Dr Diana Burman University of Oxford Winner of

Dr Diana Burman University of Oxford Winner of the 2006 Michael Young Research Prize Researching Deaf Children’s Literacy Prof Terezinha Nunes Deborah Evans Danny Bell Addy Gardner ESRC Research Methods Festival St Catherine’s College, Oxford Thursday 3 rd July 2008

Deafness One in 1, 000 babies born in the UK each year is deaf n Only 2% of deaf school leavers are able to read at their appropriate age level n 98% leave school functionally illiterate n WHY?

Literacy Learning Writing is the written form of the spoken word n Congenitally deaf children have never accurately heard words spoken n Therefore they are unable to think in words in their head n Therefore deaf children find reading and writing very challenging n

National Curriculum Writing Assessment Level 1. n n n Pupils’ writing communicates meaning through simple words and phrases. In their reading of their writing, pupils begin to show awareness of how full stops are used. Letters are usually clearly shaped and correctly orientated. No writing assessments exist for measuring deaf BSL users early attempts at English literacy.

The Problem Criteria used to measure writing progress in hearing children are inadequate for many deaf children. Assessments for writing samples of hearing children start at a level in advance of writing samples of many deaf children

Aims n To develop a teaching programme for deaf primary school children to improve their literacy n To devise literacy assessments To monitor their progress in literacy To provide a framework for teachers 1. 2.

Grammatical and morphological differences between BSL and English n n n There is not always a one to one correspondence between a word and a sign (e. g. ‘up until now’). Sentence structures vary (e. g. boy play where? ). BSL expresses interrogative and negative through non -manual features. BSL does not use tenses to denote time. Plurality in BSL is denoted by quantity; the noun remains the same. BSL does not contain many function or content words – to/at; is/was; nor the definite or indefinite article – the/a.

Fingerspelling is where each alphabetic letter is represented by a hand finger configuration n It has been developed by hearing educators in an attempt to bridge signlanguage with written language n It has to be taught to deaf children as a pre -curser to literacy n

Phonological awareness n is important for literacy learning, but so are Morphemes these are units of meaning rather than units of sound n Some spellings appear irregular from their letter sounds, but are regular in their units of meaning magician = magic + ian n

Morphemes in English Morphemes have a fixed spelling n Morphemes are related to grammar n ¨ ‘er’ is used to make person words from verbs (read-reader) ¨ ‘ian’ is used to make person words from nouns (magician) ¨ Analyzing words into morphemes helps children break long words into smaller units, accessible to visual coding - unbreakable = unbreakable n Visual coding is used more by deaf than hearing children to remember spellings of words

Question 1 Are deaf children using morphemes?

Spelling assessment: Pretest example

Hypothesis n If taught, deaf children could learn to use morphemes to spell English words, n to decode English words in reading, and n to help them plan writing because of the important connections between morphemes and English grammar.

The Teaching Programme targeted morphemes from 11 English classifications: 1. Plurals ‘s’ 2. Regular past tense ‘-ed’ 3. 3 rd person singular 4. Person words ‘-er’ 5. Person words ‘-ist’ ‘windows’ ‘jumped’ ‘Now Sophie walks’ ‘teacher’ ‘artist’

Targeted morphemes (contd. ) 6. Person words ‘-ian’ 7. Suffixes ‘-ful’ 8. ‘-less’ 9. ‘-ment’ 10. ‘-ion’ 11. ‘-ness’ ‘magician’ ‘painful’ ‘painless’ ‘government’ ‘competition’ ‘tiredness’

1. Singular and Plural n BSL = 1 dog; 4 dog n English = 1 dog; 4 dogs

1 bun 6 buns ?

1 flower ? 3 flowers

mats tie spoons

Tense to denote time 2. Regular past tense 3. Third person singular n English = I walk now I walked yesterday n BSL I walk now I walk yesterday =

Last week she danced.

Now she d………. . dances. .

Now granny cooks.

Last night granny cooked. c………. . .

Third Person Singular and Regular Past Tense Bingo Game

Regular past tense: Story Book

Irregular Verbs

Reported speech

Name the person who…… n 4. ‘-er’ n 5. ‘-ist’ n 6. ‘-ian’

er ist ian A person who reads is a reader

A person who makes art is an art ist er ist ian

A person who makes magic is a magician er ist ian

artist O magician O electrician O florist X teacher X

teacher X artist O magician O electrician O florist X

Grace. . ……. likes school.

On Tuesday Grace …………. writes in her science book. She likes science and she’s a scientist/writer. good ……………….

This is Sir Isaac Newton. He was a scientist and a mathematician.

He liked science…. .

…. . and he liked mathematics.

Suffixes that change word meanings in predictable ways: n 7. ‘-ful’ n 8. ‘-less’

He had a cut. He was in pain. The cut was painful. pain___.

Then the cut got better. He had no painless. pain. The cut was pain____.

The puppy was playful. She ran fast; She arrived breathless. The magician was wonderful. The cut was painful. © Diana Burman & Addy Gardner Broken glass can be harmful. Tom made lots of mistakes; he was careless.

Suffixes n 9. ‘-ment’ n 10. ‘-ion’ n 11. ‘-ness’

We must look after our environment with the correct punctuation. We vote for people to govern to find out the exact measurement. We measure rooms he went to sleep satisfied. The grey paving stones those people form our government. The teacher said, “Punctuate this sentence” made a grey pavement. The cat ate to his satisfaction by reducing pollution.

Assessments n Spelling n Reading n Writing

1. These are w………. . . .

3. Yesterday this man j………… over the babies.

Post-test results of Spelling with Suffixes controlling for age, IQ and pretest scores (n=132)

Evidence of increased use of morphemes in spelling Effect size: 0. 49

Post-test Sample (Score 14; Max 14)

Post-test results of Reading Comprehension controlling for age, IQ and pre-test scores

Writing Assessment Initially 35 children were invited to write about the same 4 -picture sequence story at pre-test and post-test.

Scoring n Six experienced teachers of the deaf ranked the deaf children’s writing productions into 5 bands. These represented knowledge of written English - Band ‘E’ (the weakest) to Band ‘A’ (the strongest).

Band ‘E’ examples (8 boys; 2 girls)

Band E n (Children may not understand that writing is a form of communication based on an oral/aural communication system) Demonstrate an ability to: n Place words the correct way up in order to copy-write n Write some alphabetic letters in sequence to resemble words n Memorise some fingerspelling configurations and their corresponding written letter n Produced letter sequences for isolated words, which may/may not be relevant

Band ‘D’ examples (4 boys; 3 girls)

Band ‘C’ examples (5 boys; 1 girl)

Band D & Band C Appear to understand that writing is a communication system n Produce some letter sequences to form relevant words, with some obscure spellings n Write words in BSL order, with emerging English syntax Band C n Place words in a more coherent order with greater awareness of English syntax n

Band ‘B’ examples (3 boys; 2 girls)

Band ‘A’ examples (1 boy; 3 girls)

Band Band A Band B n Transcribe BSL into English n Follow through characterisation with an action (e. g. ‘he pack a clohes for to go to hoilday’ / ‘he finish he carried bag’) Band A n Produce sufficient English syntax for coherent communication

Reliability n The correlations between the six teachers scores were high and significant (between r = 0. 57 and r = 0. 94, p<0. 001; n = 32). n These Bands of writing profiles therefore provide a reliable instrument that can be used by teachers of the deaf for both assessment and progression in teaching.

A further study involved supported by The Nuffield Foundation involved: n 257 deaf children n Spread across the UK n

Dissemination Michael Young Prize 2006 n 1. 2. BBC Woman’s Hour Raised awareness of the link between deaf ness and literacy Many private individuals and professionals in the UK contacted me seeking further details of the research