Makaton

[Sherman Wilcox]

How interesting. Paul, I have some colleagues in Britain who do  
signed language research. I'll forward this to them and ask if they  
know of anyone doing this kind of work.

Coincidentally, I was flipping through TV channels here last night  
(trying to find some news and avoid yet another Anna Nicole Smith  
story), and spotted a commercial with kids signing. It was some book,  
or DVD, or something for teaching young hearing children to sign as a  
way to improve their language skills. This is becoming quite a fad  
here too.

On the one hand it's neat. On the other... Do you know how  
frustrating it is for Deaf people, and for parents (Deaf or hearing)  
with deaf children, to see this happening when deaf children and  
their parents are still being told that signing will harm their  
child's language development?

As for my original posting on the AALE's position on ASL as a FL:  
THANK YOU to ALL who have responded. Let's hope that we can nudge  
AALE a bit towards the enlightenment that we hope a liberal education  
should provide.


On Mar 23, 2007, at 7:05 AM, Paul Hopper wrote:

> I have just returned from the UK, and a big thing over there is  
> "Makaton". It's a combination of spoken English and manual signs  
> borrowed from British Sign Language. It was developed originally  
> for learning-disabled kids (autistic, retarded), where it was so  
> successful that teachers have been introducing it into the normal  
> classrooms, and it has become something of a fad, spreading into  
> the playgrounds and streets among grade-schoolers. My question is:  
> does anyone know of any _linguistic_ studies of Makaton? Its  
> grammar, etc.?
>

-- 
Sherman