Steven's post teaching English W/O SEE

[taylorcamel]

Teaching kids English without using SEE, Part 1.

Someone suggested I opine about this. I'm just crazy enough to think
I can do justice to the subject in an email so here goes.

First of all, I want to say right up front that it IS possible to
teach Deaf kinds English without using SEE. Because that's probably
the #1 question for a lot of you. I have heard a lot of arguments
that you can't do it without SEE. Well. Um. Baloney. In the first
place, SEE prolongs the process by making your child learn whole new
signs for words he already knows. Secondly, ASL is a language and SEE
is not. SEE is merely a manual representation of English, a language
your child does NOT know yet. If you realize this and acknowledge
that not only are ASL and English different languages but they are
also the best forms of communication for their methodology as
developed by the people who actually use them then you are ahead of
the game. IE: English is best for vocal and written communication.
ASL is best for manual communication. If you accept this right up
front, then you can approach it as helping your child learn a second
language without discarding the first, instead of suddenly
saying "oops, I need to teach my child SEE, therefore I have to
discard ASL." This just confuses the child. (I can expand on this
another time. That's not the point of this post.)

So. How? There are two important things you can do to prepare. (I am
assuming you are doing this at the "usual age" meaning approximately
4 or 5.)

Key #1. Have a largish working vocabulary in ASL. It will be useful
later on. The bigger the better, but don't force the issue, of course.

Key #2. Have your child already familiar with the relationship
between fingerspelled words and signs. Example: T-R-E-E is the same
as TREE. C-H-A-I-R is the same as CHAIR. The concept is what we are
after here. You want your child to already have a visual
understanding that T-R-E-E and TREE are both indicative of a tree.

Would Be Nice: Maybe have them at least familiar with the letter
shapes via bath toys or whatever. (See below for what we did with our
daughter with those.)

Let me say up front that you will be doing a lot of fingerspelling at
first. This is the deaf version of sounding out words phonetically,
by the way. And the fingerspelling will act as a link between written
English and ASL. Also let me state that nobody is going to be
worrying about proper grammar when the child is 5 years old.(Another
strike against SEE.) In fact, I don't really remember my teachers
getting all angsty about grammar until about second or third grade. I
had already been reading for about three or four years by then. I
believe I learned to read at around 4.

The first and most important thing you want to do with your child
when starting to teach them English is you want to teach them the
relationships between those lines on paper and his fingerspelling.
(This is the Deaf version of what hearing children do when their
teacher teaches them that "'a' sounds like _this_.")

Once they have that concept firmly grasped - and I mean firmly. One
day of work isn't going to do it. You have to do it both ways:
reading and writing. Yes, let's not forget the writing part. (You
would be surprised how many Deaf can read fairly well, but their
writing skills are atrocious. Partly because they didn't practice
enough and partly because they never understood that ASL and English
are separate languages therefore they have separate grammars, etc.
But we won't worry about that for a little kid. Moving on.)

What I suggest is you get those nice, widely spaced lined papers that
you no doubt remember from grade school. Get the ones that have a few
letters already printed on the page if possible. Explain to them that
the written 'A' corresponds to the fingerspelled 'A.' Explain to them
that the written 'a' also corresponds to the fingerspelled 'A.'
Explain to them that one is a big 'A' and the other is a small 'a'
but they both mean fingerspelled-A. (Keep it simple. Say something
like "this is a big 'A'" "This is a small 'a'. Something like that.)
Show them how to draw the letter. "Draw" is probably the right word
at this point even though you'll say "write." They're not yet
writing, they're just drawing lines the way Mommy/Daddy says to.

After they do it, ask them what that is. They should fingerspell "A."
If they don't, prompt them. Once they have that down, then you can
say "write an 'A'" and they should be able to do it. Once they have
all the letters of the alphabet down, both big and small, you're
ready to move on. You HAVE to show them both big and small and
reinforce that both sizes still mean the same thing in fingerspelling
otherwise they'll be majorly confused once they see caps and no caps
in a book.

Speed is NOT of the essence here. Understanding is. It'll probably be
a boring few months to you but you want to make sure your child has
this down backwards and forwards. Flash cards are a good idea. If you
do this, be sure to vary the order of the letters. :) Don't get your
child too used to thinking that B is right after A, for example.

What we did with our daughter was we got those sturdy foam-ish
letters that were, oh, about three inches high and when she would
play with them in the bath or wherever, we'd ask "what's that?" and
she could tell us what they were fairly early so we got her used to
at least seeing the shapes. We're noticing that it's really helping
now that she's in Kindergarten and starting to formally learn how to
read. But this is also the reason why I think the writing part is
important. She knew what the letters looked like, etc., but until she
started writing I don't think she fully grasped the concept. But now
that she has, she's starting to actually read instead of just
recognize the shapes.

NOTE: You judge how ready your child is for the above depending on
age, mental development, motor development, etc. A 2-3 year old kid
can recognize the shapes of letters but a 4-5 year old kid is likely
more able to understand the concept and physically be able to write
the letters.

Okay, this wasn't supposed to be "just" part 1, but this went longer
than I expected and it's 12:30 and I'm tired. I'll continue tomorrow.

SKS

(Caveat: Even though a lot of this is from my own experience in
assistant teaching a ESL (English as Second Language) class at UVSC,
I am not a teacher.)

[taylorcamel]

Teaching kids English without SEE - Part 2.

Technical notes: if I write something like this - "B-O-O-K" - that signifies fingerspelling. If I write something like this - "BOOK" - that signifies signing. If it's this - "Book" then it's just someone talking. If I write something like this - "B-o-o-k" - then it's someone writing. All verbal communication - "What's this?" - is generally assumed to be in sign language. I won't use ASL gloss unless I want to make a point. (ASL gloss is basically a written form of the sentence in ASL in a strict sign by sign order.)

Okay, in part 1 we got up to the point where the child is understanding the correlation between fingerspelling and letters on the page. Now, we want to add in the signs.

The exact method can vary, but roughly what you want to be able to do is along these lines:

Parent: (holding card/book/whatever and pointing at word *Cat* and fingerspelling) C-A-T

Child: (copying fingerspelling) C-A-T.

Parent: How do you sign C-A-T?

Child: CAT.

Parent: Good! (etc.)

That teaches the child the connection. Now to see if the child can fingerspell the word on the page without prompting and sign it with minimal prompting:

Parent: (holding same card) What's this?

Child: (fingerspelling on own) C-A-T.

Parent: How do you sign that?

Child: CAT.

Parent: Good! (etc.)

Once the child gets the idea that the three (word on page, fingerspelled word, signed word) all mean the same concept, you can see if they can make the connection without any prompting. As such:

Parent: (holding same card/etc.) What's this?

Child: CAT.

Of course, this is rather simplified and a bit idealized, but you can see what the end goal is.

Then of course you want to go "backwards" and do something along these lines:

Parent: (holding up picture of cat) What's this?

Child: either CAT or C-A-T. (if they fingerspell, accept that - we want to encourage rather than discourage fingerspelling but do follow up by asking what the sign is.)

(If child signed CAT then Parent: How do you spell that?

Child: C-A-T - otherwise skip because they already spelled it and then signed it as a follow up)

Parent: how do you write CAT? (You will have to help a lot at first, including promptings of C-A-T.)

Child: C-a-t. (This also has the added benefit of double-imprinting the proper spelling in their memory.)

Parent: Good!

Eventually the goal would be for the child to write the word on their own without prompting.
Don't expect any of this to be quick. It may take a while for the brain to flip that switch where the child suddenly says "Oh! Mommy wants me to write the word." or "Oh! Mommy wants me to sign the word on the paper."

Here is where the importance of having as large a vocabulary as possible comes in handy. Just keep working on it until you are beyond 100% sure that not only does your child have an extensive vocabulary but that they understand the relationship between the three different versions of the word AND the concept of the word.

The next step is to show them how written words form longer concepts (ie, sentences) the same way that signed words together form larger concepts (again, sentences). There are several ways this can be done. This is merely one suggested way.

Example sentence: See Sue Walk.

Parent: (one word at at time) What's this?

Child: SEE S-U-E WALK (Note: this is not a child smoothly signing the sentence in word order. This is the child signing individual words in the order it's presented on the page.) (Technical note: Feel free to either make up a sign name for Sue or fingerspell it but be clear to the child that it's a person's name.)

Parent: Who do we see?

Child: Sue.

Parent: What's Sue doing?

Child: Walking.

Parent: What do you see?

Child: Sue walking.

At first the child will need quite a bit of prompting to get the correct answers to the H5W questions. (H5W is my shorthand for How, Who, What, Where, Why, Where) I believe this is very important because one place where Deaf tend to have problems reading is in comprehension of what the sentence means. This helps them look for the main idea of the sentence.

Example sentence: Jane was hurt. (Again, option of making up a name sign for Jane or fingerspelling it, but do still be clear to child that this is a person's name.)

Parent: What's this? (each word in turn)

Child: J-A-N-E W-A-S HURT.

Parent: J-A-N-E HURT FINISH.

Child: J-A-N-E HURT FINISH. (Child is starting to learn how to translate. Also learning that "was" means past tense just like FINISH means past tense.)

Parent: Who was hurt? (WHO HURT FINISH?)

Child: Jane. or Jane hurt.

Parent: What happened to Jane?

Child: She was hurt. (SHE HURT FINISH)

Parent: When was Jane hurt? (this tends to be a difficult one.)

Child: (usually) Huh?

Parent: Did Jane get hurt now?

Child: No. (Prompting may be needed.)

Parent: Will Jane be hurt later?

Child: No.

Parent: Did Jane get hurt before now?

Child: Yes.

You start to see the idea of how more prompting is needed for "when" since ASL renditions of time are not the same as English. Also you can see other examples of how to use H5W questions.

Another example sentence: Jane is sad.

Parent: what's this? (each word in turn)

Child: J-A-N-E I-S SAD. ("Is" is one of those English words that aren't often used in ASL. That's alright. This gives another opportunity for English to ASL translation.)

Parent: J-A-N-E IX SAD TRUE. (IX is ASL gloss for index finger pointing. So you are basically saying the person's name, pointing to some place in space to designate that area as representing Jane, then continuing. As in "J-A-N-E point-to-left SAD TRUE")

Child: (copies parent)

Parent: Who is sad?

Child: Jane.

Parent: How does Jane feel? (This helps reinforce the idea that "sad" is a feeling.)

Child: Sad.

Parent: Is Jane happy?

Child: No.

etc.

Keep asking questions like these. Remember that a lot of these should just be review as far as the H5W questions and different/same questions and other such questions are concerned. The only new thing should be the introduction of reading and writing.

What you can do for the reverse is similar to the procedure for single words. When you give the ASL sentence, be sure the child understands the sentence. At that point it is an exercise in translation and this will probably be the part of the exercise that has the potential to be the most frustrating. But, frankly, it needs to be done.

Example sentence: (for simplicity I'll use one we've already seen) J-A-N-E IX SAD TRUE.

Parent and Child discuss to be sure Child understands.

Parent: How do you write that?

Child J-A-N-E I-S SAD

Parent: Write it down.

Child: Jane is sad.

Parent: Good! (etc)

To break up the routine of questions and answers, once you have a nice foundation in place, you can simply do what my mother did with me. My mother got those peel-n-stick squares of mirror tiles and stuck them on the wall in the playroom in our house. She had a large area mirrored but you can make do with just a small area that allows you and the child to see each other as the child sits on your lap. So, while the child is sitting on your lap, hold the book on the child's lap and use your finger to point to the words. Have the child sign the words to you. Read the book through once like that. Then go back to the beginning and talk a little bit about what is going on - not to the same extent as above, but do discuss it. (My wife will write another post talking about that.) If the child can't remember or doesn't know the sign for a word, just sign it normally and the child can see you in the mirror. This positioning allows the child to see both you and the book without contortions of the neck and torso. I plan to talk about this in another part of this "series" of posts, but after a certain point, the best thing for your child will simply be what I refer to as Butt in Chair, Book in Hand. Encourage them to read as much as they will tolerate.

Anyway, that's enough for this post. Next post tomorrow. :)

[taylorcamel]

Teaching kids English without using SEE, Part 3

This post is intended to give reasons why ASL is preferable to SEE.

By the end of part 2, we'd started teaching the kids how to translate back and forth between ASL and English. It will be important for them to be able to mentally distinguish between the two languages and use the syntax that is appropriate for the situation. As you have no doubt figured out, beyond a certain point ASL is just practice and picking up new words every so often. Well, guess it won't come as any surprise that - golly gee whiz - English is the same.

For quite some time, when your child will be writing, it will be natural for them to use ASL word order. This is the point at which it becomes REALLY tempting to switch to SEE. Do your best to avoid that. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, it will badly confuse your child. You have probably been telling your child for years now (probably at least three or four) to sign it THIS way and now, all of a sudden, you want them to sign it THAT way. Trust me, it is not simply a matter of switching to English word order. A lot of the signs in SEE are different. SEE means just that - Signing Exact English. SEE uses the initial letter of the word in the sign a LOT more than ASL does. It also insists on signing THE, AND, BUT, BE, etc., _every_single_time_. On top of that, SEE invokes the black magic of individual signs for -ing, -ly, -ed, -s, -es, -'s, -y. (This hinders more than it helps, especially if you are switching to SEE after many years of using ASL. Many people think that ASL does not use those concepts because they are not explicitly used. On the contrary, these concepts ARE used.) And, finally, SEE is not conceptually accurate. It often uses the same word for all the individual meanings of the word. So your child will lose the understanding of the many different meanings a word can has. For example, in ASL you do not sign the word RUN the same way in these three sentences: Run the water for the bath. Run to the store. Run a mile. But you do it the same way in SEE. (By the way, if you do not do all these things, you are not using true SEE. You are probably using one or the other of the many manual methods on the range between SEE and ASL.) So all these changes will badly confuse your child, as I said.
The second reason why you shouldn't use SEE is that it is a static, artificially invented representation of a fluid, changing oral-aural language. Nobody sat down one day and said "Let us invent ASL." ASL developed through years and years of usage, with people keeping what worked and throwing out what didn't. Exactly the same way French and English and Spanish evolved. This is called a _living_ language. SEE, on the other hand, was invented by someone who did just that - sat down at a desk and made it up.

[Slight digression: By the way, someone asked awhile ago why ASL doesn't have some central organization that dictates what the signs are for everyone. You might as well ask why English doesn't have that central organization. I don't care what the Academie Francais says about preserving the purity of French. The French people ignore them almost as much as we do, I can guarantee you. And I'll guarantee you something else. The day the French people start using the Academie Francaise as gospel is the day French starts to become a dead language. I promise you, some governmental organization cannot possibly keep up with the natural changes that language demands, especially in these days of rapid change and frequent technological innovations. When they get far enough behind, French will become constricted and stagnant. Then people will stop speaking it because it does not suit their needs. At that point, it is only a matter of time until it becomes like Latin and what people call Classical Greek. Modern Greek is as much like Classical Greek as English and French are like the eleventh century version of French. If you look, Modern English has a lot of words whose roots are French. 1066 and William of Normandy and all that, y'know.

So, anyway, when your child becomes an adult, if not before, they will find out that ASL is much more flexible and infinitely more adaptable than SEE. They'll drop SEE like a hot potato, watch if they don't. I've seen it too many times to count. Including when I look in the mirror so I can assure you I know what I'm talking about. I discovered ASL when I was about eleven or twelve and I never looked back. So why not do them a huge favor and let them use ASL all along? Another convenient thing to this is that ASL has an infinitely larger vocabulary than SEE so as your child picks up the age-appropriate ASL, which is conceptually accurate, they will be better able to translate into or from English. Because they understand the concept already, they will be able to understand the sentence. End of digression]

The third reason why ASL is preferred to SEE is morphemes. What are morphemes, you ask. So glad you asked. This enables me to whip out my trusty dictionary and reveal that a morpheme is defined as "A meaningful linguistic unit consisting of a word, such as man, or a word element, such as -ed in walked, that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts."

And, yes, sign language has morphemes, too. As far as sign language is concerned, a morpheme is roughly defined as "An individual sign used to express a thought, a word, or a part of a word." The big thing with morphemes in sign language vs spoken language is that while a word in spoken language such as "walked" has an extra morpheme compared to "walk" it does not take very much longer to say. Whereas if you use an entire other sign for the "-ed" part, it takes longer. The other issue is that a lot of people will not really understand "-ed" on its own. Try it some time. Tell your friend " I walk ed to the store this morning." I bet you they'll say "huh?" Likewise if you sign I WALK ED TO THE STORE THIS MORNING. You've got to think for a second to realize that WALK and ED mean the same as walked. Plus, that has 8 morphemes. Whereas if you use ASL, you would sign MORNING ME WALK IX STORE. (Remember from my previous posts that IX indicates an index finger pointing.) That has 5 morphemes. We did several things here. First, we eliminated 3 morphemes. That alone made the sentence much faster to sign. Second, we eliminated the necessity for "-ed" by using the time - MORNING - first off so the past tense was already established. And, remember, the sign MORNING isn't just the sign for the word, but can also be accompanied by modifications of the sign. For example, you can sign MORNING as usual and give a vague interpretation of sometime in the morning, you can end the sign with the "sun" hand low to give the interpretation that it was early in the morning (the lower the hand, the earlier in the day it was), or you can start the "sun" hand kind of high and finish the sign to give the interpretation that it was late in the morning. Whereas if we were to use SEE, we would have to sign each word LATE/EARLY IN THE MORNING which produces 4 morphenes rather than 1 and takes much longer to sign. Thirdly, we give the sentence a much smoother spatial flow. If you watch a Deaf person sign that sentence you will realize that the first sign is right in front of him and the last sign is away from him. The sign WALK moves away from him slightly and the IX movement moves farther away from him then STORE is signed right there instead of the hands moving back to the starting point every time. This is what is called "economy of movement" meaning that there is no reason to move your hands back close to your chest for STORE when it can be done just as well where your hands were after IX. This is also consistent with the area-assignment rule shown by IX assigning a spatial area to "store" and the sign STORE being signed in that area. IX does not just assign an area. It can also show what direction the store was and how far away it was. What I mean by that last sentence is that if you point to your right or your left, the listener will tend to interpret that as the store is literally in that direction. Plus if you point "gently" as it were, the interpretation is that the store isn't that far away. Whereas if you point vigorously or emphatically with appropriate facial expression, the interpretation is that the store is rather far away. (Remember the examples of modifying MORNING - same principle here.)

[taylorcamel]

Here's a few examples of English vs SEE vs Basic ASL vs Modified ASL

English: The floor is dirty and needs to be cleaned.
SEE: THE FLOOR IS DIRT Y AND NEED S TO BE CLEAN ED
Basic ASL:FLOOR DIRTY CLEAN NEED.
Modified ASL: FLOOR !DIRTY! CLEAN NEED. (I used the !! around dirty to show that you are emphasizing it strongly.)

English: I have to wash a ton of dishes.
SEE: I HAVE TO WASH A T-O-N OF DISH E-S
Basic ASL:DISHES MANY WASH NEED.
Modified ASL: DISHES-DISHES-DISHES WASH-WASH-WASH NEED. (Repetition of DISHES and WASH give the viewer the idea that there are a lot of dishes and it'll take a while to wash them.)

English: I was reading the book and I really enjoyed it.
SEE: I WAS READ ING THE BOOK AND I REAL LY ENJOY ED IT.
Basic ASL: BOOK ME READ, ME ENJOY WOW.
Modified ASL: BOOK ME READ, ME !ENJOY! !WOW!

Anyway, I hope you get the idea.

One last thing about Deaf children learning English and then I'll end this longwinded post. I mentioned this briefly in another post awhile ago. Let me quote it: "I plan to expand on this idea in that third post, but for now suffice it to say that as far as learning English, a Deaf person's five best friends are: 1) dictionary, 2) thesaurus, 3) encyclopedia, 4) A solid grounding in their native language (whatever it may be, frankly. I've seen it done with ASL, CASE, PSE, etc.), and 5) BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS.
Oh, and did I mention TIME to read? My mother encouraged me to read as much as I could when I was a kid."

When I was a kid, whenever I found a word to which I didn't know the meaning, I asked my mom. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, my mother didn't have the world's greatest vocabulary. So when I reached the limits of her vocabulary, or her patience whichever came first, she started saying "Go look in the dictionary." So I would go look in the dictionary. I might have had to look up a word a few times before I remembered on my own what it meant. Basically I got so I was kind of tired of looking it up every time and made the effort to remember. This is when I really started understanding that words had all these other meanings. Not only that, but I discovered the wonderful abbreviation of "Syn." and discovered what other words could mean the same or similar. I also realized that the dictionary showed me the pronunciations, the roots of the word, etc. Such a wealth of information at an age when I wanted to figure things out on my own. So I started reading the dictionary for fun. (I was such a geek when I was a kid, I promise. But it worked.)

And right next to the dictionary was that wonderful tool of aspiring writers everywhere, the thesaurus. I discovered this when I wanted to know how else to say "I am thirsty." and my dictionary didn't have "Syn." for its entry of "thirsty". So I learned such fascinating words as "parched", "dehydrated", a more fun meaning of "dry". You get the idea.

And this is when I discovered encyclopedias, because the encyclopedia was right next to the dictionary and thesaurus on the shelf. I learned that if I wanted to know what Yggdrasil was (yes, it's a real word - look it up) and the dictionary didn't satisfy me, I could just step two feet over to the right and pull out the Y volume. I also discovered that great time-sink known as "see also:"

As for a solid grounding in the native language, you know my opinion on that. I won't make the horse deader.

For books - all I can say is that reading was an accepted activity in our house, and one which was perpetuated by all the inhabitants thereof. Given that I was the seventh person in that house, including my parents, I had a lot of examples of how desirable and enjoyable that activity was. For example, my dad had every book by Louis L'amour. I'd read them all by the time I was old enough to drive.

And as you know from parts 1 and 2 of this series, I believe the reading needs to be reinforced by writing. I had an elementary school teacher who firmly believed in this concept as well. I was one of those kids who tended to finish their assignments in less than the allotted time (geek, remember?). As a way of keeping those of us who did that out of boredom-mischief, she had what she called a "spare time activities" table, or something like that. These were learning activities cleverly disguised as "fun" stuff. To use a pertinent example, whenever I was finished with my English or Reading assignment quickly, she'd send me to the English part of that table. One of my favorite things in that part of the table was a story box. That was a box with a bunch of index cards in it. Each index card had a starting paragraph that gave the essential information. It basically gave us the beginning of the story and we'd have to finish the story. So I'd grab a card and then write the rest of the story. (This was about the time I discovered the thesaurus, by the way, much to the despair of those discouragers of purple prose everywhere. I've gotten better since then, I promise.) So when you want your child to write something, and they say "But I don't know what to write about," I suggest you find something similar or make your own. You could probably ask a fourth or fifth grade teacher and odds are good they'd have an idea of what you're talking about even if they don't actually have one. They tend to get all those cool catalogs full of teacher-type things. One thing though: you want to encourage writing, rather than discouraging. So resist the urge to whip out the red pen. Instead, ask your children if they want you to help them find mistakes. If they do, start small - just focus on misspellings and egregious word order mistakes. Leave active vs passive voice and such things for their English teachers. And if they say no, leave it alone.

And now I think I am really and truly finished. Whew. That took much longer than I thought it would.