Using sign language to teach written language: An analysis of the strategies used by teachers of deaf children in a bilingual context

The main objective of this study was to characterize the type of activities and strategies employed by Chilean teachers when using Chilean Sign Language (ChSL) to teach written Spanish. This was achieved through the observation and analysis of three deaf educators, who were in charge of children attending kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade. Eight video recordings of written Spanish lessons were analyzed. The results show that, in the early grades, teachers working with written material over a sentence long tend to center their strategies on the general aspects of the texts, such as their structural elements and the comprehension of their global meaning, and on clarifying the meaning of specific words found in the text. We analyzed certain specific episodes in detail, which depict how the teachers work when introducing new words to the children. In this aspect, salient strategies included use of fingerspelling, matching signs and written words, and the explanation of the meaning of a word using signs and pictures. Finally, the article highlights the strengths and potential limitations of the strategies currently employed by these teachers to teach written Spanish as a second language using students' knowledge of ChSL. Also, we make suggestions aimed at optimizing the acquisition and development of lexical and syntactic knowledge of Spanish, as some of the factors that contribute to the improvement of deaf students' reading level.