Using Online Glossing Lessons For Accelerated Instruction In ASL For Preservice Deaf Education Majors

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 6-1-2007

Department

Speech and Hearing Sciences

Abstract

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.

Publication Title

American Annals of the Deaf

Volume

152

Issue

3

First Page

331

Last Page

343

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