Bilingual/Bicultural Deaf Education: An Overview

Methods and approaches used to foster English language acquisition in deaf students have a long history of change. The recent use of manually coded English (MCE) systems has not produced desired results. Current research on American Sign Language (ASL) has proved it to be a genuine language with its own systems for making words and sentences. The acceptance of ASL has led to increased demands that deaf students be allowed to acquire ASL as a first language and English as a second language. Proposed methods for teaching English as a second language have been drawn from models of second language acquisition in hearing speakers. Because language and culture are closely related, these proposed bilingual ASL/English models include a cultural as well as a linguistic component. Several proposed models and related research are here examined and a pilot program for bilingual/ bicultural teaching is suggested.