Return-Path: <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id fADI5K018466; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 13:05:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 13:05:20 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <16c.3d8d3c9.2922ba9b@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: KathleenBombach@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-ld@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-LD:3762] Re: Deaf, communication issues X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub 10021 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_16c.3d8d3c9.2922ba9b_boundary" Status: O Content-Length: 5075 Lines: 49 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I would like to make a few comments: 1. I am glad that Carlson's synthesis of research on the brain was mentioned. For whatever reason, the work that is happening in experimental psychology in learning, memory, communication ability (production and reception in different modes such as speaking, reading, listening, comprehension...), and the physiology of these processes seems to be unknown to people in education and vice versa. I suggest that these fields need to 'cross-contaminate'. In universities, for example, these two fields are generally strictly segregated in different departments that look down upon each other. When I was in a grad program in psychology, professors took great delight in the high failure rate (virtually 100 percent) of the education department grad students, rather than getting together with their colleagues in the other department and working together. Likewise, I took one ed psych course and was viewed as an alien by both departments! 2. When it comes to why deaf people don't read very well, why don't we look at what deaf people say? Many deaf people say that reading in whatever language is an artificial linear constraint to the way their brains work, which is not linearly. In deaf-created languages (as opposed to translation sign languages that hearing people invented and like to teach to the deaf such as SEE and SE), one rapid gesture can convey all the meaning and grammar that we hearing people use a long linear sentence to express. Spoken language is also linear, so hearing people have a basic congruence between speaking and reading. Deaf people do not. So reading for the deaf is like learning a very, very foreign language, and actual cognitive structures for deaf people have to be changed for written language to make sense--an extreme form of 'code switching'. Teachers of the deaf, however, are generally hearing, hence they are linear thinkers. Teachers teach reading to deaf students the way hearing people think. Although there are some who have tried teaching reading and writing as a foreign language to the deaf, no one really knows how to make the incredible leap between the hearing brain and the deaf brain ways of thinking. To the deaf, written language is a remarkedly inefficient way of communicating. Kathleen Bombach
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