‘Sign Language’ use as Medium of Instruction: The Case of Grade One and Two at Mekanissa School for the Deaf
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Literatures show sign language is a fully fledged language that can be employed
effectively to teach the contents of a curriculum as spoken language. Though the
use of sign language in education makes sense educationally, linguistically and
psychologically there are many grievances in the practices. In many parts of the
world, sign language is seldom used in formal education. On the other hand,
when signing is employed, it is either in the form of contact sign language or an
artificially constructed manual in which sign codes for a spoken language,
mostly.
In view of that, this research has attempted to examine sign language use as
medium of instruction in primary classes of Mekanissa School for the Deaf. To
deal with this, the study employed a case study research technique. The data
collected through 20 classroom observations, individual interviews with 7
teachers, 10 students, 10 parents and 3 officials as well as several document
analyses. Those data were examined and presented based on their themes in
detail following narrative analysis method to achieve the purposes.
According to the findings of the study, the Deaf communication approach
dominantly employed in primary classes of Mekanissa School for the Deaf is
SimCom which is considered as best method by the teachers. Signed Amharic
(Manual Codes for Amharic) is the principal MOI, while written and spoken
Amharic served in few classroom activities. Unfortunately, the natural EthSL
rarely employed as it is in many countries in the world. On the other hand, both
the teachers and the students exhibited incompetency to make use of the signed
language in the classes besides their unconvinced attitude to utilize the natural
sign language as capable instrument of education. The classrooms and their
facilities also found to be unsuitable to sign medium.
The challenges that hinder the effective utilization identified as they are related
to improper proficiency of the teachers, students and the language itself, negative
attitude of the users, poor classroom facilitation, material unavailability and lack
of clear policies. On the contrary the manualist philosophy the school advocates
and sign language training programs of the school appeared to be opportunities
for further improvements.
Generally, using sign language as MOI has several drawbacks in the cases.
However, considering its benefit for Deaf learners, the research suggested to
persist on using it along with conducting researches to improve the drawbacks in
the practices.
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Deaf