Help: let them speak or sign their language

[Lorraine Howard]

This sounds very exciting, Isa!

Lorraine

On Wednesday, March 12, 2014, Isa Barriere <barriere.isa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I just wanted to mention that the issue of exposing all hearing-impaired
> children to a Sign Language, and doing so sufficiently- is going to be
> discussed at a symposium I am organizing at the  Head Start's 12th
> National Research Conference on Early Childhood to be held July 7-9, 2014 at
> the Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 (
> http://www.cvent.com/events/head-start-s-12th-national-research-conference/custom-116-31f6c50d9a9b4fa6aeb28d515d4db363.aspx)
> that includes a paper by Deb Chen Pichler and colleagues.
>
> When Head Start (subsidized creche and preschool education for children
> from low SES in the US) established a Dual Language policy in 2008 (that
> requires that Head Start programs that serve children whose home language
> is not English are transparent about both their fostering of the
> development of the Home Language and English),  it was not clear that their
> definition of Dual Language learner includes bimodal learners and/or
> children who are exposed to different varieties of English.  The symposium
> is meant to address these issues, as well as include papers on learners of
> Spanish as well as a few of the other 149 languages spoken by Head Start
> children (Haitian Creole, Russian, Yiddish).
>
> Given that Early Head Start
> a) focuses on children minus 3 months (when the mother is pregnant) until
> age 3 and both center-based and home-based programs exist;
> b) is supposed to make up for disadvantageous environments in the early
> years (and the income requirement does not apply to children with eraly
> Intervention/Special Education needs),
> I do not see why Hearing Impaired children, including those with Cochlear
> Implants should not benefit from this program....
>
> Isabelle
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 10:08 AM, Aliyah MORGENSTERN <
> aliyah.morgenstern at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks a lot Keith!
> In France not only is it dramatically difficult to convince the medical
> world, but sign language for Hearing parents is hardly financed. They have
> to be entirely convinced and become real militants to make the tremendous
> efforts needed. But as our last family visit proved to us, when they do
> make the effort, the results are just incredible, even she Sign language is
> introduced after 3.
> Best,
> Aliyah
>
> Le 2 mars 2014 à 15:49, Keith Nelson a écrit :
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: *Keith Nelson* <keithnelsonart at gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 8:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Help: let them speak or sign their language
> To: info-childes at googlegroups.com, Keith Nelson <keithnelsonart at gmail.com>,
> Mary Rudner <mary.rudner at liu.se>, Jerker Rönnberg <jerker.ronnberg at liu.se>,
> Mikael Heimann <mikael.heimann at liu.se>, "tomas.tjus at psy.gu.se" <
> tomas.tjus at psy.gu.se>, Philip Prinz <p1210 at yahoo.com>
>
>
> Hi Gisela, Roberta, and all.   Lots of good updates and ideas in these
> threads.   I would emphasize that it is very often the case that once the
> decision is made to include sign language there is not really enough
> attention to the needed combination of quantity and quality of
> interaction--and monitoring thereof-- to insure significant progress.  In
> PA I have known families whose grand total support  in a year for teaching
> sign language was one one-hour visit by an expert hired by the School
> District ! As background, some may find interesting the attached 2 chapters
> that cover what we describe in dynamic systems terms as Dynamic Tricky
> Mixes of conditions that need to converge for learning--as illustrated not
> only for sign but for spoken language, literacy, and art skill.
>       Also, I am copying my Swedish and California colleagues who may have
> some interesting thoughts and updates on all this.   Very best regards,
> Keith
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 4:06 AM, Gisela Szagun <
> gisela.szagun at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Roberta,
>
> I think the paper by Lyness et al. (2013, attached) is helpful when
> evaluating the claim that sign may be hurtful to kids. There is quite a bit
> of evidence and argumentation for the reverse argument: withholding early
> language from the child is likely to have negative consequences. It seems
> to me that this is what happens if children with CI do not master spoken
> language sufficiently and sign language is withheld from them. So, we may
> equally ask the reverse question whether it was the withholding of sign
> language that was hurtful to these children?
>
> What happened in Germany, basically, was that the parents started asking
> this question, and, if you so want, empowered themselves to find a way to
> get *a* language to their children.
>
> From my point of view as a developmental, what has to be ensured is that a
> child builds up a symbolic system and that, in cases where spoken language
> acquisition does not succeed, not too much time is lost before sign
> language is offered. Unfortunately, there are too many cases - not
> presented at conferences because they are not a success story - where this
> has happened. The first priority is to prevent any
>
> To view this discussion on the web visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CANNGd2ak9EdsYHB%2BnYPmyWApvz%3D1U_m0GWGaiM0x4it6X8u%3D_g%40mail.gmail.com<https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CANNGd2ak9EdsYHB%2BnYPmyWApvz%3D1U_m0GWGaiM0x4it6X8u%3D_g%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
> .
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/info-childes/CAGrP7AZ-1jaWWfp4KVCpy0qSBqYd%2BF%3DGX-_DLwG7EqooZ3n-YQ%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/info-childes/attachments/20140312/c560277f/attachment.htm>