Language Dominance in Deaf Students

An examination of the effects of a dominant language in unbalanced bilingual deaf students. The hypothesis was that when asked to retell a story, signing deaf subjects will tend to retell the story in their dominant language. Stories were presented in Signed English (SE) and American Sign Language (ASL) to 36 profoundly deaf subjects (mean age, 16;9). Results showed that ASL dominant bilinguals translated English stories to ASL in retelling, but English dominant bilinguals also preferred to retell English stories in ASL. This evidence is a partial investigation of the implications of a bilingual education program that uses English and ASL with signing deaf students.