AN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT TO IMPROVE DEAF PEOPLE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Prelingual deaf learners, experiences difficulties in achieving receptive and expressive skills in English Language. We aim to present DELE (Deaf-centered E-Learning Environment), a platform created for the promotion of literacy skills in young deaf learners through cooperative activities, visual easification procedures, visual motivating educational games and Sign Language videos. DELE also allows teachers to create linguistic learning paths using an integrated editor. Some principles of language teaching and learning methodology that have been adopted in the development of the FIRB-VISEL project, funded by MIUR and aimed at creating a Deaf-centered E-Learning Environment (DELE), an online and open source platform prototype in which language learning is presented as an interactive and dynamic process.

DELE provides teachers with a story-editor allowing to:
- define a learning path by inserting texts, images, videos, animations to be automatically integrated in the environment structure;
- create an open source database by collecting materials produced by teachers working with deaf learners.

Through the implementation of embodiment theories in the design and development of both the educational and interactive path of this e-learning environment, we wish to include any deaf user wishing to improve his/her literacy skills.

The goal is to construct visually-grounded e-learning environment in which the didactic tools and the written language materials are made available in different forms. To do this we have to define the differences and similarities between the L1 and the L2 learner and identify activities and pedagogical procedures which facilitate the process of understanding written Italian by deaf learners both signers and not signers. In comprehension activity, depending on the nature of the respective genre and on the purpose of reading, we propose Easification as an alternative to Simplification that tampers integrity and authenticity against the purpose of teaching. Easification devices guides the reader through the text without making dramatic changes that could affect the approach to text complexity by the students.