Info on Research on Writing by deaf people

[Robin L. Bird]

Lon Kuntze and I were working on a project headed by Liz Charlson that had
collected writing samples from "successful" deaf high school students who
were from various backgrounds. We ended-up not including the writing sample
data in our report because we could not develop a rubric or even clear
descriptions for what differentiated the writing samples of the various
types (e.g., orally raised, native ASL, signer of hearing parents) of
students; they were just different. What was really interesting to me was
the fact that the samples Lon judged to be the best writing were not the
ones I as a hearing person judged to be the best writing samples. I would
love to see any work on the topic.

Robin L. Bird, Ph.D.
Program Evaluator
Department of Research & Evaluation
Oakland Unified School District
rlbird at ousd.k12.ca.us

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> From: Mary Arliskas <mearlis at FLASH.NET>
> To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
> Subject:
> Date: Thursday, October 29, 1998 1:35 PM
>
> It has been a while since I have been to the list.
>
> I have a question for all you researchers out there...
>
> I have been wrestling with a thesis topic for the better part of a year.
I
> know what I am really interested in - written language performance of
deaf
> children in oral only and signing only programs. Why does it seem that
all
> of the research on written language with deaf children compares the deaf
> children to hearing age or ability mates? As much as I'd like to think I
am
> the only person to wonder about this query, I know I must either be
missing
> something or be focusing on a moot question.
>
> Some experts have told me that the communication strategy used (i.e.,
> signed or oral) will have little effect on their language production,
while
> others have reported that oral kids will beat the pants off the signing
> kids in language.
>
> So, I look forward to your responses. For now, I am sticking to my idea.
>
> Thank you in advance!
>
>
>
> Mary E. Arliskas
> Teacher for Deaf/EBD Students
> Chicago Public Schools