Humanising Language Teaching: Reviewing Concepts for the Teaching of English to the Deaf.

Antonio Henrique Coutelo de Moraes and Wanilda Maria Alves Cavalcanti, Brazil

Antonio Henrique Coutelo de Moraes holds a Master’s degree in Language Science. He is both a teacher at Cultura Inglesa Madalena and an Assistant Professor at Faculdade Senac, Recife/PE. E-mail: coutelodemoraes@gmail.com

Wanilda Maria Alves Cavalcanti is a Professor of the Master’s in Language Science Course at UNICAP, Recife/PE. E-mail: wanildamaria@yahoo.com

Menu

Introduction
First steps
Stepping onto a possible path
Next step
Methodology
Discussion and analysis
Conclusions
References

Introduction

Humanising the teaching of a language involves having a good understanding of how people learn and what motivates them to learn. And, although the verb 'humanise' appears to take advantage of a particular approach to language teaching, we are aware that aspects of other approaches are also humanising.

All of these; in one way or another fall within Diller’s ‘rationalist’ category with em-phasis on the mind’s ability to formulate and use ‘rules’ of various kinds. Except for Grammar-Translation, these are also approaches in which learners meet new language in the context of challenging, interesting activities. (Stevick, 1990, pp. 132)

It is therefore a way to propose to the students and, in this case, deaf students, a learning path that will facilitate the construction of knowledge in teaching a third language, English. Looking at the needs of students does not constitute a new fact. However, when we devote special attention to some of the obstacles to be overcome in a motivating, dynamic and agile way, we are surely approaching the assurance that students have more success in their learning.

With this perspective, and from the various reflections on language in recent years, this issue deserves our attention. This fact, something new among our research, appears as a little studied proposal in Brazil. In this scenario, and based on previous experiences in teaching English to deaf people, we pitched in to carry out this proposal through the intervention planned for six deaf people, all with high school completion.

The most important data that we want to emphasize on is that, given the difficulties already identified for teaching first and second languages, the task of teaching a foreign language (therefore, a third language) for the deaf seems to be a question that can be postponed. Contrary to the idea that tomorrow has not yet begun we started this journey that seemed quite promising – even considering the obstacles that were to be encountered.

First steps

During the first stage of a discipline at university, some students and teachers made thoughtful readings on matters related to deafness and brought comments and concerns to the classroom. Some of the topics discussed relate to the difficulties of including deaf students in regular schools, the influence of Vygotsky in understanding the performance of the deaf, and, finally, the current status of academic research in respect to foreign language acquisition for the deaf.

Regarding the first matter, we can say that it is one of the most controversial, because it leads to reflection on the inclusive discourse. In fact many talk about inclusion, but not all think about its real meaning and the points that are needed for it to occur. Placing a deaf person in a mainstream school with an interpreter does not bring many benefits to the subject in question when they do not master the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) first. We say this because there seems to be an impression that all deaf people are very good Libras speakers, which is not something that always occurs; and, if so, the basis of the language which would serve as auxiliary to learning a second language or more does not exist.

Therefore, not having thought of the need that the deaf have to learn and better understand their own language – as the hearing learn Portuguese – is to reduce the chances of this student learning something else, which leads us to another issue: interpreters having the role of “mother tongue teachers”. These professionals end up doing two jobs in one – in a short space of time – transposing their function, and still not guaranteeing the learning.

We must grant those individuals the right to study in inclusive classes, if it is their will or their families’, but we do not see forced inclusion as a tool to build a better and more equal future, nor to give deaf people the same learning conditions.

We all have different timings to mature our ideas and absorb information: differences are known to exist among the so-called normal, let alone among people with different anatomical features. Furthermore, a Brazilian, for example, willing to study at high school in England must have a good level of English for them to interact and absorb the content better.

This leads us to believing that either the deaf have the opportunity to better understand their own language and Portuguese during their time at school, or they may even have more difficulty when it becomes necessary to learn English, driven by different requirements.

On the second matter, the influence of Vygotsky, we can say that he advocated that the laws of development are the same for all children. In his studies he reaches a conclusion about oral methods: oralising is important for the deaf, but not to generate an authentic language, alive. Vygotsky (1929) presents an innovative and optimistic concept about the development of people with disabilities, or not, based on their approach to cultural history.

Finally, on the proposal to teaching English to deaf people, we can say that it is still part of a very shy framework in Brazil, which justifies its relevance. Trying to understand why this position exists, what seems most revealing is the fact that you feel little credit is attributed to the possibility of deaf people learning a foreign language. In this context, this attitude is often observed and, moreover, the issue found on the agenda of most of the active research is the learning of the Brazilian Portuguese language (written). However, the history of deaf education shows that in sixteenth-century Spain the monk Pedro Ponce de León taught four deaf noble children to speak Greek, Latin and Italian (Goldfeld, 2002).

Thus, it's not difficult to imagine that this possibility may be repeated more often nowadays, when we have more information, technologies and more enlightening studies to do so.

There are currently about seven dissertations and some monographs that offer information and expertise, mostly considering the issue in a cursory manner, in Brazil. Accordingly, today the acquisition of language in the context of deaf students is centred mainly in translation. But it would seem that translation is not the best way of teaching / learning a language.

These discussions led to thoughts that made us confront issues strengthened by the certainty that the movement, the interest in the use of Internet communication, spreads more and more, and we need to better understand how the deaf person is within the context and what means could be used to meet the demands arising from their needs.

Stepping onto a possible path

The history of English teaching in Brazil is long, starting in 1809 with the signing of the decree of 22 June 1809 by the Prince Regent of Portugal, who had set up a French language school and an English language one as-well (Nogueira, 2007, pp. 20).

In the following centuries, the world engaged in studying issues related to the acquisition and development of a language. Those studies, which have lasted to this day, come closer and closer to the answers necessary for the evolution of language studies, and generate, as a result, theories about the subject.

Concerning these theories, it seems important to make some considerations about the concepts of language and subject. There are three concepts of language: as a representation of the world and thought, for Greeks and Romans; as communication, for behaviourist and innate theories; and as interaction, present in the theories of Bruner, pragmatic interactionism, and De Lemos’ interactionism - which has been pragmatic, but long departed.

Based on some concepts of language acquisition, there were - and continue to emerge - the various theories of second language teaching that generated new methodologies. Harmer (2005, pp. 78) defines the general area of methodology as the practice of teaching English through such approaches, methods, techniques, procedures and models. The first of them was the Grammar-Translation, developed for secondary schools in the eighteenth century.

Despite many approaches for teaching English as a foreign language already being known, we are here to make an introduction for the primary ones, among those that focus on the acquisition of fluency and proficiency. We leave out, therefore, those which focus on secondary schools and which, in our view, had little impact in the area.

However, we feel the need to start off by commenting about the contexts for language learning due to differences between the characteristics of learners and the environment in which the acquisition of first (L1), second (L2) or foreign language (FL) takes place. This concern owes it validity, according to Lightbown & Spada second (2011, pp. 29), to the fact that an apprentice of L2 or FL differs from a child acquiring a first language, an argument that is easy to understand.

Regarding the characteristics of learners, researchers (Lightbown & Spada, 2011, pp. 30) point out that in the contexts of second language you already know another language - the first or mother tongue - and when it comes to adolescents and/or adults, there is cognitive maturity, language awareness and attitude.

We understand, then, that there is an influence of L1 on L2, because taking off from the basis of the first language can help develop the second one through the inevitable comparison made by apprentices, which can also lead them to making mistakes that would not occur in the acquisition of the first language. In this context, the previous contact with other languages seems valid, especially if you are learning a foreign language, in the case of the deaf.

Let us bear in mind that Brazilian deaf people have Libras as L1, which is visual-spatial. In this case, having some experience with writing in the L2, an auditory-oral language which uses the Latin alphabet, can facilitate the work of the educator, who may be only concerned with focusing on a (more) "effective" methodology, thus, leaving aside concerns with the time it takes their student to become familiar with the alphabet and, in many cases, the teaching of different text genres.

Also, about the environment of acquisition / learning, Lightbown & Spada (ibid.) remind us of the issue of (in) formality, which can be analyzed when referring to conditions in which one learns a language.

If, on the one hand, informality grants children the right to remain silent until ready to speak - which does not happen in classroom contexts for adolescents and adults -, on the other hand, the formality grants those adolescents and adults access to corrective feedback regarding both the lexical choice, and the meaning in grammar and pronunciation. However, both converge with respect to the input which takes a modified form, as it is common for speakers to adjust their speech in order to facilitate understanding of the message to be conveyed.

It is for these reasons that a theory of second language acquisition that inspires a particular approach and method of teaching should cover as many variations of the characteristics of learners in a variety of contexts. Therefore, taking this position as right, we listed here the approaches and methods that took origin from the theories that made interesting points and continue to inform the practice of English language teaching (Harmer, 2005, pp. 68).

Starting out over the reflections from the discussions within the study group, it became clear that one point stands out to others, which we hope to make clear: the need for deaf people to master their natural language, and to have some knowledge of the second language (Brazilian Portuguese) - official language of their country -, contained in all documents and communications in Brazilian society. Only then did we consider the teaching of a foreign language, in this case English.

As stated, the literature about the subject is quite small, which complicates but does not invalidate the attempt to answer questions about what society generally regards as something that can be delayed because problems in acquisition and learning of their natural language and second language (Portuguese) still cannot be treated as resolved issues.

Silva (2005), when commenting on the learning of English, presents a group consisting of deaf and hearing students, a teacher, and an interpreter. The teacher translates the words to the listeners while the interpreter changes what is being said into Libras for deaf students. The text-reader interaction is associated with the idea of mastery of words. Deaf people do not know if they're learning English or Portuguese, though, because of the emphasis on de-contextualised vocabulary.

Then, Oliveira (2007) investigated the influence of teachers' beliefs about the teaching of English language for the deaf in their manner. The results point to difficulties in training teachers which brings more obstacles than facilities.

Addressing the same theme, Sousa (2008) focuses on the communicative language teaching. His work shows an extension of the linguistic repertoire, as well as an ability to articulate the structures with information learned through communicative activities.

Following this discussion, Lopes (2009) discusses the use of text genres in English language teaching in which the author seeks to work on the text through the translation / discussion of the senses made, in Libras, and then students write their understanding in Portuguese in their notebooks.

The methodology suggests that he brings the proposal for six (6) lessons: with a comic (HQ), with a charge, three using the computer, one for the understanding of Orkut – a social network which was very popular at the time of research – in English, a reading of the homepage of the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) and another one for reading the Deaflympics homepage, and the sixth for reading a brochure. Each lesson students compare the two types of texts from previous lessons.

This proposal represents an opportunity for employment of written genres for English teachers and may be supplemented by other activities that allow greater interaction through language, leading to the possibility of developing a fluency in writing. Therefore, we recognize the importance of such work not only for the inclusive school context - the authors' goal - but also to the context of language schools because of the quality in the theory and the ideas of the proposed activities.

Focusing on teaching English as a foreign language in an inclusive perspective, it is necessary to get to know first how the process of the teaching of, and learning by deaf students occurs before considering an inclusive language classroom. One of the reasons to that is the fact that language schools tend to group students according to their goals and needs of the target language, which means that students who seek to work in conversational fluency are usually divided into different classes from students who aim to improve their fluency in written language.

In the case of the deaf, their fluency in another language will be widely used in internet situations, where they can interact with deaf and hearing people from other countries in online chat rooms, blogs and social networking sites.

Considering the internet, which itself comes in actuality as an endless source of motivation to the young independent digital native to attend the English language, one has to learn more and more terms in that language before the digital world that suggests a need to know basics to stay connected in social networks, blogs, etc. crossing all corners of the earth and reaching the farthest points and their various linguistic groups, making what we can actually nominate digital inclusion.

Next step

As previously mentioned, the steps taken by the Study Group about the language of the deaf which we hold in the Master’s of Language Sciences, provided opportunities for some thoughts that put a successful experience of an English teacher of deaf Libras users before us, as something we could repeat and whose facilities would be clearly demarcated by the motivation of the deaf in joining these social networks, mainly.

Thereby, the information brought in that forum strengthened the idea that we could try to learn from the possibility of the deaf learning a foreign language, and thus share with others interested in our findings. Our credit on the ability of the deaf, as already demonstrated on many occasions, allows us to assert that they can acquire fluency in written English. To clarify our questions we tried to work with six subjects in the Laboratory of Language, Education and Socio-cultural organization.

Since it is therefore a subject seldom researched in Brazil, the difficulty that could be faced is notorious, but it can be seen as one more challenge in finding quality teaching.

Methodology

The methodology that we describe represents the organization and implementation of this research - since the object of the study and justification for the collected data, respecting the theoretical framework discussed in previous sections of this article.

As noted earlier, we seek here to understand the process of learning a foreign language for the deaf and the ability to demonstrate fluency in that language. In the case of deaf people, the experience with second language means a first contact with written language, since Brazilian sign writing is still under construction / testing. This leads us to the bi(multi)lingual perspective pointed out by Lopes (2009, p.45) because it is in Brazil, Libras the first language of the deaf, Portuguese the second, and English a foreign language which, therefore, would be the third.

It is for the urgency of developments in education and the belief in the cognitive ability of these individuals that we support the theory that, to have an inclusive school, it is essential to know not only the particular, but also the identity and learning characteristics of groups considered as minorities in the classroom.

The considerations led us to set the criteria for selecting the subjects, which are shown below:

1. Six (06) deaf people of both sexes.
2. Deaf members of the National Federation of Education and Integration of the Deaf (FENEIS).
3. Deaf people who have finished high school.
4. Deaf people aged between 20 and 35.
5. Deaf people fluent in Libras.
6. Deaf people fluent in Portuguese.

Initially, we met with the subjects to explain the activities step by step and, after having the consent forms signed, we began the research itself, with the group directly interacting with researchers and / or through computers, according to the following stages:

1. Assessment of the level of English by applying the placement test, published by the Oxford University Press, which grouped them into the elementary level, corresponding to A1 of the Common European Framework.
2. Lessons followed by a stimulus to the use of English through chats and a social networking site created for this purpose.
3. Registration of data on the growth performance of research participants through the application of a new placement test as well as the printing of the texts produced.

The predicted number of meetings was ten (10), which we performed in three (3) months. These classes complied with the content taught by foreign language schools at the elementary level of English and were planned taking the book New English File Elementary as one of the main bases – widely used in language schools and well liked by teachers.

The study, which was submitted to the Committee for Research Ethics at Universidade Católica de Pernambuco (UNICAP) received approval. This research is linked to the project "Communication in linguistic minorities: viewing new directions", registered under number 225 180-PSI-015-2009 / 1, approved and registered on 28/10/2009.

After successive readings, the data were transcribed verbatim, according to guidelines of Minayo (1998) and Turato (2003). Although this research is still inconclusive, the data collected and analyzed gave us a good profile of the reality we are studying. Then, they were discussed with the didactic purpose of outlining the comparative profiles of subjects - as regards the characteristics, production and results - showing similarities and dissimilarities between them (Turato, 2005, p. 510).

Discussion and analysis

The analysis occurred in the light of the theoretical base, and was conducted after obtaining data which recorded the progress achieved by deaf students during follow-up activities with texts produced on the site created for this purpose.

Table 1

Subjects’ level of English - placement 1

Most subjects showed some knowledge of English except for two students, who presented a more basic level of English than the others. So we started at the Elementary level equivalent to the Common European Framework A1, under which such learners should be able to understand and use familiar everyday expressions and basic phrases that aim to satisfy the needs of the concrete type. They should also be able to present themselves and others, ask and answer questions about personal information, such as where they live, etc..

As an example, for a better explanation of that comment we are going to describe the first encounter with the subjects. At that time we started working on greetings, numbers, personal information and the verb to be in the affirmative.

Of these contents, the subjects could recognize the numbers from zero (0) to ten (10), and showed no difficulty in understanding the other numerals up to two hundred (200) in addition to showing confidence in working on greetings.

In the case of the affirmative form of the verb to be, the only issue raised by two students (M and A) relates to the use of the verb form are in sentences where the subjects are represented by names and not by the subject pronoun they. This fact as we see throughout our experience with foreign language - as students and as teachers -, however, is not a difficulty unique to the deaf, because we can observe the same phenomenon in class with the hearing.

In another class, the subjects were exposed to the vocabulary of countries, nationalities and languages and worked on the negative and interrogative forms of the verb to be. Again there were not many difficulties and they remembered a few words they would have learned during high school.

In the production phase of one class, students had the opportunity (once again) to personalise the content learned, creating an about me in a networking site exclusive for the group for purposes of practice and production of English. R, for example, wrote the following:

Hello, My name is R, I'm Deaf and i am twenty-four years old, single. I'm from Brazil and I live in Olinda. I speak Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language. My e-mail address is r.a@gmail.com. Thanks.. =)

Here we can see how R, who was one of the students who presented the most basic levels of English language compared to other subjects in the early test, has evolved and how well she produced, and can be compared to any other student, hearing or not, at elementary level; because although the text shows simple mistakes concerning punctuation (uppercase and lowercase), she could effectively communicate personal information.

Another example is M, who was able to produce a text in which the mistakes did not interfere in communication despite having a more limited knowledge of sign and Portuguese languages than the others.

Her text:

hello, my name is M, i'm deaf and i am thirty-two years old, single i am from brazil and i live in Recife. i speak brazilian. My address is ms7@hotmail.com.

Therefore, this student was the one who had the weakest level of English in the whole group, but gives demonstrations that her prior knowledge combined with new information and explanations about this language brought her confidence to express herself as prompted by the researchers.

The fact that the subject did not use capital letters, or punctuation, has nothing to do with her ability to learn English, it only shows a failure in second language learning. This fact was verified by observing her notebook - M tends to write everything in lowercase. Regarding the “I speak brazilian”, we consider it important to remember that, although " brazilian " is not the right word, there is no real break in meaning, for a native could understand that the subject refers to the Portuguese of Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese).

These fragments of text show progress in our subject. By giving the emphasis towards those who had a weaker initial performance of the whole group but were able to achieve somehow good results, regardless of possible improper uses with regard to grammar, we show it is possible for the deaf to learn a foreign language, although some argue it is not. After all, these improper uses are recurrent in classrooms where foreign languages are taught to any students, deaf or hearing, and are part of the construction of knowledge.

As for other subjects, it can be noted that they fared better than those just described, as can be seen below.

L. writes:

Hello, my name is L., I'm twenty-three years old, single. I am deaf and this is my profile. I live in Recife, Pernambuco and am a student. I study at Fir, in Recife. I am here to study english.

Or even:

His life is limited. Do not waste time living the life of else.

A. wrote the following text:

Hello Toni, What do you like animals? You have a pet? Cat is beautiful? A photo image animal. Who that the dog is yours?

In these cases, we identified a higher level and fluency. We can say that they dared more, being able to express themselves with vocabulary and verbal constructions that we have not brought to the classroom. And although the structure may not be grammatically correct in the case of "A", he actually managed to communicate something that she wanted regardless of any request.

Conclusions

At the end of the period of direct contact with deaf people experiencing learning situations in English, we resumed our original question which was to monitor the performance of deaf users of Libras, trying to understand if there was any possibility of them acquiring fluency in the writing of that language. Thus, when we started working with the subjects we expected it would deliver better yields in the English language, which was met.

The analysed data already allowed us to bring some conclusions such as these we describe.

We were able to identify improvements in deaf people’s fluency in English in the research, and explain it as follows:

1. They presented development in English from their interest in accessing and staying on the website, showing an expansion of the vocabulary from the previous knowledge as well as that brought by the occurrence of new words based on suggestions that the interaction made possible.
2. The primary tool selected for use in the classroom greatly facilitated the participation of the subjects, which motivated subjects to invest more in communicating with other colleagues in the country and other countries and the researchers.
3. Today, individuals are able to provide personal information such as name, age, preferences, description of pictures (in this case the subjects had the opportunity to be more creative since images allow discussions about different aspects according to the experiences of each one of the subjects).
4. They showed clarity in the use of verbs taught, using the forms required for the type of communication.
5. They also demonstrated a difficulty that occurs, as well, with hearing students in language schools – subject-verb agreement. Clarifying the item, we can say that they needed more time to incorporate a habit to transfer from a proper name to a pronoun.
6. They sought to express their thoughts without having the vocabulary that would be appropriate to that situation and, for failing, they show some impatience. At that point they could always make use of the dictionary, Google translator and / or other tools which allowed them, in most cases, to resolve the question with which they had encountered.

The texts analysed show that our subjects developed, achieving better results, independent of the appropriation of the language, after all, improper uses are common in classrooms where foreign languages are taught to different types of students, being part of the construction of knowledge.

To finalise our observations we can say that, contrary to some expectations that circulate in society when it comes to learning a foreign language, we can make foreign language teaching more humane, giving the deaf a chance to learn it. The deaf are able to do so provided that certain conditions are respected as any other student in a similar situation.

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Vygotsky, L. S. (1929/1993) The fundamental problems of defectology. In The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. New York: Plenum Press. Acessado em 01 de maio, 2010. Disponível em:
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