Teaching English writing skills to hearing impaired learners an evaluative study of using interactive writing approach in the special school

Abstract

There are several misconceptions about sign language which are prevalent in the hearing community. The first myth or misconception is that sign languages are just a distorted version of spoken languages. The hearing people mostly believe that sign language is a set of isolated gestures corresponding with morphemes of dominant spoken languages, but in reality, sign language is a full-fledged language with a distinct set of complexities at phonological, morphological and syntactic levels. There may or may not be a similarity between the linguistic structures of spoken and sign languages. Similarly, most hearing individuals believe that sign language is universal. This is a false notion as there are as many as over 140 sign languages in the world. Surprisingly, no two sign languages match each other even at basic levels. The combination of kinemes and cheremes into different handshapes, location and movement contributes to the production of one sign (a morpheme). Hence, a sign language is as different from another sign language as from a spoken one. Recognizing the sign language as a full-fledged language which is the primary language of the deaf, it is interesting to explore how it helps the deaf learn English literacy as a second language. The approach for teaching H/I learners is Interactive Writing which provides the best environment for interaction-based teaching and learning. The approach was first developed in 1991 by the educators of Ohio University. Since then, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate its effectiveness in teaching literacy in general and writing in particular. This thesis aims to investigate the effectiveness of Interactive Writing Approach in teaching English writing skills to Indian hearing impaired learners. Of various terms being used for the deaf in society the term deaf in this study represents persons with varying degrees of hearing loss. Hence, it includes all persons with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound.