DEAF STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING: RATIONALE FOR AN EXPERIENCE-BASED CURRICULUM MODEL

The life of the prelingually profoundly deaf child is a never-ending quest to define experience through the difficult code that is the majority language. This fact becomes the primary concern of the deaf person's educational history. In spite of the elaborate attention given to language development in their schooling, however, the difficulties in expressive and receptive English demonstrated by older hearing impaired students and deaf adults are well documented.; Such experience must be considered in the conduct of teaching and research with college-age deaf students. The development of a feasible postsecondary-level English curriculum model in particular presupposes a thorough understanding of the concept of language and the attitudes toward language expressed by deaf students. The curriculum model would then incorporate experiences addressing these concerns with strategies suggested by recent insights into the nature of pragmatic language usage in appropriate and meaningful contexts.; An open-ended, anonymous essay question was administered to 87 deaf college students, asking for recollections of past communication-related educational experiences. The study analyzed these essays descriptively using methods proposed by phenomenologist researchers and reconceptualist educators, and classified repeated themes in the written responses. Particular attention was given to: (a) the concept of self-as-communicator expressed by students; (b) the concept of deafness conveyed through the educational experience; (c) the concept of the process of learning language and communication skills. The essays were analyzed at sentence and paragraph level to define the patterns that emerged across samples. A curriculum model was then proposed, taking these responses into account as well as current developments in language pedagogy.; Thus the study serves an integrative function in its matching of certain educational experiences with linguistic awareness and its relating of professional knowledge of needed language skills with expanded insights into the experience of the postsecondary-level student.