Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-1996

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Education

Major Professor

Kathleen Warden

Committee Members

Schuyler Huck, Olga Welch

Abstract

This study examined how accurately a teacher of deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students could morphologically match signed and spoken English. Results show that it is possible for teachers of D/HH students to accurately sign spoken utterances. While similar studies reported that only 10% of their subjects' signed and spoken English matched, the subject of this study accurately signed 71.3% of spoken utterances, ranging from 62% to 100% accuracy. More importantly, the mean primary deletion rate for the subject of this study was only 11.1%, meaning the remaining 88 .9% of the signed communication contained only secondary deletions or were signed accurately. Findings from this study have implications as to how teachers of D/HH students may improve the morphological match between their signed and spoken English. On the other hand, since it is possible for teachers to accurately sign what they say, more research should be conducted to determine why D/HH students' facility with English has not significantly improved in the past 20 years in schools where simultaneous communication (signed and spoken English) is used.

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