Dr Diana Burman
University of Oxford
Winner of the 2006 Michael Young Research Prize
Researching Deaf Children’s
Literacy
Prof Terezinha Nunes
Deborah Evans
Danny Bell
Addy Gardner
ESRC Research Methods Festival
St Catherine’s College, Oxford
Thursday 3rd July 2008
Deafness
One in 1,000 babies born in the UK each
year is deaf
 Only 2% of deaf school leavers are able to
read at their appropriate age level
 98% leave school functionally illiterate

WHY?
Literacy Learning
Writing is the written form of the spoken
word
 Congenitally deaf children have never
accurately heard words spoken
 Therefore they are unable to think in
words in their head
 Therefore deaf children find reading and
writing very challenging

National Curriculum
Writing Assessment
Level 1.



Pupils’ writing
communicates meaning
through simple words and
phrases.
In their reading of their
writing, pupils begin to
show awareness of how
full stops are used.
Letters are usually clearly
shaped and correctly
orientated.
No writing assessments exist
for measuring deaf BSL users
early attempts at English
literacy.
The Problem
Criteria used to measure writing progress in
hearing children are inadequate for many
deaf children.
Assessments for writing samples of hearing
children start at a level in advance of
writing samples of many deaf children
Aims

To develop a teaching programme for deaf
primary school children to improve their
literacy

To devise literacy assessments
To monitor their progress in literacy
To provide a framework for teachers
1.
2.
Grammatical and morphological
differences between BSL and English






There is not always a one to one correspondence
between a word and a sign (e.g. ‘up until now’).
Sentence structures vary (e.g. boy play where?).
BSL expresses interrogative and negative through
non-manual features.
BSL does not use tenses to denote time.
Plurality in BSL is denoted by quantity; the noun
remains the same.
BSL does not contain many function or content words
– to/at; is/was; nor the definite or indefinite article –
the/a.
Fingerspelling
Fingerspelling is where each alphabetic
letter is represented by a hand and finger
configuration
 It has been developed by hearing
educators in an attempt to bridge signlanguage with written language
 It has to be taught to deaf children as a
pre-curser to literacy

Phonological awareness

is important for literacy learning, but so are
Morphemes
these are units of meaning rather than units of
sound
 Some spellings appear irregular from their letter
sounds, but are regular in their units of meaning
magician = magic + ian

Morphemes in English
Morphemes have a fixed spelling
 Morphemes are related to grammar

 ‘er’
is used to make person words from verbs (read-reader)
 ‘ian’ is used to make person words from nouns (magicmagician)
 Analyzing
words into morphemes helps children
break long words into smaller units, accessible to
visual coding - unbreakable = unbreakable

Visual coding is used more by deaf than
hearing children to remember spellings of
words
Question 1
Are deaf children using
morphemes?
Spelling assessment:
Pretest example
Hypothesis

If taught, deaf children could learn to use
morphemes to spell English words,

to decode English words in reading, and

to help them plan writing because of the
important connections between
morphemes and English grammar.
The Teaching Programme
targeted morphemes from
11 English classifications:
1. Plurals ‘s’
2 .Regular past tense ‘-ed’
3. 3rd person singular
4. Person words ‘-er’
5. Person words ‘-ist’
‘windows’
‘jumped’
‘Now Sophie walks’
‘teacher’
‘artist’
Targeted morphemes (contd.)
6. Person words ‘-ian’
7. Suffixes
‘-ful’
8.
‘-less’
9.
‘-ment’
10.
‘-ion’
11.
‘-ness’
‘magician’
‘painful’
‘painless’
‘government’
‘competition’
‘tiredness’
1. Singular and Plural

BSL
=
1 dog; 4 dog

English
=
1 dog; 4 dogs
1 bun
6 buns
?
1 flower
?
3 flowers
mats
tie
spoon
spoons
Tense to denote time 2. Regular past tense
3. Third person singular

English =
I walk now
I walked yesterday

BSL
I walk now
I walk yesterday
=
Last week she danced.
Now she d………..
dances. .
Now granny cooks.
Last night granny cooked.
c……….. .
Third Person Singular and
Regular Past Tense Bingo Game
Regular past tense: Story Book
Irregular Verbs
Reported speech
Name the person who……
 4.
‘-er’
 5. ‘-ist’
 6. ‘-ian’
er ist ian
A person who reads is a
reader
A person who makes
art is an
art ist
er ist ian
A person who makes magic is a
magician
er ist ian
artist
O
magician
O
electrician
O
florist
X
teacher
X
teacher
X
artist
O
magician
O
electrician
O
florist
X
Grace ..…….
likes school.
On Tuesday Grace ………….
writes
in her science book. She
likes science and she’s a
scientist/writer.
good ……………….
This is Sir
Isaac Newton.
He was a
scientist and a
mathematician.
He liked science…..
…..and he liked mathematics.
Suffixes that change word
meanings in predictable ways:
 7.
‘-ful’
 8. ‘-less’
He had a cut. He was in pain. The cut
was painful.
pain___.
Then the cut got better. He had no
painless.
pain. The cut was pain____.
The puppy
was playful.
She ran fast; She
arrived
breathless.
The magician was
wonderful.
The cut was
painful.
© Diana Burman & Addy Gardner
Broken glass
can be
harmful.
Tom made lots of
mistakes; he was
careless.
Suffixes
 9. ‘-ment’
 10. ‘-ion’
 11. ‘-ness’
We must look after our
environment
with the correct
punctuation.
We vote for people to
govern
to find out the exact
measurement.
We measure
rooms
he went to sleep
satisfied.
The grey paving
stones
those people form our
government.
The teacher said,
“Punctuate this
sentence”
made a grey
pavement.
The cat ate to his
satisfaction
by reducing pollution.
Assessments
 Spelling
 Reading
 Writing
1. These are w……….......
3. Yesterday this man j…………
over the babies.
Post-test results of Spelling with
Suffixes controlling for age, IQ and pretest scores (n=132)
Evidence of increased use
of morphemes in spelling
16
14
12
Score in
spelling
suffixes
10
Pre-test
Post-test
8
6
4
2
0
Comparison Group
Intervention Group
Effect size: 0.49
Post-test Sample (Score 14; Max 14)
Post-test results of Reading
Comprehension controlling for age, IQ
and pre-test scores
Writing Assessment
Initially 35 children were invited to write about
the same 4-picture sequence story at pre-test
and post-test.
Scoring

Six experienced teachers of the deaf
ranked the deaf children’s writing
productions into 5 bands.
These represented knowledge of written
English - Band ‘E’ (the weakest) to Band
‘A’ (the strongest).
Band ‘E’ examples
(8 boys; 2 girls)
Band E

(Children may not understand that writing is a form of
communication based on an oral/aural communication
system)
Demonstrate an ability to:
 Place words the correct way up in order to copy-write
 Write some alphabetic letters in sequence to resemble
words
 Memorise some fingerspelling configurations and their
corresponding written letter
 Produced letter sequences for isolated words, which
may/may not be relevant
Band ‘D’ examples
(4 boys; 3 girls)
Band ‘C’ examples
(5 boys; 1 girl)
Band D & Band C
Appear to understand that writing is a
communication system
 Produce some letter sequences to form relevant
words, with some obscure spellings
 Write words in BSL order, with emerging English
syntax
Band C
 Place words in a more coherent order with
greater awareness of English syntax

Band ‘B’ examples
(3 boys; 2 girls)
Band ‘A’ examples
(1 boy; 3 girls)
Band B and Band A
Band B
 Transcribe BSL into English
 Follow through characterisation with an action
(e.g. ‘he pack a clohes for to go to hoilday’ / ‘he
finish he carried bag’)
Band A
 Produce sufficient English syntax for coherent
communication
Reliability

The correlations between the six teachers
scores were high and significant (between
r = 0.57 and r = 0.94, p<0.001; n = 32).

These Bands of writing profiles therefore
provide a reliable instrument that can be
used by teachers of the deaf for both
assessment and progression in teaching.
A further study involved supported by
The Nuffield Foundation involved:
 257 deaf children
 Spread across the UK

Dissemination
Michael Young Prize 2006

1.
2.
BBC Woman’s Hour
Raised awareness of the link between deaf
ness and literacy
Many private individuals and professionals in
the UK contacted me seeking further details of
the research
Dissemination
Michael Young Prize 2006
 National Conferences
1.
2.
3.
Teachers of the Deaf
Parents of deaf children
Professionals
Dissemination
Michael Young Prize 2006

National Conferences
Edinburgh
Troon
National Conferences (contd.)
Manchester
Coventry
National Conferences (contd.)
Nottingham
Reading
National Conferences (contd.)
Oxford
London
Dissemination
Michael Young Prize 2006

International Conferences
International Conferences
Pittsburgh, USA.
American and Canadian Teachers of the Deaf
Annual Conference
International Conferences
Hobart, Tasmania.
Annual Conference for Teachers of the Deaf
from Australia and New Zealand
Family–School Partnership
to promote
Deaf Children’s Literacy
Supported by
National Deaf Children’s Society
Teaching materials and assessments are
available at
www.education.ox.ac.uk/research/cl/index.php