Outside English-speaking countries deaf people come into contact with the English language in specific domains; indirectly through interpretation and translation or directly by learning it as a foreign language. This volume explores a range of intercultural/interlinguistic encounters with English.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing students form a specific group of foreign language learners. They need to use foreign languages just like their hearing peers if they want to enjoy the same benefits of globalization and technical advancements of today, yet they cannot take part in the same foreign language education. As sign language users, lip-readers or persons relying on hearing aids or cochlear implants in their everyday communication, they need special support in learning a foreign language. This book has been written by teachers and researchers involved in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to deaf and hard-of-hearing students in various different European countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Norway, Poland, and Serbia. The chapters mirror both the authors’ personal journeys through this field and give insight into various aspects of empirical research into the foreign language acquisition of hearing-impaired learners. They discuss mainly the issue of specific methodology for teaching EFL vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing and speaking to deaf and hard-of-hearing persons and the challenge of effective communication during the classes via sign language, cued speech or the oral approach. Special chapters are also devoted to EFL teachers’ experience in special schools for the deaf. Educators interested in practical advice, responses to challenges and worked-out solutions to problems will particularly welcome this book as a useful source of ideas. It will also help novice teachers embarking on their careers in English language education for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and adults.

This book outlines best practice and effective strategies for teaching English as a foreign language to D/deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students. Written by a group of researchers and experienced practitioners, the book presents a combination of theory, hands-on experience, and insight from DHH students. The book brings together a variety of tried and tested teaching ideas primarily designed to be used for classroom work as a basis for standby lessons or to supplement courses. Placing considerable emphasis on practical strategies, it provides educators and practitioners with stimulating ideas that facilitate the emergence of fluency and communication skills. The chapters cover a wide range of interventions and strategies including early education teaching strategies, using sign -bilingualism in the classroom, enhancing oral communication, speech visualization, improving pronunciation, using films and cartoons, lip reading techniques, written support, and harnessing writing as a memory strategy. Full of practical guidance grounded in theory, the book will be a useful resource for English teachers and all those involved in the education of deaf and hard of hearing learners across the world; including researchers, student teachers, newly qualified teachers, school supervisors, and counsellors.

Written by authors who are themselves Deaf, this unique book illuminates the life and culture of Deaf people from the inside, through their everyday talk, their shared myths, their art and performances, and the lessons they teach one another. Carol Padden and Tom Humphries employ the capitalized "Deaf" to refer to deaf people who share a natural language—American Sign Language (ASL—and a complex culture, historically created and actively transmitted across generations. Signed languages have traditionally been considered to be simply sets of gestures rather than natural languages. This mistaken belief, fostered by hearing people’s cultural views, has had tragic consequences for the education of deaf children; generations of children have attended schools in which they were forbidden to use a signed language. For Deaf people, as Padden and Humphries make clear, their signed language is life-giving, and is at the center of a rich cultural heritage. The tension between Deaf people’s views of themselves and the way the hearing world views them finds its way into their stories, which include tales about their origins and the characteristics they consider necessary for their existence and survival. Deaf in America includes folktales, accounts of old home movies, jokes, reminiscences, and translations of signed poems and modern signed performances. The authors introduce new material that has never before been published and also offer translations that capture as closely as possible the richness of the original material in ASL. Deaf in America will be of great interest to those interested in culture and language as well as to Deaf people and those who work with deaf children and Deaf people.

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Language development, and the challenges it can present for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, have long been a focus of research, theory, and practice in D/deaf studies and deaf education. Over the past 150 years, but most especially near the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, advances in the acquisition and development of language competencies and skills have been increasing rapidly. This volume addresses many of those accomplishments as well as remaining challenges and new questions that have arisen from multiple perspectives: theoretical, linguistic, social-emotional, neuro-biological, and socio-cultural. Contributors comprise an international group of prominent scholars and practitioners from a variety of academic and clinical backgrounds. The result is a volume that addresses, in detail, current knowledge, emerging questions, and innovative educational practice in a variety of contexts. The volume takes on topics such as discussion of the transformation of efforts to identify a "best" language approach (the "sign" versus "speech" debate) to a stronger focus on individual strengths, potentials, and choices for selecting and even combining approaches; the effects of language on other areas of development as well as effects from other domains on language itself; and how neurological, socio-cognitive, and linguistic bases of learning are leading to more specialized approaches to instruction that address the challenges that remain for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. This volume both complements and extends The Oxford Handbook of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Volumes 1 and 2, going further into the unique challenges and demands for deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals than any other text and providing not only compilations of what is known but setting the course for investigating what is still to be learned.