Simultaneous Communication in the Classroom: What Do Deaf Children Learn?

Recent researchers have investigated the nature of the simultaneous communication used by teachers of the deaf and by deaf children. One assumption behind the use of signed codes for English (i.e. Manual English) is that deaf students will recognize the signed-and-spoken communication as English and learn to speak, sign, and write English. This paper examines whether deaf students’ written English reflects their teachers’ use of English sign markers in simultaneous communication. The study required seven high school deaf students to write stories that had been presented to them in simultaneous communication. The students’ output and the teachers’ input were not identical but differed in ways consistent with principles familiar from studies of imitation in children and from semantic memory research.