introduction

[Susanne Mirring]

Hello everybody,

I am on the list for a few weeks now and would like to introduce myself.
My name is Susanne and I come from Germany. I ±>  a student of the university of
Cologne and will become a teacher for deaf and hard of hearing children. For my
examination I am writing a paper about bilingual education of deaf children. I
suppose some list members are working on a similar topic so it could be
interesting to share some thoughts

ÿÿ n Germany there are different bilingual programs that use German Sign Language
and spoken language  o  one of the most famous concepts is the one in Hamburg
(developed by Prillwitz and others). Sign Language is seen as the  œ? atural m
language of deaf children and so it is used at school for giving information,
instructions, explanations and so on. The target is to give everything to the
children that is important for their development  o  not only in language but
also in cognitive and emotional cases. German spoken language is taught as a
second language to make sure the deaf pupils can cope with the hearing world.
The way how the children are learning spoken language is mostly through
writing.
Now I looked at some bilingual programs for hearing children and found out that
they are comparable to the situation of deaf children  o  according to immigrants
and other minority groups. They also want to support the development in their
first language because it has good influences on second language learning
(shown by the works of Cummins and others). But they also emphasize literal
skills in the first language  o  they want to reach bilingualism AND biliteracy.
The question I asked is: Can a bilingual program for deaf children reach the
same? Can children develop literacy in sign language? And why do the Hamburg
program only teach written spoken language  o  as research shows WRITING the
first language is very important, too. I think the reason is that they have not
found an acceptable notation system for signs yet. As you know nearly all sign
notation systems are mainly for research use (e.g. HamNoSys) and not very
practical for school.
I want to find out if SignWriting could be a solution for this problem and if
it could be included in the bilingual program for deaf children. A writing
system like SignWriting would make  œš ontrastive m  language learning possible and
could also support the target of teaching cultural aspects of the Deaf
community  o  why reading  œ eaf stories m  in written spoken language when you can
read it in written sign language?

I hope that I managed to explain everything comprehensible  (I am sorry for my
bad English!) - if you are interested you can ask everything that I didn ±²  make
clear enough.
At the moment I am still collecting information and thoughts, so I would love
to hear what you are thinking about it. Of course I am also interested in
similar works, your experiences and criticism

ÿÿ est wishes,
Susanne