2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
3/10/2020 | 1:45 PM - 2:15 PM | How to support ASL as an L1 for children and L2 for parents: An interactive discussion | Empire C
How to support ASL as an L1 for children and L2 for parents: An interactive discussion
When new parents of a child who is deaf and hard of hearing opt for ASL, they embark together on a journey of learning a new language and culture. Yet parents approach ASL as second language (L2) learners, while their children approach it as first language (L1) learners, often in conjunction with a spoken L1. In this presentation, we will explain why L1 and L2 learning are fundamentally different processes that place different demands on the learner. The optimal environments for one may not necessarily be optimal for the other. For parents who have never signed before, they not only learn a new vocabulary, phonology and grammar, they do so in a new modality (signed rather than spoken), which may pose unique challenges. As parents learn, they naturally "filter" ASL through their L1, so explicit comparisons between the two languages may be very helpful to them. In contrast, young children do not typically learn their L1 by being explicitly taught; rather they learn it on the basis of exposure/input. Although parents’ role as input-providers is important, they do not ‘teach’ their children language any more than they ‘teach’ them to crawl or walk; children acquire these abilities as long as their language environment is sufficiently rich. A critical issue, then, is ensuring a sufficiently rich ASL environment for natural L1 development to occur. After a basic overview of L1 and L2 learning of ASL, we will interactively poll audience members about their experiences learning ASL, and compare their answers to those collected by us during previous parent interviews, highlighting recurring patterns that help us understand which environments are most effective for parents' L2 versus children's L1 ASL development, and what resources are the most crucial for supporting overall family success.
- Summarize major characteristics of L1 vs. L2 learning of ASL
- ompare different environments for ASL development
- Identify resources for supporting overall family success
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Presenters/Authors
Deborah Chen Pichler
(), Gallaudet University, deborah.pichler@gallaudet.edu;
Deborah Chen Pichler is Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on the acquisition of ASL by Deaf children, bimodal bilingual acquisition of ASL and English by Coda children and Deaf children with cochlear implants from Deaf families. She also studies L2 acquisition of ASL by hearing and Deaf adults, particularly hearing parents of deaf and hard of hearing children.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Nonfinancial -
Elaine Gale
(), Hunter College, CUNY, egale@hunter.cuny.edu;
Elaine Gale is an associate professor and program leader of the deaf and hard of hearing teacher preparation program at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently the chair of the Deaf Leadership International Alliance (DLIA), an organization established to advocate deaf adults collaborating with professionals and connecting with young deaf children and their families. Her research experiences include joint attention, theory of mind, and sign language development. At present, she is the Lead Investigator for the Hunter College consortium on a research project titled Family ASL: Bimodal Bilingual Acquisition by Deaf Children of Hearing Parents supported by the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
No relevant financial relationship exist.
Nonfinancial -
No relevant nonfinancial relationship exist.
Diane Lillo-Martin
(), University of Connecticut, diane.lillo-martin@uconn.edu;
Diane Lillo-Martin is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut, and a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories. Her main research interest is to better understand the human language faculty. Primarily she examines this by studying the structure and acquisition of American Sign Language, and by looking at the process of language acquisition across different languages. See her site for the Sign Linguistics and Language Acquisition lab (http://slla.lab.uconn.edu/) for more information.
ASHA DISCLOSURE:
Financial -
Nonfinancial -