Does learning a Sign Language Orthography support Deaf children's bi-literacy development?

这项研究将设计、运行和评估一项基于手语矫正术(SLO)的干预措施，在特殊的学校环境中为聋生提供帮助。这项研究既新颖又原创，因为它结合了聋人教育和应用语言学的领域，并探索了一个新的领域，将手语转录成书面形式用于教育目的。它将开发一种资源，有可能与聋人学生的教育工作者高度相关。它将通过影响聋人学习者的双读写能力发展来影响他们的教育成就。聋人学习者被广泛记录为教育结果不佳以及与心理健康相关的问题(Fellinger等人)。2012年)。该项目与心理健康ESRC的战略重点相关。这项研究是创新的，需要开发一种使用SLO对聋人学习者进行干预的方法。这项建议是基于我在聋人教育中对聋生进行手语矫正术(SLO)的初步试点。在试点中，聋人学习者可以在很短的时间内使用手语写作(SLWRITE)产生结果。这些令人鼓舞的结果表明，学生们能够独立于我的指导，使用SLWRITE编码和处理一个简短的短语。在我最初的试验中，我观察到聋人学生在学习中变得活跃起来，并被SLO的新概念迷住了。正是看到聋人学习者开始明确地意识到他们确实有一种语言，这激发了我进一步探索这一领域的愿望。在聋人社区中，SLO的概念还处于初级阶段，在教育领域几乎没有研究。这项新颖而开创性的研究对聋人教育具有重要意义，为聋人儿童识字学习提供了理论和实践方面的见解。我已经与当地一所特殊学校--埃克塞特聋人学院--建立了合作伙伴关系，以确定目前难以理解书面英语的一群学生。聋人学院的联合校长已经同意与识字部合作，探索提高聋生双语技能的想法。我的研究将使我能够进行一项调查，通过以书面形式使用BSL(Grushkin，2017,1998)，使用和引入语义技能，来更多地了解聋童的双语潜能(Flood，2002)。我将在交叉识字的背景下研究，使用书面形式的BSL如何可能导致英国手语(L1)和英语(L2)的提高。Skyer&Cochell(2016)强调了美国手语和以文本为基础的英语在多模式学术话语环境中的关系，这给了使用手语的聋童一种与其他书面语言平等的感觉(SIGN Matters，2005)。此外，Keogh(2013)报告说，聋人学习者对使用类似手形、身体部位和运动的字符的标志性书写系统反应良好。这项研究提供的证据表明，使用SLO有可能改善聋儿的语言发展(Voreck，2014)，并可能有长期的影响。总体目标是探索如果聋童被教授一种具有代表性的书面形式的母语视觉手势语言(L1)，是否可以更好地发展认知能力，以再生他们的第二语言-英语(L2)的阅读技能，同时也在他们的第一语言英国手语(L1)上取得进展。英国手语(L1)的这种代表性形式将以美国手语书写为基础，也就是众所周知的‘ASLWRITE’(Clark，2012)。

This study will design and then run and evaluate an intervention based on Sign Language Orthography (SLO) for Deaf pupils in a special school setting. The research is both novel and original as it combines the fields of Deaf education and Applied Linguistics and explores a new area, transcribing Sign Language into a written form for educational purposes. It will develop a resource, which has the potential to be highly relevant to educators of Deaf pupils. It will impact on the educational achievements of deaf learners by targeting their bi-literacy development. Deaf learners have been widely documented as having poor educational outcomes and associated problems with mental health (Fellinger et al. 2012). The project is relevant to the strategic focus of the ESRC of Mental Health.This study is innovative, requiring the development of an intervention using a SLO to Deaf learners. This proposal is based on my initial pilot of a Sign Language Orthography (SLO) to Deaf pupils in Deafeducation. In the pilot it was possible for Deaf learners to produce results using Sign Language Write (SLwrite) in a short time period. These encouraging results revealed that the pupils were able to encodeand process a short phrase using SLwrite, independently of my instructions.In my initial pilot I observed Deaf pupils become active in their learning and captivated with the new concept of a SLO. It was seeing the Deaf learners explicitly begin to realise that they did have a languagethat sparked my desire to explore this area further. The concept of a SLO is still at an emergent level within Deaf Communities with little research in the educational domain. This novel and ground-breakingresearch has the potential to be significant for Deaf education, providing insight into both theory and practice for literacy learning for Deaf children.I have established a partnership with a local special school, The Deaf Academy, Exeter, to identify a group of students who currently struggle to understand English in its written form. The co-principal ofthe Deaf Academy has agreed a partnership with the literacy department to explore the idea of improving their deaf pupil's bi-literate skills.My study would enable me to conduct an investigation to find out more about a Deaf child's bi-literacy potential (Flood, 2002) by using BSL in a written form (Grushkin, 2017, 1998), employing and introducing semantic skills. I would examine, within the context of cross-literacy, how using a written form of BSL might result in improvements in both British Sign Language (L1) and English (L2). Skyer & Cochell (2016) highlighted the relationship between American Sign Language (ASL) and Text-based English in multimodal academic discourse settings, which gave Deaf children, using sign language, a sense of an equal footing with other written languages (SIGNmatters, 2005). Additionally, Keogh (2013) reported that Deaf learners responded favourably to iconic writing systems that used characters resemblinghandshapes, parts of the body, and movement. This research provides the evidence to suggest that using an SLO has the potential to improve Deaf children's language development (Voreck, 2014) and may have a long-term effect.The overall aim is to explore whether Deaf children, if taught a representational, written form of their native visual-gestural sign language (L1), may better develop cognitive abilities in order to regenerateliteracy skills in their second language, English (L2), whilst also making gains in their first language British Sign Language (L1). This representational form of British Sign Language (L1) will be based on American Sign Language Write, known as 'ASLwrite' (Clark, 2012).