The most important thing that we should do first for improving scholastic achievements of deaf students is to understand their language needs induced by their circumstances and culture.
This study, which took bilingual deaf students as its objects of...
The most important thing that we should do first for improving scholastic achievements of deaf students is to understand their language needs induced by their circumstances and culture.
This study, which took bilingual deaf students as its objects of investigation, looked into the socio-cultural backgrounds that made the deaf students become bilinguists and analyzed the impacts of bilingual deaf education on their scholastic achievements.
The aims of this study are as following:
First, this study identifies the process of sign language acquisition as the first language that should be acquired before anything else in the course of bilingual education and its justifiability through examining the socio-cultural backgrounds of the bilingual deaf students.
Second, through this research, it is identified how important and necessary the bilingual deaf education in the integrated education and the sign language interpretation supports for improved scholastic achievements are.
Third, this study makes an inquiry into the methodological factors of bilingual deaf education, thereby grasping their influences on scholastic achievements of deaf students.
This study took participant observations and in-depth individual interviews as its research methods in order to examine the influences of bilingual language education on the deaf students' scholastic achievements, as well as qualitative methodology using open-ended questions about the methodological factors of bilingual deaf education for the improved scholastic achievements to 9 persons who were selected as participants in the research that began in March 2007 and ended in May of the same year.
The researcher used sign language for questioning three deaf students and their mothers, and these sign language interviews were recorded by a laptop computer. As for three deaf students, who were the key research objects, the researcher conducted the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Sentence Understanding Test and the Korean-Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Ⅲ(K-WISC-Ⅲ) respectively, differentiating each term.
Moreover, for examining the scholastic achievements of the deaf students, the results of the Primary Scholastic Ability Test that is annually carried out in the early March by Chungcheongnam-do Office of Education and the mid-term tests conducted in May by each elementary school were adopted.
The results of this study can be outlined as following:
First, after looking into the process of sign language acquisition of the deaf student 1, 2 and 3, who had been grown up under deaf parents, this study found out that they were be able to acquire sign language as the first language naturally in daily life, in the course of communicating with their deaf parents.
Second, despite the sign language interpretation supports in the integrated education are not equal to perfect bilingual educational circumstances, it was found out that the supports are required for the bilingual deaf education and can induce a sense of social stability, the self-confidence and the desire and incentive for scholastic achievements, which are all appeared to be influential factors to their school scores.
Lastly, as seen in the analysis on the scholastic achievement each subject through bilingual deaf education, the deaf student 1 showed high scores ranged from 6 points to 25points in Korean, mathematics and science, with exception of social studies. The deaf student 2 also shows the growth in the average marks by 7 points in Korean and mathematics, with high scholastic achievements near or more than the average marks of his whole class.
Based on these results, this study provides some suggestions:
First, the sign language interpretation supports should be backed by the government's legislative efforts and financial helps, so as to improve the bilingual deaf education and the deaf students' scholastic achievements in the integrated education.
Second, in schools for deaf, the bilingual education program should be invented and conducted mainly by deaf and hearing teachers qualified as bilinguists.