Success with Academic English: Reflections of Deaf College  Students

By Rose Marie Toscano, Barbara McKee and Dominique Lepoutre

An article in the American Annals of the Deaf, March 2002
 
 

This is a summary of this article. It has some excellent advice for parents  and teachers since we would like to have our children and students become the  well-adjusted successful students that the authors recruited to interview for  this article. If you would like a copy of the entire article, which has some  excerpts of some of the student 's comments, please email me at  cook-walker@worldnet.att.net and I will send a copy home with your child.

Basically, the authors used information gained from a questionnaire,  institutional databases and in-depth personal interviews to identify factors and  characteristics that positively influenced the attainment of strong academic  literacy skills. 

The participants were 30 deaf college students with pure tone averages  ranging from 83  - 120. They were high achievers with excellent reading and  writing skills. There were 15 men and 15 women. Ninety-three percent had at  least one hearing parent and had attended a mainstream program for at least part  of their academic experience. These student 's SAT scores averaged 550, very  close to their hearing peers at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology). Six  students said they communicated through sign only, 3 said speech only, 11 said  simultaneous sign and speech and 9 indicated no preference. Twenty-two  identified themselves as bilingual in ASL and English. Just under half (46%)  considered English their first language, 23% stated that ASL was their first  language. However, several students were born and raised in countries where  English is not the first language and one student raised in the United States  listed Spanish as his first language. In all 30% considered a language other  than English or ASL as their first language. 
 

Basically, the findings for deaf students were very similar to other  researcher findings done with high achieving hearing students. The parents were  highly involved in almost all phases of their deaf child 's education. They used  many strategies to instill a reading ethic in their children. They actively  taught their children reading and writing skills, and provided assistance during  elementary and middle school responding to their writing, answering questions  about reading and generally being available to help them. They supported and  challenged their children in order to enhance the development of the child 's  skills.
 
 

All the students talked about their parents' high expectations. The parents  demanded hard work and expected them to finish their academic work before  engaging in social or leisure activities. Students believed that it was  important, both to their families and their own self-concept to maintain the  image of "successful student." 
 
 

Another important finding was that students could communicate easily with  their families. Family members, often particularly mothers, took pains to learn  to communicate with the student. Many students had good communication with  siblings and grandparents as well. Families clearly valued communication  both  a visual language and written and spoken English. "The deaf children who appear  most likely to be the most competent in all domains of childhood endeavor are  those who actively participate in linguistic interactions with their parents  from an early age. From those interactions, they not only gain facts, they gain  cognitive and social strategies, knowledge of self and others, and a sense of  being part of the world." (Marschark, 1993)
 

In most cases, the students in this study had very early exposure to and  intensive experiences with reading and writing. They read early, read well and  enjoyed their reading experiences. This began in elementary school and was a  constant theme in middle and high school. They consistently read a variety of  books, from best sellers to popular literature and the classics. Early and  intensive exposure to language and the skills associated with language  development seems to be linked to this finding.
 

Middle school and high school teachers and the schools themselves actively  encouraged the development of study habits to facilitate their learning. These  students reported engaging in substantial reading and writing activities and  hard work throughout their middle school and high school years. All these  students said that academics took precedence over their social life at least  through middle school. Social life improved during high school, with many  students indicating that they were involved in sports, drama and other  extracurricular activities. Many students indicated that there was at least one  teacher that highly influenced them and spent extra time after school tutoring  or helping them.
 

Television, TTY 's and computers were important to these students. Captioning  was a critical technology for them and may have been a significant influence in  helping them develop reading and writing skills. They had access to computers  and TTY 's at an early age. These technologies also would tend to help develop  their reading and writing skills.
 

Finally, it is clear that these students had personality characteristics that  enabled them to believe they could overcome setbacks and succeed. They saw  themselves as competent individuals and cited persistence, determination and a  desire to strive for the top as their most important attributes in becoming  literate college student. Four characteristics: achievement, endurance,  awareness (open to experiences) and understanding distinguish talented males and  females from average teenagers. It appears that no one factor could be  identified as the defining attribute, but rather those successful deaf students  benefited from the combination and synergy of all these  variables.