Qualitative Reasoning in Education of Deaf Students: Scientific Education and Acquisition of Portuguese as a Second Language

Can we effectively integrate Deaf students into our post-secondary classes before recognizing and listening to them? Studies indicate that Deaf students continue to struggle, be silenced, and experience isolation when mainstreamed. Deaf students, or second-language students, inevitably develop new identities once included; however, we cannot justly ask that they abandon their own cultural identities, nor ignore that they have their own cultural and individual identities. This paper draws on the literary theorist Homi Bhabha, specifically his notion of the “third space.” I propose that as educators we enter and create this space for our students and begin listening to them using a “third ear” so as to enable the surfacing of their cultural identities in hopes of countering their struggles, perpetual silencing, and isolation. The essay focuses largely on the implementation of the third ear and third space by programs found in the humanities.

Download Full-text

Maximizing content learning for deaf students and English as a second language students (abstract only)

Proceedings of the 43rd ACM technical symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE '12 ◽

10.1145/2157136.2157380 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Raja S. Kushalnagar ◽

Joeseph S. Stanislow

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Deaf Students ◽

Content Learning ◽

Language Students

Download Full-text

WRITTEN PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE AS SECOND LANGUAGE

Diacrítica ◽

10.21814/diacritica.440 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 19

Author(s):

Izabelly C. Dos Santos Brayner ◽

Antonio H. Coutelo de Moraes ◽

Wanilda Maria Alves Cavalcanti

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Theoretical Foundation ◽

Deaf People ◽

Linguistic Minority ◽

Deaf Students ◽

Educational Approach ◽

Textual Production ◽

Catholic University ◽

Qualitative Descriptive ◽

Access To Knowledge

Writing plays a fundamental role in active participation in society, since it facilitates access to knowledge. In the case of the deaf people involved in our research, this modality represents a second language, placing them in a bilingual perspective - an educational approach that guides professionals in the education of this linguistic minority. The objective of this research was to analyze the written productions of the deaf students of the Group of Studies and Practices of Language for the Deaf, Catholic University of Pernambuco, aiming at a better understanding of the obstacles to textual production learning in L2. Authors such as Brochado (2003), Lacerda (1998), Pereira and Karnopp (2012), Quadros (2004), among others, will be brought into the theoretical foundation, which will serve as a basis for discussions. The methodology adopted was qualitative descriptive. The data indicated the subjects are in stages I and II of the interlanguage, no subjects were identified in stage III. We conclude that investment is still necessary in researches that seek strategies to strengthen L2 writing by deaf people, as well as the acquisition of knowledge available mostly in written Portuguese language in several educational resources.

Download Full-text

Exploring the Potential Impact of Sentence-Level Comprehension and Sentence-Level Fluency on Deaf Students' Passage Comprehension

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2020_jslhr-19-00205 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 63 (7) ◽

pp. 2281-2292

Author(s):

Ying Zhao ◽

Xinchun Wu ◽

Hongjun Chen ◽

Peng Sun ◽

Ruibo Xie ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Independent Predictor ◽

Vocabulary Knowledge ◽

Group Differences ◽

Regression Analyses ◽

Deaf Students ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Sentence Level ◽

Mediating Mechanisms ◽

Potential Impact ◽

The Relationship

Purpose This exploratory study aimed to investigate the potential impact of sentence-level comprehension and sentence-level fluency on passage comprehension of deaf students in elementary school. Method A total of 159 deaf students, 65 students ( M age = 13.46 years) in Grades 3 and 4 and 94 students ( M age = 14.95 years) in Grades 5 and 6, were assessed for nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, sentence-level comprehension, sentence-level fluency, and passage comprehension. Group differences were examined using t tests, whereas the predictive and mediating mechanisms were examined using regression modeling. Results The regression analyses showed that the effect of sentence-level comprehension on passage comprehension was not significant, whereas sentence-level fluency was an independent predictor in Grades 3–4. Sentence-level comprehension and fluency contributed significant variance to passage comprehension in Grades 5–6. Sentence-level fluency fully mediated the influence of sentence-level comprehension on passage comprehension in Grades 3–4, playing a partial mediating role in Grades 5–6. Conclusions The relative contributions of sentence-level comprehension and fluency to deaf students' passage comprehension varied, and sentence-level fluency mediated the relationship between sentence-level comprehension and passage comprehension.

Download Full-text

Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2019_jslhr-h-19-0074 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 62 (12) ◽

pp. 4534-4543

Author(s):

Wei Hu ◽

Sha Tao ◽

Mingshuang Li ◽

Chang Liu

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Native Language ◽

Vowel Identification ◽

Vowel Perception ◽

Perceptual Distance ◽

Vowel Space ◽

English Vowels ◽

Chinese Counterpart ◽

Vowel Categories

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

Download Full-text