02 Bilingual Language Profiles of Deaf Students

8/2/2019 02 Bilingual Language Profiles of Deaf Students

1/26

Bilingual Language Proles o

Dea Students: An Analysis o

the Written Narratives o

Three Dea Writers with Dierent

Language Prociencies

MARIA KOUTSOUBOU, National Research and Development Centreor Adult Literacy and Numeracy, Institute o Education, London, UK;

ROSALIND HERMAN, Department o Language and Communication,City University, London, UK; BENCIE WOLL, Department oHuman Communication Science, University College London, London,UK

ABSTRACT

Literature on bilingual education suggests that the material used in teaching secondlanguage writing has an impact on the quality o the text. In addition, the material

interacts dierently with the level o bilingual profciency o the students. This paperattempts to explore the written stories o three dea students, which were producedunder two dierent conditions: translation rom a signed narrative vs. direct composi-tion rom a picture narrative. The three dea students represent three language groups,with dierent profciencies in Greek Sign Language and written Greek. It will beshown that a) each representative produces a unique writing style in accordance tohis/her language profciencies and b) each representative reacts dierently to thestimulus material acilitating (or not) dierent aspects o writing. The narratives wereexplored in terms o their discourse and technical characteristics. Implications or dea

education and the teaching o writing are discussed. Copyright 2006 John Wiley& Sons, Ltd.

Deaness and Education International

Deaness Educ. Int.8(3): 144168 (2006)

Published online 7 July 2006 in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/dei.195

144


2/26

Bilingual language profles o dea students 145

INTRODUCTION: BILINGUALISM AND DEAFNESS

Dea people who unction largely through the use o two languages (sign andspoken/written) have started being viewed under the prism o bilingualism.

The nature and degree o a two-language interaction are the main areas thattheoretical bilingualism tries to explain. The classical bilingual models andparticularly that o Cummins (1991) claim that the languages o the bilingualshare a common cognitive unction whereby the skills developed in the rstlanguage (L1) will transer to the second language (L2), especially with regardsto literacy. This principle has also been used to justiy dea bilingual education(Grosjean, 2001; Powers et al., 1998).

However, these theories have been developed to describe hearing bilingualswith whom dea bilinguals have some striking dierences, the most notable

being the L1 acquisition. As requently reported, 95% o dea babies are bornto hearing parents. We cannot thereore assume that dea babies will grow witha grounded L1 sign or spoken language which is the case or hearing babies(Turner, 2000). However, there are arguments why dea people can be consid-ered within a bilingual ramework. Language acquisition in many dea childrenseems to be similar to hearing children learning a L2, in that the dea childrenlearn, rather than acquire, their language (Paul, 2001). Paul (2001) explainsthat the L2 or hearing bilinguals may be not ully acquired because o inade-quate exposure but or dea individuals is an issue o incomplete exposure,

which has to do with the conveyance o the auditory-based signal itsel. Thatis why dea people are naturally oriented to visual communication, whichor many may be the only opportunity to acquire a natural ully-fedgedlanguage.

Due to natural visual orientation, the written mode o language could beconsidered as a special complete linguistic input once acquired. However, thisis also an area o diculty or many dea students and it is infuenced by thedierent bilingual prociencies that many dea students exhibit as explainedbelow.

DEAF WRITING

When dea students operate in two languages sign language and spoken/written language these may interact in various ways, depending on the levelo their prociency (Mayer and Akamatsu, 1999; Paul, 2001; Swanwick, 2002).This interaction predicts the existence o dierent writing styles rom deastudents just like hearing students. Established research in L2 writing has

shown that this interaction maniests itsel on the surace o the written textvia dierent styles (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992). However, in dea bilingual

iti th l l i i b th l b h ll i


3/26

146 Koutsoubou et al.

Research has only recently considered the complicated nature o deabilingualism by including as a actor the sign language prociency o the deastudents (Singleton et al., 2004). Also, very little research has considered the

interaction o sign language prociency with written language prociency.Viewing dea writing and dea education rom a bilingual perspective inevi-tably raises all the issues o bilingual education, the most prevalent being therole o the L1 in teaching the L2 (or bilingual debate see Porter, 1998; Hakutaet al., 2000). Research on bilingual writing accepts that L1 acilitates the cog-nitive aspects o writing, but not necessarily the linguistic aspects o text(Cohen, 2000). However, the degree o acilitation depends on many otheractors including the language prociency o L2 and the genre o writing. Formany dea writers, writing is even more complicated because they do not always

enter education with a grounded L1, either in sign language or spoken/writtenlanguage (Paul, 2001).Another issue to consider in dea writing is the similarities and dierences

between sign languages and written mode o spoken languages.1 Sign languagesdespite their dierences are characterised by some common properties. In brie,sign languages, because they are visual, employ the signing space, the ace andbody o the communicator or linguistic unctions. Visual perception has thecapacity to process all these elements concurrently. On the other hand, pho-netic-based languages are characterised mainly by linear syntactic properties.

This linearity is even more evident in writing as the paralinguistic eects ospoken communication disappear. This concurrent vs. linear processing osigned and spoken/written language has various alleged eects on memory,attention and possibly on literacy acquisition and production (Marscharket al., 1997).

This paper will address some o the above issues and in particular it willexplore the infuence o the dierent language prociencies o dea writers sign language and written language and the eect o the language input inthe production o a written text (sign language input vs. no language input).

The paper considers the qualitative ndings o an earlier mixed methodstudy in the light o literature on bilingual writing and the analysis o narratives(Koutsoubou, 2004b).

BILINGUAL WRITING AND THE GENRE OF NARRATIVES

A review o bilingual writing brings up two areas o interest: the stimuli usedto initiate writing and the genre o writing. The stimuli used or the writing

1 There are great dierences among sign languages themselves as well as written/spoken lan-

guages, which are beyond the scope o this paper to describe. Comparative linguistic analysis is


4/26


activities o this research were translation and direct composition (see Cohen,2000; Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992; Uzawa, 1996).

Translation tasks are used to see how the discourse o one language is con-

verted into the discourse o another. Languages dier rom each other in termso orm, rules or constructing sentences and discourse structures. These dier-ences infuence the way meaning is conveyed. So, when translating a text,there are many subtle ways in which the translator can render the meaningrom one language to the other. Another issue with translation is that a simpleone-word utterance in one language may require a multiple-word sentence inthe other and is thereore less easily rendered in that language (Malako andHakuta, 1991).

Translation as a linguistic task is a rather burdened and biased one (Koba-

yashi and Rinnert, 1992). Translation skills are usually taken or granted as anaspect o bilingualism, yet this is ar rom the truth. Many bilinguals ace di-culties in translating, especially when writing (Malako and Hakuta, 1991).

The task odirect composition presents the writer with a dierent processto that o translation: there is no other language explicitly intervening apartrom the language that the mind uses to construct meaning. Direct assumesdirect access to L2. I L2 prociency does not allow that, then the L1 is sum-moned and direct composition may resemble translation in varying degrees.Especially on the level o planning and revision, L1 is important in its infuence

(Wang and Wen, 2002; Cook, 2001). The problem with direct compositionthereore is that we do not know how direct it is.

In the context o the present research, the two tasks o translation and directcomposition assumed dierent purposes. Translation was used as a linguisticallybiased task. The task o direct composition was used to uncover any dierencein the texts produced. The design o the two tasks each assumed an educationalsituation. The translation task, which is closer to a bilingual situation, uses signlanguage as a tool to mediate between a story and its written orm. The directcomposition task, which is closer to direct L2 teaching situation, does not use

any language at least not explicitly. A comparison o these techniques mayreveal how students with dierent prociencies in the two languages make useo these educational situations.

The genre o writing used in this study is thenarrative because narrativecan reveal how the discourse methods (grammar, reerence, coherence andcohesion) o the languages interact (Hickmann and Hendriks, 1999). Alsonarratives are more naturalistic and less academically dened (Reilly et al.,2004).

Narratives are considered to be thereore predictable in their structure.

Because o this predictability, various scholars have developed models or ana-lysing narrative content/inormation. Stein and Glenn (1979) developed story

t t l i hi h d ti t d d


5/26


analysis (1997) has similar categories but operates on two levels: a) the reerencelevel which is similar to the above sequence o inormation and, b) the evalu-ation level which gives inormation about the attitudes o the narrator or the

events/characters o the story and can take place throughout the reerencelevel.A second aspect o narratives is the organisation o the content. The organi-

sation o the content, attempts to reveal relationships between language ormand content o the story. Certain words (surace structure) are linked to deepstructures (meaning) o the narrative. The idea that surace and deep structureare hierarchically organised has been entertained by various scholars (Langer,1986; Mann and Thompson, 1988; ODonnell, 2002; Torrance, 2002). Seman-tic categories are identied to determine the deep structures used (e.g. conjunc-

tion, cause, antithesis, etc.) and then connected to surace structure linguisticitems in use: Conjunction = and, Cause = because, Antithesis = but, etc.Finally, narratives can be analysed by looking at their technical character-

istics on the surace level. Research shows that certain eatures are reliableindicators o text quality. For example, number o words, adjectives and adverbscan indicate lexical diversity. Length o a sentence, number o clauses per sen-tence, subordination and coordination can indicate grammatical complexity.The use o cohesive ties such as pronouns, conjunctions and demonstrativescan indicate cohesion in the text, to name just a ew (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996;

Polio, 2001; Kamberelis, 1999).

METHODOLOGY: THE DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The material presented is based on a mixed-method study, which analysed thewritten narratives o 20 Greek dea students (eight male and 12 emale) agedbetween 1823 and attending the last two years o lyceum (Koutsoubou, 2004a,2004b). The sample came rom three dierent dea schools in three majorGreek cities and although small in number can be considered as typical o the

dea population attending dea education (or population numbers in Greekdea education see Lampropoulou, 1994).

The research investigated the written narratives o the students in two situ-ations: a) translation rom a Greek sign language (GSL) video story intowritten Greek and b) direct composition in written Greek rom a picture storywithout words. Both materials used two stories without words: the Frog, Whereare you? (Mercer, 1969) and The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (Bang,1986) [rom now on: Frog Story and Strawberry Lady]. Both were signed andvideotaped by a native dea signer and also made into a picture booklet. Hal

the students received the Frog Story in sign and the Strawberry Lady in picturesand the other hal received them the other way round, in order to control ort t


6/26


no standardised assessments or GSL or or writing as an expression o signbilingualism. The researcher constructed a rating scale o our levels eachdened in terms o general linguistic and pragmatic characteristics. The descrip-

tion o the assessment criteria is beyond the scope o this paper (but seeKoutsoubou, 2004b). Two assessors (students schoolteachers) were used orGSL and written Greek. The assessors gave rates o 1 or low prociency to 4or high prociency but they could also give median rates such as 1.5. Thestudents nal assessment comprised the means o the two ratings. Followingassessment, three groups emerged:

Sign language dominant group (GSL high, written Greek low) sixstudents,

Weak balanced bilingual group (GSL low, written Greek low) sixstudents,

Strong balanced bilingual group (GSL high, written Greek high) eightstudents.

The texts were coded and explored on three hierarchical levels o writing:inormation level, organisation level and surace level. The highest level inor-mation only explores content. The second level organisation linkscontent to orm. Finally, the third level ocuses only on the linguistic orms.

The coding o the three levels is summarised below.

Coding o the texts

Inormation level

Based on Stein and Glenns (1979) and Labovs (1997) narrative analysis, theinormation in the stories was measured in two ways.

Amount o Inormation:

a. Basic structureo the story, consisting o our structural components, sameor both stories (Table 1, rst column).

b. Basic story lines (Table 1, second column).

Type o inormation:

a. Descriptive inormation (Table 1, third column).

b. Aective inormation (Table 1, ourth column).

Th t i ti l l t d i t th b i t t l


7/26


1:Amountandtypeoinormation:elements,

defnitionsandexamples.

ntoin

ormation

Basicstorylines

Type

oinormation

tructure(storygrammar)

Frog

story

Strawberrylady

Descriptiveino

Aectiveino

TTING

=i

ntroduction

1.

Boy

anddog

1.

Ladybuys

Alltheclausesowhich

Anyinormationaboutthe

inner

mainc

haracters/temporal

have

rog

strawberries

verbsdescribesomekin

d

stateothecharacters,

dspatialorientation.

ostateoraction.

E.g.

evaluations,comments,

e.g.Th

eevening.Theboy

2.

Frogescapes

2.

A

manollows

State:Aboyis7years

attributes,

thoughts,

desires/

is7yearsold.

Andhasa

her

oldPELPAN

intentionsorstoryanimation.

E.g.

dog.P

ELPAN

3.

Boy

anddog

Action:Thewoman

gotofndrog

3.

Themantriesto

climbsupthetree

Innerstate:Theboya

ndthe

EASON

=t

hetriggeror

snatchthebox

ARILIA

dogarehappy.

PELPAN

edevelopmentothestory

4.

Theyget

4.

Hestartschasin

g

Intention:Badwantsverymuch

g.Frog

Story:therog

invo

lvedin

thewoman

willtakethestrawberries

capedromthehouse.

adve

ntures

GOPLAST

rawberryLady:astrange

5.

Shealwaysescapes

anwantstosnatchthe

5.

Theyfndrog

Alsoallclausesmodifedwith

dysstrawberries).

with

amily

6.

Hefndsabush

anytypeoadjectiveoradverb:

e.g.Th

estrangethie

withotherruit

e.g.suddenly,

happily,angrily,etc.

triedtostealthe

6.

Boy

anddog

andorgetsher

andclauseswithemotiveverbs:

strawberriesromthe

take

anew

e.g.scared,

loves,worried,

lady.B

uttheladyholds

rog

back

7.

Shearriveshome

envies,etc.

themtightrunandget-

hom

e

andgives

intoth

ebusPELPAN

strawberries

toamily

CTION

=t

he

velopm

entothestory.

LOSUR

E=t

heresolution

thesto

ry.

e.g.Th

ewomangoesto

hishouse.

Theamily

we

eatthestrawberries

ARILIA


8/26


story grammar was present. I two out o the six basic story lines o the FrogStory were present it meant that there was 33% present).

The type o inormation was calculated against the total amount o the

clauses combined: or example, a 6% aective ino and 94% descriptive inomeans that 6% o the total narrative had aective inormation and the remain-ing 94% was descriptive.

Organisation level

This level was measured with Langers (1986) tree diagrams adjusted(Appendix A). The branching points o the tree diagrams are based on clausesand are determined rom connectors and other grammatical words. The basic

relationships ound in the narratives are the ollowing:

S Sequence: temporal sequence o episodes. At the top o thetree diagram as the superimposed rhetorical structure othe genre o narrative.

E Event: action taking place (signied by verbs o doing).D Description: attributes, states, setting (signied by verbs o

state or example, be, have, become, etc).Exp Explanation: signied by words such as: because, because o,

etc.Ev Evaluation: a comment by the narrator on some aspect o

story.C Cause: causal relationship between two clauses (signied by

words such as: so, in order to, etc.).Adv Adversative: an alternative given (signied by words such

as: but, or).Res/ Rem/ Q-A Response/Remark and Question-Answer: dialogues, mono-

logues, inner thoughts.

The tree diagrams are organised in levels o hierarchy where the topmost levelis the rhetorical pattern (sequence is the deault or narratives) and the sub-ordinate levels o the content can undergo various levels o elaboration(Level 1, Level 2, etc.). The deeper the levels go, the more elaborated the storyis. The more nodes in each level the more inormation-rich they tend to be.The more variety in the nodes, the more sophisticated the story (AppendixA).

Surace level

Th t d d t i iti ti d i th lit t


9/26


number o words,number o sentences,number o clauses,

clauses per sentence,sentence length,subordinate clauses,coordinate clauses andsentence complexity (use o adverbials, adjectives, rare vocabulary, and complex

structures) (Fraser, 2001; Silliman et al., 2000).

A category o Unknown structures was added to allow counting o deviant

structures.As or the text characteristics, both absolute numbers o occurrences andpercentages are given. The percentages in text characteristics were calculatedagainst the total clauses o the text (e.g. 25% subordination meant that 25%o the total clauses in that narrative were subordinate clauses).

The relationship between the quantitative and qualitative context o the study

The quantitative strand o the research showed that there were several signi-cant group dierences and one reported interaction between the group and thematerial. Regarding group dierences, the strong bilingual dea students out-perormed the weak bilinguals but not the sign language dominant in the typeo inormation and the organisation o the story. However, in the surace levelmeasurements the strong bilinguals outperormed both the other groups. Therewas no dierence on the amount o errors o the groups. Overall, these resultssuggest that high prociency in one language has an impact on the higher levelso writing but not on the surace o the text.

With regard to the interaction eect the three groups reacted dierently tothe stimulus material on the aective inormation o the stories. The strongbilinguals signicantly increased the amount o aective inormation in theirstories in response to the translation (video material); the weak bilinguals sig-nicantly increased the aective inormation with the direct composition(pictures material) and the sign language dominants did not produce any di-erence according to the type o material. This suggests that each group tooka dierent route to writing as a result o their dierent language proles.

However, a quantitative analysis cannot give insight into the language

routes that dea students took or how the material may have infuenced this.This is an area better explored by a qualitative analysis o the written texts.Thi ill d ib th di t bili l l th t th d t d t


10/26


THE CASE STUDIES

The case study writers have been chosen as typical representatives o theirgroups both in their language assessments and the style o texts they produced

according to the quantitative results. The pseudonyms o the three representa-tives are:

Arilia (weak balanced bilingual group)Pelpan (strong balanced bilingual group)Goplast (sign language dominant group)

Here only the translated English texts o the case studies will be presented,2ollowed by a summary o measurements o the texts and their prole

analysis.

ARILIA (weak balanced bilingual)

Arilia is an 18-year-old male student, comes rom a hearing amily and attendsthe last class o lyceum. He has been dea rom birth. Both his language pro-ciencies were rated as average to low (on a scale o 14: GSL = a mean o 2.25/ written Greek = a mean o 2) and thereore placed in the weak balancedbilingual group. His two stories (Tables 2 and 3) and summary table o his text

measurements (Table 4) are shown here.

Weak balanced bilingual: analysis and results o the writing prole

At the information level, it is clear that one o the stories is unnished. Thiswas not unusual most o the stories in this group (10 out o 12) were notcompleted, suggesting that they aced diculties constructing them.

Again on inormation level, Arilia only reported two structural componentso the overall our rom the direct composition story, however, these two com-

ponents were adequately elaborated, sometimes with detail (such as the dogsall rom the window). The basic storylines are only 33% o the total episodes,again as a direct result o the story being incomplete. It seems that althoughthe conceptualisation o the story was ne, Arilias low skills in Greek writingdid not permit nishing the direct composition story despite the eort toelaborate in certain areas.

The translation text is more complete but less elaborated (used ewer wordsthan the direct composition and theAction is almost missing). The reason orthis may be that, due to low sign language skill he only understood the basics

o the signed story without much detail.


11/26


The type o inormation in the direct composition is slightly more variedthan the translation as it was not only descriptive but also involved aectiveinormation. This trend was more obvious in the writings o his group wherethe aective inormation o the direct compositions was more signicant thanthe translation stories (Koutsoubou, 2004a).

At the organisation level, the two stories do not dier greatly. Both reachedthe ourth level o the tree diagram and that was mainly due to the ew sub-

ordinate clauses o the because o type. The third level was where themajority o clauses were concentrated which means that none o the stories

d ti l l it i th i ti th i ti M t th

Table 2: Weak balanced bilinguals direct composition story.

THE FROG STORY

The child sees rom the rog.

The dog hold vase.

The rog is in the vase.

The child and the dog to-sleep on his bed.

The rog climbs-on the vase.

Two windows has small the child and dog sees the vase because leaves the rog.

The child wake-up to put-on the clothes.

The dog is in the vase.

The child calls.

The dog has inside vase because hurts his head.

The dog ell down.The child sees rom the dog.

The child hugs the dog.

The vase brakes down.

Table 3: Weak balanced bilinguals translation story.

THE STRAWBERRY LADY

The mother will go to the town.The mother buy the strawberries.

The woman asks 1 kilo the strawberries.

The bad is watching the woman.

The bad catch the woman because eats the strawberries.

The woman climbs up the tree.

The bad looks or the woman because have tree.

The bad goes to the tree because eats the strawberries.

The woman goes to his house.

The amily we-eat the strawberries.


12/26


On the discourse style, both Arilias texts have very little cohesive elabora-tion particularly with regard to reerence. There is a complete absence o

cohesive devices (e.g. manipulation o pronouns, determiners, etc.) other thanthe repetition o nouns. In both his stories he is introducing his characters byd it d t i hi h i t d t i t d i ti b t l

Table 4: Weak balanced bilinguals summary o measurements: comparisons between direct

composition and translation.

Results rom direct composition (picture) Results rom translation (video)

Inormation level: Inormation level:

Amount o inormation: Amount o inormation:

Story grammar: 2/4 (50%) Story grammar: 3/4 (75%)

Basic storylines: 2/6 (33%) Basic storylines: 4/7 (71%)

Type o inormation: Type o inormation:

Descriptive ino: 95% Descriptive ino: 100%

Aective ino: 5% Aective ino: 0%

Organisation level: Organisation level:

I Seq

II Seq Seq

III D D D D E D E E E E E E E E E E E

IIII Expl Expl

I Seq

II Seq Seq Seq Seq

III E E E E E E E E E E

IIII C Exp C

(Level: II 2, III 16, IIII 2) (Level: II 4, III 10, IIII 3)

3 dierent relationships: Event, Description, 3 dierent relationships: Event, Cause

and Explanation and Explanation

Surace level: Surace level:

Number o words: 89 Number o words: 65

Sentence complexity: 0 Sentence complexity: 0

Number o sentences: 14 Number o sentences: 10

Sentence length: 6.35 (mean) words Sentence length: 6.5 (mean) words

Number o clauses: 18 Number o clauses: 13Subordination: 2 (11%) Subordination: 3 (25%)

Coordination: 0 Coordination: 0

Unknown structures: 2 (11%) Unknown structures: 1 (1%)

Clauses per sentence: 1.28 Clauses per sentence: 1.3


13/26


introductory sentence and the maintenance sentence o the Strawberry Lady.The second sentence does not use any anaphoric devise even though themother has just been mentioned:

For example: The mother will go to town. The mother buy the strawberries.

The stories resemble a collection o sentences the majority o which have thesame word order o Subject-Verb-Object (S-V-O). This may be the eect oyears o drilling grammatical exercises in a language whose discourse techniqueshave not been mastered. The sentences do not only resemble each other struc-turally but they are also arranged one under the other as a list o items. Thiswas also a distinct characteristic o his language group.

On the surface level, Arilias texts have very little grammatical elaboration.The simplicity o the sentences is obvious as their length is nearly equivalentto one clause. Modication is absent (adjectives, adverbs) and thereore thereis no sentence complexity. Nevertheless, there is some subordination in bothstories (all measurements in Table 4). Here, we must again bear in mind thatthe direct composition is incomplete and has already produced almost the sameamount o subordination as the translation story. However, none o the attemptsto subordinate is grammatically correct.

The stimulus material has not aected the narratives dramatically as ar as

grammar and text characteristics are concerned. However, two things are oimportance. First, it seems that there is an eect o the material on inormationlevel. The translation story, which is a complete story, is lower in generalinormation and elaboration in comparison to the direct composition story.The direct composition story only comprises the rst two structural compo-nents, however, they are reported with great detail. This may mean that thisstory was better perceived but low writing skills did not allow task completion.In the translation, however, the story was not perceived in detail and lowwriting skills did not much hinder the production o a brie narrative. Second,

the direct composition story being incomplete produced the same results as thetranslation story. This may indicate that direct composition, as stimulus wasmore appropriate or this student. Most students in his group did not avourthe translation material because they did not master GSL and could not use itas an appropriate tool or literacy purposes.

Summary o weak balanced bilingual prole

The writing style reads as unconnected due to rare use o reerence means. Thenarratives can be described as item-lists where the sentences are just placed

t t h th ith t ti Th t i l t l i d l


14/26


Table 5: Strong balanced bilinguals direct composition story.

THE STRAWBERRY LADY

The lady went to the shop o the ruits

and bought the strawberries. She-walked in the corridor

but suddenly she-had behind her a strange thie

and ollow her oten. The strange thie tried

to steal the strawberries rom the lady. But the lady holds them

tight run and get-into the bus. The strange thie had disappeared.

The lady had relieved. And got-o in the woods

and walk, then suddenly and again idea

the strange thie. The lady run towards her house.

But the strange thie has company with same aces.

And stay in the woods to look-or the ood. The lady staysto her house and they-gave her amily with strawberries

her amily ate the strawberries. The basket is

empty or the strawberries.

Table 6: Strong balanced bilinguals translation story.

THE FROG STORY

The evening. The boy is 7 years old. And has a

dog. The boy and the dog are

happy because has rog they-slept.

The rog has been lost

because went out o the window.

Then until the morning, they-wake up and they didnt see

anything rog and they begin to worry about the

rog. They-look everywhere in his house and nothing.

The little dog ell rom the window, the boy

ound his little dog and look

the woods but I-ound the rog, suddenly saw the mouse andlooks or and I-saw the tree, there was a

hive. The little dog jumps and jumps, one hive

ell and many bees fy to attack the

little dog. The little dog with the rog on his head

and ell into the river, they were nearly drown the

boy they-save and they-breath. The boy and the little dog

with the rog they believe that there are there the

wood ell and there-is inside. The rog

with little rogs. The rog is happy

because he-has a lady-rog. The rog told him boy that give a little rog. The boy saidthanks went to take the little dog told him to leave.

The rog with a lady-rog and their little ones stay at the orest.


15/26


PELPAN (strong balanced bilingual)

Pelpan is a 19-year-old emale student, comes rom a hearing amily and attendsthe last class o lyceum. Her language prociencies were rated average to high

(on a scale o 14: GSL = a mean o 2.75 / written Greek = a score o 3). Shewas thereore placed in the strong balanced bilingual group. Her texts (Tables5 and 6) and measurements o analysis (Table 7) are shown here.

Table 7: Strong balanced bilinguals summary o measurements: comparisons between

direct composition and translation.

Results rom direct composition Results rom translation

Inormation level: Inormation level:Amount o inormation: Amount o inormation:

Story grammar 4/4 (100%) Story grammar 4/4 (100%)

Basic lines 6/7 (85%) Basic story lines 6/6 (100%)

Type o inormation: Type o inormation:

Descriptive ino 95% Descriptive ino 85%

Aective ino 5% Aective ino 15%


Seq

Seq Seq Seq Seq

EEEEE EEEEEv l EEEE??? EEEE

Cau

Adv

Seq

Desc Seq

DDDDE EEEEval EEEE?EEEDEEEEEEEEEDDEE???EEE

Expl Expl Com Com ExplExplExplResp

Level: II 4, III 21, IIII 1, IV 1 Level: II 4, III 38, IIII 8

4 dierent relationships: Event, 6 dierent relationships: Event,

Evaluation, Cause and Description, Comment, Response,

Adversative, Explanation and Evaluation.



Sentence complexity: 75% Sentence complexity: 62%


Sentence length: 10.16 Sentence length: 12.75

Number o clauses: 23 Number o clauses: 46Subordination: 2 (8%) Subordination: 9 (19%)

Coordination: 8 (34%) Coordination: 11 (23%)


16/26


17/26


suddenly she-had behind her a strange thie

the lady holds them tight

They were nearly drown

It is obvious that in both stories the discourse style is qualitatively dierentrom the weak bilinguals stories. We need to know though which o the twomaterials had a greater eect on the degree o using this style. From the resultso the surface level it seems that the translation was more acilitative than thedirect composition. Firstly, the translation was more productive (204 words vs.96 words) with more clauses. Subordination, longer sentences and more clausesper sentence were greater in the translation story. However, the direct composi-tion produced slightly more complex sentences than the translation. Perhapsthe most notable advantage o the direct composition against translation is

that it produced ewer unknown structures (all measurements in Table 7). Thisshould be interpreted in the context o the other text characteristics particu-larly the increased productivity. The translation story appears to be moreadventurous than the direct composition, which may involve more experimen-tation and thereore more errors.

In brie, it seems that the translation task has enabled Pelpan to write in aslightly more eective way in all three levels. This is a very representativeprole o her language group, as the same pattern o discourse appears in theother stories o the group.

Summary o strong balanced bilingual

Despite the erroneous language, there is a L2 style albeit o low pro-ciency.3 Both stories make requent use o various cohesive techniques, whichmeans that the stories are not rigid and blunt. The method most successul inalmost all levels o story production is translation.

GOPLAST (sign language dominant)Goplast is an 18-year-old emale student in the last class o lyceum. She comesrom a hearing amily. She was ound by all assessors to be very good in GSL(a mean o 3.5 on a scale o 14) but not in written Greek (a mean o 1.75).Consequently, she was placed in the sign language dominant group as her GSLwas above average and her written Greek was below average. Her texts (Tables8 and 9) and measurements (Table 10) are shown here.

3 By L2-writing style we do not assume homogeneity in bilingual writing but we assume some


18/26


Sign Language dominant: analysis and results o the writing prole

Starting rom the information level (amount o inormation), only the transla-tion story is complete. The direct composition does not have the closureelement. The basic story lines are incomplete in both stories; however, the directcomposition story is more aected. As ar as the type o inormation is concerned,the two materials were almost the same (all measurements in Table 10). Ingeneral though, translation has produced a greater quantity o details. Theabove behaviour is characteristic o the sign language dominant group.

The dierent stimuli made an impact on the amount o inormation but noton the type o inormation where both materials were treated the same by thei l d i t it

Table 8: Sign language dominants direct composition story.1

THE STRAWBERRY LADY

A THE LADY WILL GO TO THE FRUITS. WANTS WILL BUY STRAWBERRIES. A

BAD WANTS VERY MUCH WILL TAKE THE STRAWBERRIES AND ENVIES HER.

WANTS EFFORT WILL TAKE AND CANNOT. AFTER FOLLOWS HER. THE LADY

LEFT. WILL GO OUT TO THE WOOD. AND IS FOLLOWING HER. IS VERY THIRSTY.

THE LADY GAVE HIM THE STRAWBERRIES.

1She wrote her story in capital letters.

Table 9: Sign language dominants translation story.1

THE FROG STORY

A THE CHILD HOW OLD IS HE? 7 HE IS. HE LIKES THE DOG BOY. AT NIGHT

SLEEP. AND HIS ROOM BESIDE THE DOG BOY. AT NIGHT DOG LEFT. IN THE

MORNING THE CHILD WOKE UP THE DOG WHERE IS. IS LOOKING WHERE. THE

WINDOW HE-CALLS IT. SEES THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG. THE WINDOW

FELL THE DOG THEY-GO WHERE LOOK-FORYOU-SEE A THE TREE. THEY-LOOK-

FOR THEY-ARE SCARED A THE MOUSE. THEY CANNOT THEY-GET OFF FROM

THE TREE. AND THEY SCARE OWL. IT-LOOKS-LIKE DEERS. THE BEHIND DOG

TOGETHER DEER. FELL THE RIVERS. THE CHILD HELP THE DOG. THEY-RUNTHEY-SEE THEY-GET-MARRIED. THEY ARE BORNED EITHER FOUR OR FIVE

LITTLE-DOGS. THE DOG DOESNT WANT IT AT HIS HOUSE. HE-WANTS TO

STAY THE TREE. GIVE A LITTLE DOG GO TO HIS HOUSE. ALRIGHT.

1She wrote her story in capital letters.


19/26


direct composition appears to be poorer on the higher levels but this is becauseit is incomplete and lacks important episodes. Both stories present the thirdl l th t d d E th h th t l ti d d id bl

Table 10: Sign language dominants summary o measurements: comparisons between

direct composition and translation.

Results rom direct composition Results rom translation

Inormation level: Inormation level:

Amount o inormation Amount o inormation

Story grammar 3/4 (75%) Story grammar 4/4 (100%)

Basic story lines 4/7 (57%) Basic story lines 5/6 (83%)

Type o inormation Type o inormation

Descriptive 82% Descriptive 84%

Aective 18% Aective 16%


Seq

Seq Seq Seq

E D D E E E E E E E E E

Expl Expl Com Com

Seq

Desc Seq Seq Seq Seq

D D D D E D E E E E E D E E E E E E E E E DE E E E E E E E

D D

Expl, Expl

(Level: II 3, III 12, IIII 4) (Level: II 5, III 33, IIII 4)

4 dierent nodes: Event, Cause 3 dierent nodes: Event, Description, and

Explanation



Sentence complexity: 27% Sentence complexity: 14%


Sentence length: 4.72 Sentence length: 4.77

Clauses: 16 Clauses: 37

Subordination: 0% Subordination: 2 (5%)

Coordination: 3 (18%) Coordination: 1 (3%)

Unknown 3 (18%) Unknown: 14 (37%)

Clause per sentence: 1.45 Clause per sentence: 1.37


20/26


On the surface level there are areas acilitated by the translation, such asproductivity (109 words in translation vs.59 in direct composition). Otherareas had no dierence such as sentence length, clauses per sentence and sub-

ordination. Eventually there are areas acilitated by the direct composition suchas unknown structures.One cannot compare this style o treating the material with any o the other

two writers. The strong bilingual avoured the translation whereas the weakbilingual seemed to avour the direct composition. It seems that the signlanguage dominant writer does not avour either material or the material hasa mixed eect depending on the aspect o writing. In addition, the generaldiscourse style is distinct rom both other writers. The most notable charac-teristic is packed inormation where the text is used and un-segmented and

the pieces o inormation mingle with each other without clear boundaries.This eect is created mainly rom a predisposition to grouping 1) verbs and 2)nouns without the use o links:

1) For example, serial verbs:

THEY-RUN THEY-SEE THEY-GET-MARRIED. THEY-ARE-BORNED EITHER FOUR

OR FIVE LITTLE-DOGS. (Translation)

2) For example, serial nouns:

SEES THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG. (Translation)

Another notable characteristic contributing to the packed discourse style isthe non-use o existential and communication verbs such as to be, to have,to say, etc.

Sign language infuence is obvious in the writings o Goplast, particularlythe translation. For example:

For example, A THE CHILD HOW OLD IS? HE 7 HE IS.

This is a typical rhetorical question used in sign language to draw attention tonew inormation. It has also been described as a type o topic-comment struc-ture (Sutton-Spence and Woll, 1999). In act, looking at the translation storythe topic-comment structures occur throughout. Some examples ollowed bypossible interpretations:

For example, (3) . . . THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG = It is the toy box where the dog

was inside

(4) THE WINDOWFELL THE DOG = It is rom the window that the dog ell

The above constructs do not exist in the direct composition. The topic-

comment structure was very common among sign language dominant writersas well as among the strong balanced bilinguals, which supports the possibilityth t it i i t i l i f


21/26


reading the story as the three main characters are now reduced to two. Beorewe assume that the writer either does not know the Greek word or rog orthat she did not understand the video, we must consider again the infuence

o sign language. In sign language, the deault way to reer to the story charac-ters involves using space plus the signers body as a reerent. The economy osign language predicts that the space will provide X-1 reerents, as the signer-narrator will act the missing reerent (Ahlgren and Bergman, 1990) (reerentconusion was not uncommon among the other members o this group). Itwould appear that this student was conused as to the reerent.

The direct composition appears to have a more written Greek style.Sentences are slightly shorter and adopt more the S-V-O order, which makesit easier to read. The direct composition is simpler than translation, which

probably indicates that the writer was preoccupied with a less onerous task: inthe video story there is a more adventurous approach as translation rom alanguage gets in the way and the nal product is restricted by low written skills.So it may be the case that, direct composition rom pictures reduces the chaino tasks involved in writing.

Summary o sign language dominant

The writing style can be described as packed where the narration reads used

and sometimes incomprehensible. Much o the apparent conusion can beexplained as a sign language transer. Neither method/material was particularlyavoured.

DISCUSSION AND CONSIDERATIONS

The analyses o the written stories revealed a dierent writing prole or eachrepresentative o a language group. The weak bilingual adopted an item-listprole where the sentences o his story resemble an unconnected list o items.

The strong bilingual adopted a more L2 writing prole making use o variouscohesion means. The sign language dominant produced a packed inormationprole where the written story is presented all-in-one-breath without clearboundaries between events.

As ar as the stimulus material is concerned it has been suggested in the lit-erature that its eect varies within dierent prociency groups. Using transla-tion, or example, may help low level bilingual students, particularly on theinormation and organisation level (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992). In our casestudies, this eect was corroborated: the strong bilingual avoured the transla-

tion material, the weak bilingual avoured the direct composition material andthe sign language dominant student showed a variety o results. The groupsth t th t th th ti l t i l di t


22/26


many dea students (i.e. weak bilinguals and sign language dominants) do nott a known L2 prole.

The above considerations hold great educational interest or dea

education:

Dea students, despite their dierences in their language prociencies, aretaught in the same classes trying to ollow a curriculum designed orhearing students whose language experience is relatively homogeneous.The present paper places dea writing in a unique bilingual context wherebynone o the languages involved can be taken or granted and thereore deaeducation has to deal with multiple bilingual proles in a singleclassroom.

The material used in bilingual writing may acilitate dierent aspects othe text. For example, dea writing has the reputation o having a dry style(Everhart and Marschark, 1988). This may refect the need to acilitateaective inormation. Also, dea writing has been described as havingvarying degrees o unintelligibility, which may refect the need to acilitatetext organisation.

The importance o explicitly drawing attention to non-manual aspects osign language during the teaching o dea students (Swanwick, 1999).Proper interpretation o non-manual cues may help ameliorate the phe-

nomenon o extreme presence o visual cues rom certain students, mostapparent in the packed inormation as demonstrated in the present paper.I the processing o sign language is less sequential than spoken/writtenlanguages, this is something that contrasts with writing which is sequen-tial-linear. Here, educational practice may need to work on contrastivetranslation between languages.

Finally, this study suggests that manipulating the linguistic input as well astaking into account prociency in both languages can have some eect on

dierent aspects o writing. The act that this eect is not global on all aspectso writing may put in perspective our expectations rom bilingual methods ingeneral and, in specic, their application in dea education. Realising thepotentials and limitations o bilingual approaches will help dea education its goals, methods and students become better dened.


23/26


APPENDIX A: FRAGMENT OF A TREE DIAGRAM FORSTORY ORGANISATION

Temporal Sequence

Event Event Event Description18 20 21 23

Description Adversative Explanation19 22 24

Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode X Episode X+

This is an example o how a tree diagram shows the relationships in a story. Ithas 4 levels, the deepest has 3 clauses, and there are 4 dierent types o rela-tionships presented (Event/Description/Adversative/Explanation).

The numbers under the relationships indicate the clauses o the narrative.

E.g.: [. . .]18) Some other time again he saw a lady19) who has the strawberries20) was running21) and ollowed22) but lady disappeared in the wood23) is boy disappointing24) because not is-ound the strawberries

[. . .]

REFERENCES

Ahlgren I, Bergman B. Preliminaries on narrative discourse in Swedish sign languages. In:

Prillwitz S, Vollhaber T (Eds) Current Trends in European Sign Language Research.

Proceedings o the 3rd European Congress on Sign Language Research. Hamburg, 2629 July

(International Studies on Sign Language and Communication o the Dea; 9). Hamburg.

Signum, 1990.

Anderson JJ. Beyond Small Words and Grammar. Linguistic Analysis and Dea Writers: Towards

a Pedagogy o Meaning and Representation.Burtonsville. Linstok Press, 1993.

Bang GMG. The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher. New York. Four Winds Press,


24/26


Cook V. Using the rst language in the classroom. The Canadian Modern Language Review/

La Review Canadienne des Langues Vivantes 2001; 57: 402423.

Cummins J. Interdependence o rst- and second-language prociency in bilingual children. In:

Bialystok E (Ed.) Language Processing in Bilingual Children. New York. Cambridge

University Press, 1991.Everhart VS, Marschark M. Linguistic fexibility in signed and written language productions o

dea children.Journal o Experimental Child Psychology, 1988; 46: 174193.

Fraser JA. A comparison o the writing in English o British dea students and non-native hearing

students. Unpublished Masters Thesis. London. Kings College, 2001.

Grabe W, Kaplan RB. Theory and Practice o Writing. New York. Longman, 1996.

Grosjean F. The right o the dea child to grow up bilingual. Sign Language Studies, 2001; 1:

110114.

Hakuta K, Butler YG, Witt D. How long does it take English learners to attain prociency? The

University o Caliornia Linguistic Minority Research Institute, Policy report 20001,

2000.

Hickmann M, Hendriks H. Cohesion and anaphora in childrens narratives: a comparison o

English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese. Journal o Child Language, 1999; 26:

419452.

Kamberelis G. Genre development and learning: children writing stories, science reports and

poems. Research in the Teaching o English, 1999; 33: 403460.

Kobayashi H, Rinnert C. Eects o rst language on second language writing: translation versus

direct composition. Language Learning, 1992; 42: 183215.

Koutsoubou M. Dea ways o writing narratives: a bilingual approach. In: Rijlaarsdam G,

Van Den Berg H, Couzijn M (Eds) Eective Learning and Teaching o Writing. 2nd ed.

Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004a.

Koutsoubou M. Dea ways o writing narratives: translation vs. composition in dea groups withdierent bilingual skills. Department o Language and Communication Science, City

University, London, 2004b.

Labov W. Some Further Steps in Narrative Analysis, 1997. www.ling.upenn.edu/~wwlabov/ss.

html (accessed 14 July 2003).

Lampropoulou V. The history o dea education in Greece. In: Erting C, Johnson R, Smith D,

Snider B (Eds) The Dea Way: perspectives rom the International Conerence on Dea

Culture. Washington D.C. Gallaudet University Press, 1994.

Langer JA. Children Reading and Writing: Structures and Strategies. Norwood, New Jersey.

Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1986.

Malako M, Hakuta K. Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals. In: Bialstok

E (Ed.) Language Processing in Bilingual Children. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press,1991.

Mann W, Thompson S. Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a unctional theory o text

organization. Text, 1988; 8: 243281.

Marschark M, Siple P, Lillo-Martin D, Campbell R, Everhart VS (Eds). Relations o Language

and Thought. The View rom Sign Language and Dea Children. New York. Oxord

University Press, 1997.

Mayer C, Akamatsu CT. Bilingual-bicultural models o literacy education or dea students:

considering the claims.Journal o Dea Studies and Dea Education, 1999; 4: 18.

Mercer M. Frog, where are you? New York. Pun Books, 1969.

ODonnell M. RST Tool an RST markup tool. 3.1 or windows ed, 2002. www.wagsot.com/RSTTool/

Paul P. Language and Deaness. San Diego. Singular Thompson Learning, 2001.


25/26


Porter RP. The case against bilingual education. The Atlantic Monthly, 1998; 281: 2839.

Powers S, Gregory S, Thoutenhood E. The educational achievements o dea children a

literature review. DEE Research Report RR65. Suolk. DEE Publications, 1998.

Reilly J, Losh M, Bellugi U, Wuleck B. Frog, where are you? Narratives in children with specic

language impairment, early ocal brain injury and Williams syndrome. Brain and Language,2004; 88: 229247.

Silliman ER, Jimerson TL, Wilkinson LC. A dynamic systems approach to writing assessment

in students with language learning problems. Topics in Language Disorders, 2000; 20:

4564.

Singleton JL, Morgan D, Digello E, Wiles J, Rivers R. Vocabulary use by low, moderate, and

high ASL-procient writers compared to hearing ESL and monolingual speakers.Journal o

Dea Studies and Dea Education, 2004; 9: 86103.

Stein NL, Glenn CG. An analysis o story comprehension in elementary school children. In:

Freedle RO (Ed.) New Directions in Discourse Processes. Norwood, NJ. Ablex, 1979.

Sutton-Spence R, Woll B. The Linguistics o British Sign Language: An Introduction.

Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Swanwick RA. Dea childrens developing sign bilingualism: dimensions o language ability, use

and awareness. School o Education, Open University, 1999.

Swanwick RA. Sign bilingual dea childrens approaches to writing: individual strategies or

bridging the gap between BSL and written English. Deaness and Education International,

2002; 4: 6583.

Torrance M. Using rhetorical structure theory to explore deep generation processes in text

production. Research student seminar given at the Sig Writing 02 Conerence. University

o Staordshire, UK, 2002.

Turner V. Dea children and literacy: identiying appropriate tools and learning environment.

Dea Worlds, 2000; 16: 1725.Uzawa K. Second language learners processes o L1 writing, L2 writing and translation rom L1

to L2.Journal o Second Language Writing, 1996; 5: 271294.

Wang W, Wen Q. L1 use in the L2 composing process: an exploratory study o 16 Chinese EFL

writers.Journal o Second Language Writing, 2002; 11: 235246.

Address correspondence to: M.Koutsoubou, Research Ofcer, National Researchand Development Centre or Adult Literacy and Numeracy, Institute oEducation, University o London, 20 Bedord Way, London WC1H 0AL.(E-mail: [email protected])


26/26

Documents

02 Bilingual Language Profiles of Deaf Students