Analysis of Articles about a Deafchild Learns to Read - Annotated Bibliography Example

Rottenberg, C. J. (2001). A deafchild learns to read. American Annals of The Deaf, 146(3), 270-275. Primarily, the case study conducted by Claire Rottenberg aimed to investigate and evaluate the literacy development, particularly the reading skill progression, of a deaf child – Jeffrey, a pseudonym (P.271, C.1, L17-19) – who lives at southwestern United States. He has a case of bilateral hearing loss which was discovered when he was one year old. To be able to obtain conclusive results, Rottenberg’s methodology required an observation of Jeffrey, who was at the beginning of the study a 4 year and 6 month-old preschool student, in his classroom for nine months for five hours a week (P.272, C.2, L26-29)detailing Jeffrey’s gestures, body movements, facial expressions, vocalizations, and signs (P.272, C.3, L6-9). Rottenberg also participated in classroom activities to have interaction with Jeffrey and his classmates(P271, C3, L50-53).In addition, interviews with Jeffrey’s parents about their roles, perspectives and personal observations to their child’s literacy development was also conducted(P.272, C.3, L14-22). Findings from the case study showed that the first phase of his reading development was influenced by his enthusiasm for books and pictures within it. He points or signs some details he would notice (P273, C.2, L.3-7). Afterwards, he learned to read familiar words in context (P.273, C.2. L.15-16). Sign print skill was later on developed and mastered by him until he was able to relate sign print to written English(P274, C.1., L.7-9).Finally, he learned to read independently without the aid of sign print in the last few months of the observation period (P274,C.2, L.3-7).Jeffrey’s positive attitude and interest towards reading, the support and constant interaction with his family members and the people around him, and the aid of different literacy materials such as sign print books, charts and experienced stories played a major role to his reading development. Williams, C. L. (1994). The language and literacy worlds of three profoundly deaf preschool children. Reading Research Quarterly, 29(2), 125-153. The author used a naturalistic case study method in this research due to the nature of the questions that were explored (P.129, C.1, L46-49). One of the case analyzed is a preschool, which involves deaf children from the ages of 3 to 7 year old, in the Preschool I, Preschool II, and Kindergarten levels (P.129, C.2, L.16-27).On the other hand, the case study children – Sue, Andrew, and John – were chosen to be observed to gain approximate data on diverse situations and experiences of deaf children (P.129, C.2, L44-53). Sue was 3.11 years old, Andrew was 5.0 years old, and John was 5.1 years old. This study aims to provide readers with an understanding of the differences of language used by deaf children to interact. Data collection was done by preparing unobtrusive observations, participant observations, and formal and informal interviews (P.131, C.1, L.45-51). Data gathering was conducted from September through February (P.131, C.2, L12-13). The research first analyzed the children’s verbal language worlds, which pertains to the modality that the family uses for communication and modality of instructional settings (P.133, C.2., L.37-53). Next, is the written language world of the children (P.140, C.1, L14-20). Last, is the analysis of the children’s knowledge and understanding of the written language (P.149, C.1, L.23-30). The results of the study coincide with other previous studies which suggest that language acquisition and written language development occur simultaneously, and further reinforces each development stage (P.149, C.2, L23-26). Another finding in this study is that verbal language is independent from written language (P.149, C.2, L51-52). Williams, C. L. (1999). Preschool deaf childrens use of signed language during writing events. Journal of Literacy Research, 31(2), 183-212. doi:10.1080/10862969909548044 This study aims to understand the relationship between the use of signed language and the writing events of deaf children (P183, C.1, L.3-8).Participants involved in the study in were five (5) Preschool II students of the urban day-school program, who were 4 to 5 years old and are deaf or have mild hearing loss (P.189, C.1, L.8-9). It is the objective of the author to observe patterns that would suggest the usage of signed language by deaf children to interact with others (P.188, C.1, L.32-42). A total of 18 data collection days were used in the analyses of the study. Data includes videotapes (average of 17 minutes) of children while at the writing table and the written products (photocopies) made by the children (P.190, C.1, L.8-17).Observations were taken during the months of November through February at the writing table in the Preschool II classroom (P.190, C.1, L13-14). Using the gathered data, the author analyzed the drawing, writing, and social interaction of the five children (P.194, C.1, L.28-32).It was observed that the deaf children used signed language and facial expression, which were somehow similar to children that use oral language, and the analysis was further broken down to cover all five language functions, such as interactional, representational, directive, personal, and heuristic (P.195, C.1, L.3-16). This wide range of language functions allowed the children to have social interaction which significantly improved their writing goals (P.206, C.1, L.16-20). Results suggest that the children’s use of signed language and facial expression, which eventually led to social interactions, has allowed them to talk about the spelling of words, the relationship of written words to signed words, and of written letters to fingerspelling (P.207-208, C.1, L34-42;1-2). Vernon, S. A., &Ferreiro, E. (1999). Writing development: A neglected variable in the consideration of phonological awareness. Harvard Educational Review, 69(4), 395-415. Since most available phonological awareness research focuses on English speaking subjects and have been tested in purely oral contexts, this research conducted by Vernon and Ferreiro evaluated 54 monolingual Spanish speaker kindergartens with mean ages of 5 years and 7 months on their phonological awareness (P.401, L.1-3).These kindergartens are from lower-middle-class families studying at public schools of Queratero, Mexico (P.401, L.4-5).For the purpose of comparison and analysis, 11 first graders from nearby schools with 6 years, 8 months mean age level were also subjected to the test procedure (P.401, L.15-17).Note that these children have not had direct reading instruction(P.5, L.35-37). The objective of this case study is to assess the effect of writing on their phonological awareness (P.5, L.35-37). The methodology is divided into two interview portions at 20 minutes each (P.402, L.5-6). The first interview covered a written task to classify students into six writing levels (P.402, L.31).Subsequently, the second interview was conducted wherein two oral segmentation tasks were performed(P.402, L.7-11).One uses pictures while the other uses written words. Results of the experiment have shown that the oral segmentation task is strongly correlated with a child’s level of conceptualization about the writing system (P.409,L.31-35). The answers of most children to this task are developmentally in order (P410, L.7-8). Another pertinent result of the study is that writing and reading activities, hand-in-hand, mold the awareness of children in the sound structure of language(P410, L.38-39).It is therefore vital to encourage kindergarteners and first graders to write, as this can stimulate the analysis of spoken words and other related units. Verhoeven, L. T. (1994), Transfer in bilingual development: The linguistic interdependence hypothesis revisited. Language Learning, 44(3), 381–415. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1994.tb01112. The primary objective of the study is to obtain empirical evidence to prove that transfer of bilingual development, language and literacy skills from one language to another happens(P.381, C.1, L1-4). Participants of the study include a group of 98 Turkish children, composed of 50 boys and 48 girls from 12 primary schools in the eastern part of the Netherlands, for whom Turkish is their native language and have attended nursery school within 2 years of their stay in the country (P.390-391, C.1, L35-36;1-3). By measuring pragmatic abilities both in the proficiency on the number of different content words and the number of morphemes, and elicitation task, for lexical grammatical, and phonological sub-skills in Turkish and Dutch, the author is able to conduct analyses on the linguistic interdependence hypothesis (P391, C.1, L.17-29). For the pragmatic skills, the author utilized describing and description of objects and free conversation with students (C391, C.1, L. 19-21).Lexical skills were tested through a vocabulary task (P391, C.1, L.30-31). Grammatical abilities were tested by using a sentence imitation task (P.392, C.1, L24-25). Lastly, phonological skills were tested by conducting a phoneme discrimination task (P.393, C.1, L1-3).Observations and other data gathering procedures were done on schools where the participants attended, except for the reading comprehension task that was done individually (P.394, C.1, L.12-13). Results suggest that there is no clear evidence for grammatical competence relationship in lexicon and syntax, or in the vocabulary size (P407, C1, L8-12). On the other hand, the phonological skills and pragmatic skills show moderate and strong interdependence between the Turkish and the Dutch language proficiency of the children, respectively (P408, C.1, L9-16). Read More