Dissertation Posted, Statistical Studies, Saudi Arabia and Jordan

[Valerie Sutton]

Everyone, Bernadet, Gerard -
I just received a telephone call from Saudi Arabia, from Dr.  
AbuShaira, who is now teaching at King Saud University, in Riyadh,  
and he tells me that both schools, where both his SignWriting  
experiments were held (Saudi Arabia in 2002 and Jordan in 2007) are  
both schools that use Sign Language daily. All the students that took  
part in his experiments were already signers...so none of them were  
new to signing. The only thing that was new, was SignWriting, which  
was taught to the experimental group, while the control group did not  
learn SignWriting. The group that learned SignWriting, in both  
schools, did better on their exams overall. So the better results do  
point to SignWriting, according to Dr. AbuShaira...

I asked him if the school system in Jordan was oral, and he told me  
that there are some schools that are, of course, but the classes he  
chose to do his experiments in, were ones that use Sign Language  
daily....

Val ;-)

Valerie Sutton
Sutton at SignWriting.org
www.SignWriting.org

-------------


On Sep 25, 2007, at 3:18 AM, Bernadet Hendriks wrote:

> Hi Gerard,
>
> I must admist I didn't read through the entire PhD (certainly not  
> because most of it is still in Arabic and it would take me a lot of  
> time trying to read through it), but I skimmed through the English  
> translation. However I know from my experience of 6 years in Jordan  
> working with the Deaf that these al-Amal schools don't normally use  
> sign language...so my remark is more than just speculation. Also,  
> I'm not saying sign writing might not have been useful (I think it  
> could be very useful and I tried myself to teach it to a few Deaf  
> people in Jordan), but I am saying that I doubt these better  
> results stem from the use of sign writing only. If sign writing was  
> used, that means sign language was used, and that in itself may  
> have caused better results in the students. In the school where I  
> worked in Jordan bilingual education was introduced as a test and  
> this caused significantly better results in the reading skills of  
> students...without the use of sign writing.
>
> Greetings,
>
> Bernadet
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