American Sign Language vs. Signed English

American Sign Language began being used in the early 1800s (Bochner & Albertini 14). It is now recognised as a separate language apart from English. The linguistical constraints of ASL are different from those of spoken or signed English. In the 1960s, several groups of professionals were concerned about the academic levels, especially reading levels, of hearing impaired students. In reaction to these low scores, methods of encoding English into sign were begun. ASL, signed English, and spoken English are valid forms of communication. The big question is: Should deaf or hearing impaired children be taught in English or in another language? In the United States children are taught to read and write in English. Deaf children who are primarily ASL speakers, learn to read and write in a non-native language.

Signed English began with David Anthony. He was a deaf teacher in Michigan. His system of manually encoded English was known as Signing Essential English. He used standard signs from ASL but also included now signs to stand for English morphemes (Lou 91). Morphemes are meaningful linguistic units which can be discrete or bound together. For example "pin" is a discrete morpheme. "Pins" is a bound morpheme with 2 distinct sounds each with meaning. Every word had to be signed morphemically. A single word might require multiple signs. The idea was to give manually the same information a hearing person received aural

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s to be both formal in classroom instruction and informal between deaf adults and native ASL signers (Johnson & Erting 83). Corrections of children's ASL signing were made as appropriate in the classroom by the teacher's aid. In addition, most self-contained classes of deaf children include native ASL speakers as students and parents who are native ASL users who will correct the signs of the other children. This is informal transmission of the ASL method of communication and the Deaf Culture. A problem that is encountered in self-contained classrooms when the teacher is not a native ASL user or native Signed English user is the problem of spoken English not agreeing with what the teacher signs. Compounding this is just plain incorrect signing on the part of the teacher. Between these errors hearing disabled children can become confused over the use of English and ASL (Johnson & Erting 81). Many English words are not represented by signs in any form of manual communication. Unless the teacher fingerspells each of these at every occurrence the children will not be able to easily correlate spoken and Signed English (Johnson & Erting 81). Most classrooms do not include an adult who is capable of using both ASL and English
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Approximate Word count = 1759
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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