Using the Known to Teach the Unknown

Using the Known to Teach the Unknown Ellen Schneiderrrvan η often mentioned principle of good teaching is to use what a student knows to teach what is unknown. One of the major goals of aU educational programs for deaf students is to develop English language skills. If English competence is the goal, what is the known information that a deaf student can bring to the English language classroom? For many deaf students, contact with other deaf peers and teachers brings about language competence which is rich in its communicative abüity. Students can share personal experiences that are rich with description, feeling and detañ. Students can relate experiences from the past, comment on the present and project about the future. AU of this rich communication occurs in American Sign Language, or a more ASL-like variety of Pidgin Signed English. The known information that a deaf student can bring to the English language classroom is this very functional language through which the student can express knowledge, ideas and thoughts most freely. A language program was developed for junior and senior high school deaf students which attempted to explore the question, Can competence in American Sign Language be used to teach English language skñls? The program was developed out of the teachers' sense of frustration in dealing with students who were successful sign language communicators, but felt like language faüures, and had very low levels of competence in English writing tasks. The first goal of the program was to facilitate the students' awareness of themselves as competent communicators and language users. Tacit linguistic knowledge of ASL, a functional part of the students' current communicative competence , was drawn out through conceptual activities. Students acted out and discussed the mechanisms which they use in sign to indicate information such as tenses, pronouns, or adverbs of manner. The goal of the English instruction portion of the program was to utilize this tacit linguistic knowledge as a mechanism for teaching English language constructions. Students were encouraged to explore how they use their face and body to indicate a great deal of information in ASL. Since ASL is a language developed for a visual modality, there is no requirement that information be conveyed in a linear fashion. More than one piece of information is conveyed simultaneously. Both the manual and nonmanual information contribute linguisticauy to the fuU meaning of the sentence. Students first need to identify all of the pieces that contribute to the total meaning of their communication. They can then be encouraged to lay it out, step by step, into the linear construction necessary for the English language. The foUowing activity descriptions ülustrate the process. Students were required to come to class with a short description of an experience. The students described this experience to their classmates. The description was videotaped. The teacher played back the videotape, idea by idea. EHctj Schneiderman is Assistant Professor at California State University , Northridge. A.A.D. I March 1986 EXAMPLE 1 Student signs: DrUVE-CARELESSLY-FOR-A-LONG-TTME Teacher asks: "What did she say?" Typical student response: "DRIVE" Teacher asks: "Is that aU? How far was she going? How do you know? Who was driving? What was she driving? A boat ... a car ... a truck? How do you know? Was she looking closely and paying attention? How do you know?" The teacher writes related words on the blackboard as they come up. For example: drive, far, long time, Debbie, car, day dreaming. The class then works together to put aU of these ideas into an English construction such as: "Debbie was driving and driving for a long time. She was daydreaming." The students' initial response to the question, "What did she say?" was the simple response "DRIVE." This is understandable since DRIVE is the only manual sign in that particular utterance. The rest of the information is conveyed nonmanua üy through the use of the signer's body and face. These types of utterances are ideal for exploring the linguistic use of nonmanual information in ASL, and for clarifying their equivalents in English. EXAMPLE 2 Student signs: BOY(right) GIRL(left) HITiright to left) CRY(left) LAUGH(right) Teacher asks: "What did she say?" Typical...