school characteristics with teachers' sense of efficacy in 80 different deaf education settings in the US. Deaf education teachers reported high overall efficacy beliefs but significantly lower efficacy beliefs in the area of student engagement than in instructional strategies and classroom management. Teachers' years of experience showed a significant relationship with efficacy beliefs, yet it was the teachers' perceived collective efficacy of their educational setting that ultimately predicted teachers' sense of efficacy. These findings lend credence to the need for further examination of school processes that influence teacher beliefs and attitudes in deaf education settings.     

语言焦虑影响高职学生英语应用能力的调查研究

通过对高职学生英语应用能力的问卷调查和测试,在对获取的材料进行研究的基础上发现,语言焦虑对英语应用能力存在着阻力型影响,严重干扰着学生的＂听、说＂。在进一步对语料输入和话语产出环节中阻力型焦虑因素进行原因分析后,提出相应的改善策略,以降低学生＂听、说＂语言焦虑程度。     

The relationships between reading processes and English skills of deaf college students

This research project investigated the relationships between various working memory (WM) recoding processes and English language skills in a sample of 86 prelingually deaf college students from varied educational backgrounds. Part 1 reports the results of a short-term memory (STM) experiment and a Recoding Strategies questionnaire. The STM results suggested that, for most deaf students, neither the speech, sign, or visual codes are as efficient as the speech code of hearing persons for the purpose of maintaining English linguistic information in WM. However, the ability to use speech-based recoding processes was positively correlated with WM capacity, and the use of sign recoding was found to decrease as the ability to make efficient use of a speech recoding strategy increased. In addition, the questionnaire data suggested that neither the speech nor sign recoding systems provide the majority of students with a complete internal representation of English surface structure grammatical information in WM. There was no evidence that the use of sign language in education interfered with the ability to develop a speech recoding strategy, or that knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) negatively influenced the acquisition of English skills. The overall pattern of results suggested that WM processes and recoding strategies may be influencing grammatical processes, and the acquisition of English skills, in distinctive ways.     

Where is it? How deaf adolescents complete fact-based internet search tasks

An exploratory study was designed to describe Internet search behaviors of deaf adolescents who used Internet search engines to complete fact-based search tasks. The study examined search behaviors of deaf high school students such as query formation, query modification, Web site identification, and Web site selection. Consisting of two fact-based search tasks, the study was done in four regional day school programs for the deaf. As students conducted two search tasks, they completed task analyses of the selected Web sites and gave reasons for their selections. The research also identified the processes used by deaf students to compensate for limited English reading abilities while navigating search engines results that were typically written well above deaf students' average reading level. The results demonstrated that deaf adolescents were unable to initiate, conduct, analyze, or validate effective Internet searches in response to fact-based search tasks.     

Interactive video for bilingual ASL/English instruction of deaf children

Advances in technology make possible certain instructional approaches that heretofore were difficult to implement. One of these advances is the use of computers to present video instructional materials for student-directed learning. In the experimental program described here, we use a bilingual approach to teach aspects of English to deaf children who are fluent in ASL. The goal of this project is to explore ways that ASL and English can be used cooperatively to help deaf students learn more about English.     

Deaf college students' perspectives on literacy portfolios

The study examined how literacy portfolios were used as tools in a college developmental English class in which deaf students assessed their reading comprehension as well as their writing processes and products. The students' reading and writing assignments involved reflective thinking and were grounded in authentic tasks. Immediate feedback was provided. The study was multidimensional, longitudinal, and ongoing. A variety of field research techniques were used to ascertain the uses and influences of portfolios in regard to students' reading, writing, and reflective thinking. The results support the idea that the use of literacy portfolios can positively influence students who are deaf when they assess their reading and writing abilities.     

浅谈电大英语教学研究及教师科研能力的培养

科研是提高教学质量、学生学习效果、教师自身教学能力和素质的重要手段。研究电大英语教育的教学特点、规律及过程，保证教学质量是每一个电大英语教师应该进行科研工作。英语教师应依靠外部环境和自身的努力培养自己的科研能力。     

关于“聋哑英语”的调查与思考

“聋哑英语”是大学英语学习中普通存在的一个问题。学生的学习目的和方法，学生所掌握的语言知识和文化背景知识、学生所处的语言环境，学生的情感因素等等，都是可能导致“聋哑英语”的重要因素。英语教育工作者应采取措施，彻底改变“聋哑英语”现象。