Holistic Judgement of Texts by Deaf and ESL Students

We tested whether readers without special training could distinguish (as some have claimed) texts written by deaf signers from texts written by deaf non-signers and by hearing students of English as a second language. Thirty audiologists, speech pathologists, educators of the deaf, and language teachers were asked to sort sixty compositions by students from these groups. They could not do so correctly but tended to attribute the lower quality texts to deaf signers. The findings reveal that at the holistic level texts by these three groups of writers evoke similar judgements, also that readers systematically underestimate the writing of deaf signers. It is important to realize that the relationship between written English abilities and language background is not a simple one. Holistic judgements may be more important than discrete analyses for telling us how well writers communicate in the main.