Abstract:

The history of education with regard to teaching deaf people the reading and writing skills employed by hearing people in different languages is marked by failure. Generally speaking, the results obtained with these subjects using the various teaching methods implemented have not been very positive. This is largely due to the lack of access that deaf people have to the phonological codes considered key to achieving an acceptable level of competence in reading and writing. Our research team has been working for over a decade on an alternative way of tackling the problem, based on using, reinforcing and developing the visual strategies that these people have available (sign language and touch-typing) creating connections between the language of hearers and that of deaf people. In this study we present the results obtained from an intervention with deaf boys and girls whose primary language is sign language. The study shows that, when a bilingual model based on developing visual strategies (sign language, dactylology and lip reading) is used, deaf students can make significant progress with their reading and writing skills, bringing them closer to the performance of hearing boys and girls of similar ages.

Acknowledgements:
This work was supported by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico de Chile, Nº 11075018 and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM & DGUI), ref: CCG10UCM/HUM-5158.

Keywords:

Deaf, visual strategies, sign language, read and write.