Deaf Literacy: Learning to Read English with Strong ASL Skills

How can profoundly deaf children learn to read written English without a phonological background in spoken English? This paper examines how strong ASL skills cognitively prepare deaf children for literacy. Because ASL is fully accessible visually, deaf children can acquire ASL as a first language with the same adeptness as hearing children learning English. Strong first language skills are crucial for literacy development, and metalinguistic awareness of ASL supports deaf literacy at early and advanced stages. English word recognition can be phonologically mediated by fingerspelling, and phonological awareness of ASL prepares deaf children to develop orthographic awareness of English. Then, other ASL metalinguistic abilities allow deaf children to make progressively more complex English-ASL mappings, eventually reaching the bilingual learning mode. Through this mode, deaf children can reach advanced literacy. Poor levels of literacy among the deaf are therefore not a result of cognitive deficits but rather inadequate language experience. Literacy rates could be improved with greater access to alternative literacy education based in ASL