Abstract:

There are numerous researches that state the difficulties that deaf children show concerning written language but, teaching - learning strategies with deaf pupils is a slightly researched field.

The PhD thesis The literacy of Deaf adults in Catalonia: Strategies of the Deaf teacher, which is currently in its research stage, as part of the European Project Deafli (538750-LLP-1-2013-1-ES-GRUNDITVING-GMP), has arisen from the current needs for the Catalan written language instruction to deaf adults whose illiteracy indexes are superior to 80 %. The European Project DEAFLI approved by the European Union and led from the faculty of Education of Universitat de Barcelona with Dra. Mª Pilar Fernández Viader as the Principal Investigator (PI) has created, in a pioneering way in Europe, several didactic units and grammar contents together with exercises of different typologies connected to the above mentioned contents, as the foundation stone for the literacy of Deaf adults in the written languages of the different countries of the consortium (Austria-German, United Kingdom- English, Italy-Italian and Spain-Catalan), with the target of favoring deaf people’s social and labor integration defending their equal rights to formation as well as access to culture.

The general target of the research is supporting the optimization of the intervention in deaf adult people’s written Language, favoring, therefore, their access to culture, to society and to formation. Based on the global target, the specific targets are: Identifying and analyzing the previous knowledge of deaf adults regarding written language; analyzing the teaching - learning strategies used by the Deaf teacher (user of LSC) in the classroom and suggesting different strategies and resources to optimize the instruction and the development of Deaf adults’ linguistic skills.

After the observation of the classes, the recording, the transcription and the categorization of the information, we have analyzed the didactic situations using the analysis program QDAMINER LITE4, qualitative analysis software.

Teacher’s placement; Communicative approach used by the teacher; metalinguistic, visual and text resources; Demand Planning Strategies and feedback are some of the tools used by the Deaf teacher in the classroom in order to encourage the development of Deaf adults' linguistic competence.

Keywords:

Deafness, literacy, written language, European project, education, strategies.