The Transition From Fingerspelling to English Print: Facilitating English Decoding Tamara S. Haptonstall-Nykaza Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind Brenda Schick University of Colorado, Boulder Fingerspelling is an integral part of American Sign Lan- orthography available in most written systems. Re- guage (ASL) and it is also an important aspect of becoming search on hearing children’s development of reading bilingual in English and ASL. Even though fingerspelling is has found strong connections between children’s pho- based on English orthography, the development of finger- spelling does not parallel the development of reading in nological systems and awareness of phonological reg- hearing children. Research reveals that deaf children may ularities and their ability to read (see Snow, Burns, & initially treat fingerspelled words as lexical items rather than Griffin, 1998). Typically, reading is viewed, in large a series of letters that represent English orthography and part, as reflecting English skills, and deaf children’s only later begin to learn to link handshapes to English gra- longstanding difficulties with learning to read are con- phemes. The purpose of this study is to determine whether a training method that uses fingerspelling and phonological sidered to be a problem with English (King & Quigley, patterns that resemble those found in lexicalized finger- 1985; Paul, 1998). More recently, researchers have be- spelling to teach deaf students unknown English vocabulary gun to investigate how American Sign Language, or would increase their ability to learn the fingerspelled and ASL, can support and facilitate reading in English (see orthographic version of a word. There were 21 deaf students (aged 4–14 years) who participated. Results show that stu- Chamberlain, Morford, & Mayberry, 2000). For exam- dents were better able to recognize and write the printed ple, Hoffmeister, Philip, Costello, and Grass (1997) English word as well as fingerspell the word, when training and Strong and Prinz (1997) have adopted the incorporated fingerspelling that is more lexicalized. The dis- Linguistic Interdependence Theory (Cummins, 1989, cussion focuses on the degree to which fingerspelling can 1991) as a model for the bilingual education of deaf serve as a visual phonological bridge as an aid to decode English print. students, which proposes that when semantic and pho- nological features exist in different language forms, One significant challenge for deaf children learning to a student’s first language can be used to bridge the read is their reduced access to the phonological system gap. Accordingly, a bilingual student’s experience with of spoken languages, which impacts their ability to language, particularly their first language, will lead to develop the connections between phonology and the increased competence in both languages. However, a particular stumbling block for many researchers and educators is the fact that ASL and We would like to thank the staff, families, and children at the bilingual school that participated in this study. We also thank Drs. Lise Menn, English do not share a phonological system that is Allison Sedey, and Christine Yoshinaga-Itano for their assistance. No remotely similar on many levels. Mayer and Wells conflicts of interest were reported. Correspondence should be sent to T. S. Haptonstall-Nykaza, Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, (1996) have argued that in order for a first language 33 North Institute Street, Colorado Spring, CO 80903-3599 (e-mail: to support a second language, there must be the de- [email protected]) or Brenda Schick, Speech, Language, and Hearing velopment of an inner speech system, as well as some Sciences, UCB 409, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0409 (e-mail: [email protected]). way for the inner speech system to directly relate to Ó The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/deafed/enm003 For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Advance Access publication on February 24, 2007 Fingerspelling to Print 173 written text. They point to the fact that the differences Hearing individuals frequently adopt a coding strategy between ASL and English, including modality as well for verbal materials that is primarily based on an as phonemic and morphemic rules, constitute a barrier auditory, spoken phonology (see Snow et al., 1998). rather than a bridge between the two languages. They Though little is known about the exact nature of hypothesize that these differences prevent the deaf how deaf students use decoding strategies derived child from engaging, in part, in sound-to-print map- from mental representations of signed language, there ping and one-to-one mapping of meaning to print, is some research that provides insight. which they believe are essential for learning to read. There is evidence that proficient deaf readers It should also be noted that Mayer and Wells believe have some form of English phonological knowledge that ASL has a critical role in education, particularly (Hanson & Fowler, 1987; see also Leybaert, 1993). How- in cognitive and academic domains. ever, it is unclear whether this phonological knowledge There are models of reading in deaf children that caused reading proficiency or was a result of learning to attempt to define more specifically how knowledge read an orthography that has regular rule-governed re- of ASL could relate to the ability to read in a broad lationships with speech. It is also true that rather than sense. Chamberlain and Mayberry (2000) have adopted using only a speech-based code, deaf students often a model, developed for hearing children, called a Sim- adopt manual and visual coding strategies. For example, ple View of Reading to examine the relationship that Schaper and Reitsma (1993) found that young deaf chil- exists between ASL and reading development (Hoover & dren use visual strategies to remember pseudowords. Gough, 1990; Tunmer & Hoover, 1992). In this model, Other research has found that in order to facilitate their reading comprehension is made up of just two com- recall of letters or words, some deaf students may rely on ponents, linguistic comprehension and decoding. fingerspelling, using the letters of the manual alphabet Decoding is defined as the ability to rapidly derive to rehearse individual letters or to spell out whole words a representation from printed input that allows access (Bonvillian, 1983; Locke & Locke, 1971). Hirsh-Pasek to the appropriate entry in the mental lexicon and, (1987) also found that deaf children use fingerspelled thus, the retrieval of semantic information at the word handshapes in the same way that hearing children use level. Chamberlain and Mayberry describe some of the phonemes, connecting them to written words. Ross multiple functions that decoding can serve including (1992) found that beginning deaf readers use rule- (a) a prelexical link between the printed letters of a word governed relations between orthographic patterning and the child’s cognitive representation for the word and the sublexical structure of sign. Interestingly, Ross that facilitates retrieval of word meaning (as in figuring found that the words that the subjects only fingerspelled out orthographic patterns in order to recognize words were typically words they had not recognized on a that the child already knows in sign or speech), (b) previous task, providing preliminary evidence that fin- a postlexical mental notepad to hold in mind meaning gerspelling plays a specific pronunciation-expressive that has already been recognized in print (as in working function for deaf students for words they do not yet memory), and (c) a means to pronounce or express and, know (Chamberlain & Mayberry, 2000). hence, keep in mind an unknown word encountered in Deaf adults also show us that fingerspelling may print until a meaning can be attached to the new word serve a critical link in word learning, providing alter- (as in novel word learning via reading). The simple native cognitive representations of a word and provid- view of reading model stresses that both semantic and ing an explicit ASL–English link. Padden and Ramsey phonological components are necessary and that nei- (2001) observed both Deaf and hearing teachers and ther is sufficient independently. found that the Deaf teachers would frequently incor- porate fingerspelling in their teaching. They were much more likely than hearing teachers to link words Hearing and Deaf Decoding Strategies written on the blackboard with both sign and finger- Research to date indicates that deaf and hearing stu- spelling, going back and forth between fingerspelled dents can differ in how they decode printed material. and lexical representations, a procedure they called 174 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 12:2 Spring 2007 ‘‘chaining’’ (p. 62; see also Humphries & MacDougall, monosyllabic signs that are common in ASL (see 2000). Chamberlain and Mayberry (2000) suggest Brentari, 1998). There are linguistic rules that govern that this ‘‘pedagogical procedure arises from the Deaf such phonological restructuring (Battison, 1978), and teachers’ intuitions about the complex relations of it is entirely appropriate to think of lexicalized finger- sign, fingerspelling, and print that need to be devel- spelling as having its own subset of phonological rules oped in the minds of deaf students if they are to be that are independent of its neutral representation of skilled readers,’’ (p. 255). English orthography. Lexicalized fingerspelled words Finally, there is strong evidence that fingerspelling are pervasive in ASL, and they often convey unique skills are important to reading. Sedey (1995) found meanings in ASL (Brentari & Padden, 2001; Padden, that deaf adolescents’ ability to learn new fingerspelled 1991). In many cases, the changes are so major that the words quickly (i.e., fast mapping) was highly corre- fingerspelled loan signs are seen as regular ASL signs, lated with their reading vocabulary, meaning that the and many times signers do not realize that they were better a student’s receptive fingerspelling skills, the originally fingerspelled words borrowed from English larger their knowledge of English words.