The Efficacy of Signing Standard English for Increasing Reading Achievement: An Article Critique
- The Efficacy of Signing Standard English for Increasing Reading Achievement:An Article Critique
The language of instruction for Deaf children in the American educational system has long been the subject of debate: Should Deaf children learn language via American Sign Language (ASL), English-based visual communication systems, or spoken English only? It has long been the practice of the standard epistemology to encourage the use of verbal English, speechreading, and hearing-based behavior (Lane, 1999; Ramsey, 1997), as the use of sign language has long been thought to correlate with low intelligence (Lane, 1999; Moore & Levitan, 2005). These practices, among others, have contributed to a heavily speech- and auditory-centric focus in Deaf education, which has led to several reports that the average American Deaf high school graduate reads at the fourth-grade level (Holt, 1994; Spencer & Marschark, 2010; Traxler, 2000).
In response to this alarmist statistic first put forth by Holt (1994), researchers and educators sprang into action in an attempt to remedy the reading deficits that seem to plague Deaf children. Studies on the need of phonology for Deaf readers were conducted (Wang et al., 2008), and shifts were made in classroom practices and the language of instruction. Ultimately, studies by Spencer and Marschark (2010) and Traxler (2000) showed that the preceding two decades of change had led to little or no improvement in the reading outcomes of Deaf children. In the present article, a critical analysis of a preliminary study by Nielsen et al. (2016) on the English-language and reading achievement of Deaf children using Signing Exact English (SEE) is conducted.
Positionality
The reviewer, Ashley Greene-Woods, is an ASL-using American who was born hearing to hearing parents. She became Deaf at age 3 years, and her parents immediately began learning SEE. She was fortunate enough that her immediate and extended family all began signing, thus giving her a childhood with full access to communication. Greene-Woods grew up mainstreamed in a program that utilized SEE before spending her high school years at a Deaf residential school in the American South, where she learned ASL and began discovering her Deaf identity. She went on to earn her bachelor's and master's degrees at Texas Woman's University, studying Deaf education. At the time of the present review, she had taught Deaf education at all grade levels, but had spent the majority of her career at the high school level, using ASL in the classroom to teach a variety of subjects. She obtained her doctorate in the summer of 2020 and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of [End Page 456] Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Lamar University, Beaumont, TX.
Review
The Literature
Nielsen et al. (2016) frame the problem of low levels of reading achievement among Deaf children using SEE using a similar approach to that of Holt (1994), Spencer and Marschark (2010), and Traxler (2010), with a cautionary tale about the current reading levels of Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students in America. There is an attempt to provide extensive literature to support the need for Deaf children to be instructed in a manner that allows for bound morphemes to be visible. The literature that Nielsen et al. cite, however, does not detail the demographics of the participants in the studies; nor does the literature detail the statistical tests performed to determine whether the studies revealed statistically significant data. Use of such literature, which lacks validation to support the authors' claims, reads like blanket statements, meant to function as smoke and mirrors.
Nielsen et al. (2016) argue that in order to be successful readers, Deaf children need to have access to spoken and written English in order to access phonology and English bound morphemes (see also Mayer & Trezek, 2014). The authors ignore evidence that ASL proficiency is shown to have a direct correlation with reading proficiency (Freel et al., 2011; Hrastinski & Wilbur, 2016). Furthermore, the authors neglect to mention research showing that less than 50% of Deaf children show evidence of any kind of phonological coding, and that phonological coding predicts only about 12% of reading outcomes for these children (Mayberry et al...
