“They forget and forget all the time.” The complexity of teaching adult deaf emergent readers print literacy

Bibliographic Data

ID21332901
AuthorsIngela Holmström (0000-0002-8762-7118, Stockholm University, corresponding author), Krister Schönström (0000-0002-8579-0771, Stockholm University)
Year2024
Volume62
Issue4
Pages2009-2036
Publication date2024-11-26
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueIRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0019-042X • E-ISSN: 1613-4141
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/iral-2022-0241
OpenAlexW4381952439
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited27

This article highlight and discuss the complex situation when deaf adults who are emergent readers learn Swedish Sign Language (STS) and Swedish in parallel. As Swedish appears primarily in its written form, they also have to develop reading and writing skills. Study data comes from ethnographically created video recordings of classroom interaction and interviews with teachers and participants. The analysis reveals that while the migrants successively learn basic STS for interacting with other deaf people, learning Swedish takes a different path. The migrants struggle with learning basic reading and writing skills, vocabulary, and grammar. Furthermore, the instruction is highly repetitive, but unstructured and sprawled, using STS to explain and connect signs with written equivalents. The teachers testify in interviews that it seems very difficult for the emergent readers to learn Swedish on a level good enough to cope in Swedish society, which, in turn, puts them in a vulnerable position

Grammar · Learning to read · Linguistics · Literacy · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Reading (process) · Sign (mathematics) · Vocabulary · Hand Gesture Recognition Systems · Hearing Impairment and Communication · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Psychology

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Open DOIOpen Access