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Spring 2008 To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: DOWNLOAD Listen, See and Do: The Benefits of Sign Language Teachers do a fantastic job of motivating children to learn, and use plenty of creativity in a variety of media to captivate their interest. We all recognize that when children are involved in the learning process, they’re more likely to enjoy and remember what they’re learning. If learning is fun, they’re motivated! With the incorporation of sign language into my teaching, I added one more motivating strategy to my repertoire. The hearing children I’ve taught loved using sign language. They were not just listening but were seeing and doing, using more components and senses with their learning. My Year 1 students enjoyed signing songs and were fingerspelling, using the Auslan (Australian sign language) alphabet to learn their spelling words. My Year 4 students did the same. For a school assembly one year, my Year 3 class all wore white gloves to present a song in sign language. It looked fantastic. It was always satisfying to see children in the playground communicating with each other using fingerspelling because that was clear evidence that they were indeed motivated. More than that, they were excited—they had their own secret code. Research on the benefits of teaching sign language to infants and children indicates that hearing children who are exposed to speech and sign language enjoy educational advantages. It improves language, literacy and mathematical skills and even increases IQ. I became fascinated with the beauty of Auslan while attending a church for the deaf during the early stages of my teaching career. Having a hearing impairment myself, I decided to further my studies and complete a Masters of Special Education, specialising in sensory disability. I’ve now had experience working in hearing schools, schools for hearing-impaired children, and schools for deaf children, and have taught sign language to parents and staff of day care centres to use in their everyday interaction with children. Contrary to popular belief, exposing hearing infants to speech and sign language does not hinder their desire to speak. Research by Susan Goodwyn, Linda Acredolo and Catherine Brown reported in “Impact of symbolic gesturing on early language development” indicates that infants who are exposed to speech and sign language “have better expressive and receptive language skills than those not exposed to signs.” Just as “crawling motivates a child to walk,” the researchers explain, “so too does signing motivate a child to talk.” They also state, “babies naturally gesture before they talk as a means of communicating.” Teaching infants extra gestures or signs is a means of building on this natural development. According to Marilyn Daniels, a professor of speech communication and author of Dancing with Words: Signing for Hearing Children’s Literacy, using sign language from infancy to the sixth grade results in improved literacy. Daniels worked with children who demonstrated “better recognition of letters and sounds, better spelling and larger English-language vocabularies than children who were not taught signs.” Imagine how useful sign language might also be for children whose English is a second language. A 1985 study by Robert Wilson, Gerald Teague and Marianne Teague of first-grade students in the United States who were struggling to learn to spell, also indicates benefits in terms of spelling. Prior to the study, the first graders could spell 25 – 46% of their words correctly. The students were taught the spelling using fingerspelling and sign language, after which they could spell 56 – 90% of the words correctly, a spelling ability that they were able to retain. According to Daniels, signing while speaking can also encourage whole-brain development and memory skills. “When information is taken in with the eyes, the right brain is being used,” she explains. “All languages are stored in the left brain, so when [young children] are exposed to signs and speech, both the right and left brain are being used. This is a wonderful advantage because you are using both hemispheres of the brain, building more synapses in the brain.” In addition, studies demonstrate the positive effects sign language can have on learning Math. In an article entitled “Sign Language: The best second language?” Steve Kokette explains: “In Middlesborough, England, one study illustrated how sign language improved students’ Maths skills. The students in this study were taught BSL (British sign language) and then taught Maths entirely through sign. These students scored significantly higher on their test scores compared to their peers who were not exposed to signs. The possible reason for this is that sign language, being so visual, fascinates children and causes increased curiosity, attentiveness and concentration; therefore causing greater mental retention and in this case, higher test scores.” Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn, in “The long-term impact of symbolic gesturing during infancy on IQ at age 8,” say exposure to sign language also affects IQ. Acredolo and Goodwyn took a group of 103 children at the age of 11 months and divided them into three groups, with children from average income families and with equal numbers of boys and girls in each group. Parents were encouraged to sign to their children in one group. The parents of another group were not given sign language tools for their children and the parents of the third group were asked to expose their children to written vocabulary around the house. The findings? “The children who were exposed to sign language from 11 months to 36 months outperformed the two non-signing groups by 12 points on the WISC-3 intelligence test at the age of 8 years old.” Research suggests that hearing babies as young as 6 months can communicate using sign language before they can speak. My son, Lachlan, was communicating to me at 11 months, using Auslan. At 14 months, he was signing words like, milk, all gone, finished, biscuit and bed. If he ever grizzled for anything, I’d encourage him to communicate using sign language instead. I was excited that he could not only understand what I was saying, but that he could also communicate with me at such a young age. Lachlan isn’t deaf, and now aged three years, he’s speaking very well. I have to admit, I don’t use sign language with him as much as I used to, although I still use Auslan occasionally when singing songs, telling stories, introducing numbers and teaching him the alphabet, and every so often I’ve told him, in sign language, to say please or thank you to someone—without needing to say a thing. Using sign language while teaching is easy as it is only grasping some Auslan vocabulary. It can be used whenever you’re speaking, as little or as much as you like. There’s no need to pull children out of their natural environment to teach them signs. Signing is fascinating to watch and do, children are curious, they concentrate, are motivated and enjoy themselves. Additionally, exposing children to a second language such as Auslan touches on topics like cultural diversity, bilingualism and inclusion. When children are exposed to a second language, they’re also exposed to different ways of experiencing life through the eyes of another culture. Sign language is inviting and accessible, and it provides an opportunity for children to experience success in learning another language. This early success can build the enthusiasm a child needs to enjoy a lifetime of learning other languages and understanding other cultures. Beyond that, children who are deaf or hearing impaired feel included in the mainstream school environment. It’s exciting to know that sign language improves language, literacy, mathematical skills and IQ, but the most important benefit, I think, is the enjoyment sign language gives children. Sign language brings a new and fun component to all aspects of learning. REFERENCES Jenny McConnell has a Masters of Special Education (sensory disability), Certificate 4 in Auslan, and a Certificate in ASL – American Sign Language. She has taught in a variety of elementary school settings and established Tiny Hands Talk, which runs programs for parents and staff of day care centres, and parents and teachers of pre-school to grade 6 children. The programs, which operate in Australia and Canada, provide teaching skills based on a knowledge of the school curriculum and recent research. To find out more about Auslan or TinyHandsTalk, email jenny@tinyhandstalk.com or visit www.tinyhandstalk.ca |
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