Syntactic Structures in the Language of Deaf Children (review)

Reviews the materials in the books the first time; even though the child was not proficient in reading without the illustrated signs. This is a rewarding experience for parent and child and establishes a basis for good learning relationships. Third, the teachers: The teachers were surprised at how well the children did with the books since the children have so little language. They felt the pictures provide opportunities for language stimulation, and they enjoyed the roleplaying of basic concepts presented in the books. This helped to check the comprehension of the children. Some suggestions made by the teachers were: a. One line of print per double page. b. Shorter sentences with more consistency in structure and vocabulary. c. Word endings to the right of the sign illustration . d. Consistency in the location of both the print and the pictures on the page. e. More relevant pictures. All three of these groups agreed that they liked the size of the books but they suggested nonglossy paper to reduce glare. All complimented the illustrations. The staples holding the pages in the books are not adequate if the children are permitted to read the books at random . Sewing them together might be better. I can also speak for a fourth group and say that these books are great to keep at grandma's house. Jane P. Grisham, President International Association of the Deaf, Inc. 814 Thayer Avenue Silver Spring, Md. 20910 Syntactic Structures in the Language of Deaf Children , Stephen P. Quigley, Ronnie B. Wilbur, Desmond J. Power, Dale S. Montanelli, and Marjorie W.Steinkamp, 234 pp., no price given, Final report, project #232175, grant #OEG-0-232175-4370(607), U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, National Institute of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Institute for Child Behavior and Development, February 28, 1976. This is a report of the theoretical formulations , procedures, major findings, and conclusions of a long-term research project on the syntactic structure of the language of deaf children and youth. The study involved 450 prelingually deaf students aged 10-18 in 16 day and residential programs in nine geographical regions and 60 hearing children in the third through fifth grades. Chomsky's theory of transformational generative grammar furnished the main basis of the theoretical framework of the project. The report includes summaries of the principles of such theories and studies of language acquisition by both hearing and deaf children. Four major questions were posed: 1. What is the order of difficulty of various syntactic structures for deaf children; is it similar to the order of difficulty for hearing children; and is it predictable from transformational generative grammar? 2. How well established are the syntactic rules of Standard English in the language of deaf children at age levels from 10 through 18 years? 3. Are there developmental stages for these rules in deaf children, and, if so, how similar are they to developmental stages for hearing children? 4. Do deaf persons acquire the same syntactic rules as hearing persons, but at a retarded rate; or do they acquire some rules that never operate in the grammar of hearing persons? 5. How does deaf children's understanding of various syntactic structures compare to the occurrence of those structures in their reading materials? Aside from the creation of a test of syntax for use with hearing-impaired subjects, perhaps the most interesting results of this study were the findings that (a) although deaf and hearing children were similar in their development of structures, the deaf were behind in the rate of development and exhibited rule-generated structures that did not appear in the language of hearing subjects; and (b) most of even the oldest deaf students failed to understand structures that appear in primers and first-grade texts used by deaf students. In relation to the question of how the information gained from this language study could be used, the report also touches on a study of the influence of early language and communication environments on the development of language in deaf children. This report will be of great interest to all those engaged in teaching language to deaf children, in the production of materials for use with...