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EndnoteLanguage Development in Deaf ChildrenFrank BoweHofstra University

As we near the tenth anniversary of the report of theCommission on Education of the Deaf (Bowe, 1988), Ibelieve our foremost challenge is to accelerate languagedevelopment among deaf children and youths. Thecommission's repo rt has led to some real progress o ver-all in education of deaf children and youths (see, forexample, Bowe, 1991, and Bowe, 1993). Nonetheless,we face stub born problems. In this article, I present mypersonal views, to which I welcome reader reaction,about what I believe to be the most important of these.

The challenge of which I write here is not an issuethat government can or should address. As I put it inmy keynote address to the 57th Biennial Conference ofthe Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf(CAID) in Minneapolis (Bowe, 1995b):

We've done about as much as we're likely to do onnational policy, at least for the foreseeable future.No one, least of all me, is satisfied with the state-of-the-art in deaf education. Further gains, how-ever, are going to have to come at other levels, mostespecially in the classroom. What happens there is,and should be, beyond the reach of national policy.Accelerating language developm ent was the subject

of "COED 3," the third of 52 recommendations madeI think Oscar P. Cohen of the Lexington School for the Deaf, Robert R-Divila of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Joseph E. Fisch-grund of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, and Nancy B. Ranis ofthe National Association of the Dea f for their contributions to the prepa-ration of this article. Correspondence should be tent to Frank Bowe, Ma -son Hall, Room 111,124 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11S5O-1090(e-mail: safgb@ hofstra.edu).Copyright C 1998 Oxford University Press. CC C 1081-4159

by the commission. That recommendation capturedthe commission's frustration with the seemingly intrac-table problem of facilitating linguistic competence bydeaf students. It is a widely shared fru stration. Th egeneral nature of the problem is well-understood. Sur-veys by the Center for Assessment and DemographicStudies at Gallaudet (e.g., Allen, 1994), as well as re-search s tretching back decades (e.g., Stuckless &Birch,1966; Vernon, 1967), have shown a depressing pattern:deaf students struggle to reach third- or fourth-gradereading levels by age 13 or 14, when students with nor-mal hearing achieve at seventh- or eighth-grade levels.During the high-school years, deaf students tend to"pla teau " at those levels, rather than to advance further(see the comm ission's fina l rep ort, B owe, 1988, pp. 1524 , and B raden, 1994, and Paul & Quigley, 1994).

These persistent low levels of mastery of Englishare especially disturbing to me because they occur aswe move ever deeper into the "Information Age"atime in which our society places a premium on acquir-ing, analyzing, reporting, and using information. Mas-tery of written English is often essential for such work.My father was able to get and keep a good job despitenot having completed college. The students of todayare not likely to secure well-paying jobs unless theyhave the education and the skills to understand anduse information.

Were they to be equipped with such comp etencies,individuals who are deaf could enjoy almost limitlessacademic and vocational success by tapping today'stechnologies (Bowe, 1994). An ever-growing propor-

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74 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:1 Winter 1998tion of business and other communications takes placetoday via e-mail and fax. My consulting work thesedays is conducted almost entirely through e-mail, fax,and the Interne t all of which are 100% (or nearly so)visual communications mediums. As a deaf person, Iam an equal-opportunity participant in these commu-nication modes. What has fascinated me over the pastfive years is how eagerly m y hearin g colleagues haveembraced these technologiesbecause they seek ref-uge from time-consuming "real-time" voice telephonecalls. Th ere is, however, a caveat to all this: virtually allof these services and products present information viathe written word. In order to take advantage of thesetechnologies, I must (all of us must) possess strongreading and writing skills.

COED's recommendation was that research andpractice priorities be placed on helping deaf childrento acquire language. For me, this principally meansfinding ways to help deaf children and youths to learnlanguage. Notice that I did not say "to teach languageto deaf children and youths." I believe that linguisticcompetence is not at bottom something that can betaught; rather, it must be learned. The concept that ourbrains are wired to extract structure from innumerablesentences, whether heard or seen, and from them togenerate a personal syntax is both long-standing andwell-established (Chomsky, 1965). What it is not iswell-applied, in programs serving deaf children. Tostretch the point somewhat, our brains do not take wellto pedagogical presentations of the Fitzgerald Key(Fitzgerald, 1929). Yet the approach of teaching lan-guage, albeit no longer with the Fitzgerald Key, contin-ues to this day to dominate education for deaf children.

Lest I be misunderstood here, let me emphasizethat I am not saying that teachers of the deaf are notdoing the best jobs they know how to do. I think by andlarge they are. Rather, they have not been given thetools to do b etter. O ur task, as a field, is to develop, test,revise, and use such tools.

Current ApproachesWhat I have seen in programs serving deaf childrenand youths, with few exceptions, are approaches thatemphasize teaching language. These techniques aresomewhat different from those the commission re-

viewed in preparing COED 3, but in othe r ways remainmuch the same. A good summary of the state-of-the-art at that time was offered by King (1984). She pre-sented findings from a survey of 233 programs servingdeaf children and youths:

It can be seen that hearing-impaired children arefrequently taught to produce, analyze, and correctsentences using some type of symbol system. . . .Most programs (81.1%) also teach young hearing-impaired students to categorize words or sentencesaccording to the categories of the symbol system,(p. 315)

King reported use of a variety of teaching strategies.Nonetheless, she acknowledges: "[N]o evidence sup-ports any methods as the best approach for teachinglan gu ag e.. . ." (King, 1984, p. 315).

More recently, some schools and programs haveadopted whole language and .bilingual/bicultural ap-proaches. Whole language techniquesdespite thesurface appeal of their call for "natural language" andto "teach language in context"are controversial inthe read ing field as a whole. In deaf educa tion, I wouldexpect them to be even more problematic: whole lan-guage instruction assumes a fundamental mastery ofthe language by the student who is learning to read andwrite, a mastery most deaf children clearly lack. In thepast few years, particularly in center schools, we havealso seen bilingual/bicultural approaches in whichAmerican Sign Language (ASL) is used as the primarylanguage of instruction. Again, however, this seems tobe occurring without the benefit of a careful examina-tion of fundamental issues. The real danger in bothtechniques is that we may fail again, not because theapproaches were not useful, but rather because we donot know how best to implement them (J. E. F isch-grund, personal communication, May 16, 1997).

Through whatever techniques, schools and pro-grams continue to attempt to teach language, ratherthan support its learning by deaf students. If I am cor-rect that language must be learned, rather than taught,this immediately raises a question that King did notattempt to answer: how can teachers and parents facili-tate such learning? I believe this is the central researchand practice question in deafness education today.



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Language Development inDeaf Children 75

Some ToolsWe do have some clues as to what we might do. Myown experience, and that of other deaf adults withwhom I have discussed this, such asRobert Davila andthe late Terrence J. O'Rourke, is that reading duringchildhooda great deal of readingis what did it forus . In my case, I literally had no option. I had been"dum ped " into a local school system that hadnever be-fore worked with a deaf student; the unsurprising con-sequence for me was that time spent in class was notproductive in advancing my edu cation. And nothing ontelevision was captioned. My only means to entertainmyself were playing sportsand reading. By the timeI entered ninth grade, I had done so much reading thatI had mirrored the linguistic input hearing children ac-quire without conscious effort. The result was the samefor me as it was for them: from the innumerable in-stances of English, my brain had constructed a work-able syntaxand I had learned the language.

Today, television captioning oflfers another inputmode that we should explore, especially with youngdeaf children. Many children's television programs,such as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood,are captioned. The Telecommunications Act of 1996(P.L. 104-104) requires that virtually all video pro-gramming be captioned by some time after 2001. Giventelevision's strong appeal to children, captioning is atechnology th at offers real promise for accelerating lan-guage acquisition precisely because it provides the richinput that most children acquire via hearing and that Igot from reading.

That, however, begs an important research ques-tion: how can deaf children, especially young ones, ac-quire language throu gh, among o ther means, televisionand video captioning? Cartoons and other children'sprogramming hasbeen captioned for many years, yet Ihave not seen over that period an accompanying rise inlanguage competency among deaf children. Why is itthat we have not yet realized the promise of this tech-nology? Certainly, onepossibility is that captioned vid-eos may not have been made available to deaf childrenwho are mainstreamed in the public schools (R. R.Davila, personal communication, May 21 , 1997). Still,one would have expected television viewing at homeduring the preschool years, and especially on Saturday

mornings, to yield discernible results. I am particularlydisturbed that I have seen so little research on cap-tioning (aside from the work of Loeterman, below) inthe past 10 to 15 years. We urgently need research anddevelopment in this area.

A related co ncept, for me, is that learning languageshould be an active process. This ideathat deaf chil-dren learn language better and faster when they are ac-tive participants in the processis solidly groun ded inimportant research by Peter de Villiers, the Sophia andAustin Sm ith Professor of Psychology at Smith College(viz. de Villiers & Pomerantz, 1992; Hoffmeister, deVilliers, Engen, & Topol, 1997). Dr. de Villiers testifiedon language acquisition before the Commission on Ed-ucation of the Deaf.

The Clarke School for the Deaf, whose presidentDennis Gjerdingen was a member of the commission,offers a curriculum that provides an example of activelearning (de Villiers, Buuck, Findlay, & Shelton, 1994).Another example is offered by the Lexington Schoolfor the Deaf, in Queens (O. P. Cohen, personal comm u-nication, May 13, 1997). Lexington recently revampedits preK-12 curriculum to feature a conceptual frame-work for active learning. The approach stresses devel-opme nt by stude nts of cognitive foundations, attitudes,and problem-solving skills that enable them to learn, inschool and out. Assessment of student progress callsfor the students to apply, rather than just report, infor-mation.

I have also been impressed by the potential of ASLto enhance linguistic com petence in deaf children. Re-search reported in an earlier issue of this journal byMichael Strong and Philip Prinz (1997) suggests quitestrongly th at the long-known tendency of deaf studentswho have deaf parents to excel academically over deafstudents who have hearing parents appears to be attrib-utable, in large pa rt, to the fact that the former groupis fluent in at least one language. That is, expertise inASL could facilitate acquisition of English. Again, thisbegs an urgent research question: how, in practicalterms, can we make that happen in our schools (J. E.Fischgrund, personal communication, May 16, 1997)?

Clearly, we need to develop curricula in which ASLuse accelerates English language competency, espe-cially in the preschool years. Given the brain's develop-mental patterns, acquisition of some language during



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76 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:1 Winter 1998the early childhood years is essential. When parents,early interventionists, and preschool teachers are fluentin AS L, the use of ASL in everyday comm unication aswell as in instruction may well be indicated, since it isa highly visible language, readily accessible to youngdeaf children as long as vision is not seriously im-paired. All of this remains more theoretical than practi-cal at this point. Fundamental questions remain unan-swered: In day-to-day terms, what does the teacher doto use ASL to accelerate English language acquisition?

Even assuming answers to that question, some ca-veats remain about bilingual/bicultural approaches(Bowe, 1992). Because the vast majority of young deafchildren have hearing parents, we cannot anticipatethat A SL will be a first language for more than 10% to15 % of young deaf children. Although there are excep-tions, my experience continues to be that most hearingparents cling to interventions based upon speech andlipreading and resist learning ASL. Not many becomefluent enough in the language to provide intelligible in-put for their young children. It may be time for us as afield to give up the long-held hope that all, or at leastmost, p arents will master AS L (R. R. Davila, personalcomm unication, May 2 1, 1997). Meanw hile, few earlyintervention or preschool programs have children formore than a few hours each week (Bowe, 1995a); evenif the teachers are highly skilled in ASL, they just donot spend enough time with the children to make upfor the parents' deficiencies in the language. The po-tential of ASL for accelerating English language acqui-sition by young deaf children may therefore be muchmore limited than advocates of bilingual/biculturaltechniques seem willing to concede.

In addition, I have another concern. Some advo-cates of using ASL with young deaf children insist alsoon delaying the introduction of English, includingreading, until the later elementary school years(Moores, Walworth, & O'Ro urke, 1992). I strongly op -pose such notions, for three reasons. First, there is noreason to believe that exposure to more than one lan-guage limits the acquisition of any one language (see,for example, Strong & Prinz, 1997). Second, the brain'splasticity is such that if reading competence is not ac-quired by the mid-elementary years, children maynever become comfortable with reading and writing.And third, as I mentioned earlier, my own experience

and that of other deaf adults has been that reading is alinchpin to later academic and vocational success.

Looking at the middle-school and high-schoolyears, I believe our greatest challenge is to assist deafstudents to surmount the "plateau" that seems to stopcontinued progress. With these children and with ado-lescents, personal captioning shows considerable po-tential. Research in Boston by the WGBH NationalCenter for Accessible Media and by the Center for Ap-plied Special Technology suggests that deaf childrenand youths can improve their linguistic competence bycaptioning video programming (Loeterman, Kelly,Morse, Murphy, Rubin, Parasnis, & Samar, 1995). Inthis work, Mardi Loeterman and her colleagues haveshown that the opportunity to generate narrative cap-tions to describe student-produced videos is highlymotivating for deaf students, so much so that they per-sist in the effort until their captions efficiently andeffectively describe the video.

As Loeterman's work suggests, there is a place forteaching of language. Even experienced writers neededitors (I am no exception). Clear com munication is askill that must be honed over a period of years, andit is one that is greatly improved by expert review.For such editing to be effective, however, the writerneeds to have already developed and internalized a co-herent model of the language. That is why "teach-ing" language is something I believe is better suitedto the middle- and high-school levels, as a supple-ment to active learning. For the preschool and elemen-tary levels, I suspect the emp hasis must be on supp ort-ing the "learning" of language rather than on itsteaching.

Th at having been said, Loeterman's work su pportsthe continuation with m iddle- and high-school age stu-dents of active involvement rather than passive absorp-tion of knowledge. For the students who were cap-tioning their own videos, language was a means toaccomplish something: it had a social context that thestudent valued. It was not merely a memory require-ment imposed upon them by adults. However, thequestion must be asked: would the novelty quicklywear off? Th at is, is "personal captioning " helpful onlyon a sho rt-term basis? We need longitudinal studies ofthe effectiveness of such approach es (R. R. Davila, per-sonal communication, May 21 , 1997).



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Language Development inDeaf Children 77Conclus ionOur greatest need, it seems to me, is to research, de-velop, field test, and place into use a curriculum forparents and early interventionists to follow to giveyoung deaf children an active learning op portunity inwhich they acquire mastery of language in all its forms.I see roles in such a curriculum for reading, for cap-tioning, and for ASL. As Lexington's experience illus-trates, changing to a curriculum that fosters activelearning is not simply and quickly accomplished; it re-quires a program-wide and years-long commitment tostaff training in order for it to become effective. Thatis, I think, a price worth paying: we must move awayfrom the artificial teaching of language, simply be-cause, from all available evidence, it hasnot worked.

Almost as important, I believe, is discovering waysto help middle- and high-school deaf students to sur-mount the plateau at which they seem to become stuck.I have been impressed by the work of Loeterman inoffering active, highly motivating learning opportuni-ties. This approach offers incentives for students toidentify their own mistakes and to improve the claritywith which they express their thoughts. Although thespecific technique of persona l caption ing may be usefulonly for a limited time, the general strategy of makinglinguistic competency meaningful strikes me as beingprecisely what adolescents and young adults need tocontinue their journeys toward linguistic competence.

ReferencesAllen, T. E. (1994). Who are the deaf and hard-of-hearing stu-

dents leaving high school and entering postsecondary educa-tion? Unpublished manuscript.Washington, DC: GallaudetUniversity Center for Assessment and DemographicStudies.

Bowe, F. (Ed.). (1988). Toward equality: Education of the deaf.Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Bowe, F. (1991). Approaching equality. Silver Spring, MD: T. J.Publishers.

Bowe, F. (1992). Radicalism v. reason. In D. F. Moores, M.

Walworth, & T. J. O'Rourke (Eds.), A free hand. SilverSpring, MD: T. J. Publishers.

Bowe, F. (1993). Getting there: Update on recommendations bythe Commission on Education of th e Deaf. American Annalsof the Deaf, 138, 304-308.

Bowe, F. (1994). Technologies tha t hear and talk. Technology an dDisability, 3,1-10.

Bowe, F. (1995a). Birth to five: Early childhood special education.Albany, NY: Delmar Publishers.

Bowe, F. (1995b). Keynote address. Paper presented at the 57thBiennial Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf;Minneapolis , Minnesota; June 25.

Braden, J. P. (1994). Deafness, deprivation, andIQ. New York:Plenum Press.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of a theory of syntax. Cambridge,M A : MTT Press.

de Villiers, P. A., Buuck, M., Findlay, L., & Shelton, J. (1994). Alanguage arts curriculum for deaf students. Northampton, MA:Clarke School for the Deaf.

de Villiers, P. A., & Pomerantz, S. (1992). Hearing-impaired stu-dents learning new words from written context. Applied Psy-cholmgutstics, 12, 409-431 .Fitzgerald, E. (1929). Straight language for the deaf. Staunton,VA: McQure Company.

Hoflmeister, R. J., de Villiers, P. A., Engen, E., & Topol, D.(1997). English reading achievement and ASL skills in deafstudents. In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Boston UniversityConference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cas-cadilla Press.

King, C M. (1984). National survey of language methods usedwith hearing-impaired students in the United States. Amen-

can Annals ofthe Deaf, 729,311-316.Loeterman, M., Kelly, R. R_, Morse, A. B., Murphy, C, Rubin,

A., Parasnis, I., & Samar, V. (1995). Students as captioners:Approaches to writing and language development. Paper pre-sented at the 57th Biennial Convention of American Instruc-tors of th e Deaf; Minneapolis , Minneapolis ; June 27.

Moores, D. F, Walworth, M., & O'Rourke, T. J. (Eds.). (1992).A free hand. Silver Spring, MD: T. J. Publishers.

Paul, P. V, & Quigley, S. P. (1994). Language and deafness. 2nded . San Diego: Singular Publishing Group, Inc.

Strong, M., & Prinz, P. M. (1997). A study of the relationshipbetween American Sign Language and English literacy.Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2, 37-46.

Stuckless, E. R., & Birch, J. (1966). The influence of early man-ual communication on the linguistic development of deafchildren. American Annals of the Deaf, 106, 436-480 .

Vernon, M. (1967). Relationship of language to the thinking pro-cess. Archives of General Psychiatry, 16, 325-333.



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