Allie DeMasi Mr.

Borrero English 1101 November 27, 2012

Literacy Ethnography

Imagine living life just seeing lips move but not hearing anything or being able to be involved in the conversation. For some it could be discouraging, but for others they take pride in being deaf. There are many ways to work around not being able to use your sense of hearing. Whether its using sign language or reading lips, deaf people still make an effort to learn about literature and enjoy literacy. Throughout this essay I will illuminate how deaf people learn through literacy and how they go through the learning process and what struggles they may face. Deafness, the lacking of hearing, is not a genetic disorder; its usually caused by illness or other reasons. (Merriam-Webster) With this being said a lot of times deaf children grow up in homes with hearing parents. This leads them to a lack in education and sets them off to a bad start with the basic learning that takes place during their first year. (Briggle) Because of that, parents decide to create their own way to sign with their children and that is how they are introduced to the improper ways of communication. Later on going to school it becomes difficult to pick up on the new material that they are not used to. It sometimes causes a setback because they must learn all over. For other

children, sometimes going to school is their first experience learning sign language at all. (Briggle) As these students progress their way through school and they are being educated on their ways to learn literacy and other subjects, they are at a much different level than the hearing. Usually their sign vocabulary is extensive by the fifth grade but not so much with their written vocabulary. (Brueggemann) For deaf students, their vocabulary tends to be restricted and it is a challenge to relate signs to actual words. Its a struggle to be able to link together the two and relate them to each other to understand them better. For example: learning the sign bird but linking it to the word duck. (Penn State) That takes further understanding for the future when they must write that down and have it make sense. Eventually with progress, a deaf students writing will look like that of a hearing person learning a second language. After interviewing two adults who have been deaf for years I got more insight on the education of deaf children. At the age of 48 years old and having graduated college, Charles was at a 9th grade level of writing. He said it was one of his biggest struggles. After becoming deaf at the age of 3 from a high fever caused by meningitis, he was sent to a residential deaf school. These are schools where parents send their kids away to a program where they can get the correct education for deaf students. There he learned history, math, science, and just writing. He said there was no reading involved in their curriculum. With only reading lips a little bit, Charles requires an interpreter at all times. (Charles) Now for Joe, who is 45 and had completed a mainstream high school and graduated college, he says his biggest struggle was making connections with words. He

says that deaf people dont associate the words, they just see lips flapping. (Joe) When he was in his mainstream high school, he learned all the subjects there were to offer and some of his teachers signed. He is capable of reading lips well, but usually communicates through writing with the hearing. To this day, he communicates with his parents through writing. (Joe) After interviewing two deaf people and speaking with and observing the American Sign Language class, I learned that sign language actually has grammar! In fact, it is actually much more challenging than English grammar. With ASL grammar you are not translating. You are more or less using the object subject verb concept. Where you put only those things into the sentence to communicate. For example the hearing would say, I like your necklace but the deaf would sign Me like your necklace. (Jennifer) With learning all this sign language you would think that they could use some type of pneumonic devices to remember it all. Instead they are actually not allowed to do that. They say that it will just cause confusion and they do not want you using any other language to remember sign language because it is its own language. (Ana) With ASL being its own language, deaf students always learn signs first and then English as a second language. In mainstream schools thats not always the case because they are in a class with the hearing as well. Deaf educators seem like they have it all figured out. There are a lot of deaf students that graduate at a much higher level than expected. From the signing to writing, they make a lot of progress and work very hard to learn literacy. Its not always their favorite subject but for good reason they take pride in being able to do so. With all the

struggles involved with being deaf, I think it makes them stronger people in the long run learning to read and write. I also respect the language of American Sign Language a lot more after experiencing some of it and learning what it takes to be literate with this disorder.

Works Cited
Ana. Interview. 9 November 2012. Briggle, Sandra. Language and Literacy Development in Children Who Are Deaf or Hearing Impaired. 31 October 2012 <http://www.readingrockets.org/article/37794/>. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Literacy and Dead People. Ed. Gallaudet University Press. Washington DC, n.d. Charles. Interview. 9 November 2012. Jennifer. Interview. 9 November 2012. Joe. Interview. 9 November 2012. Kluwin, David A Stewart and Thomas N. Teaching Deaf and Hrad of Hearing Students. Boston: Ally & Bacon, n.d. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Merriam-Webster. 26 November 2012 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/deaf>. Penn State. Sign Language Users See Signs and Read Words Simultaneously . 22 March 2011. 6 November 2012 <http://www.disabledworld.com/disability/types/hearing/communication/simultaneously.php>. Spencer, Marc Marschark and Patricia E. Deaf Studies, Language, and Education. New York: Oxford University Press, n.d.