STATEMENT:
Summary of Project:
(As is customary with ASL scholarly research presentations, here is a video summary of my project in ASL only: Summary of Project: https://youtu.be/1lqVIJ0sCFg )
This current research project looks at in-text context surrounding fingerspelled words in ASL first person narratives. It was the result of a collaboration with ASL-English Interpretation graduate Scar Young, who worked with me through the Undergraduate Research Mentorship Initiative program. To my knowledge there is no research that looks at the type of linguistic contextual cues present in an ASL text that could help the receiver of the message comprehend the fingerspelled word. We analyzed thirteen first person ASL narratives found in the videos ASL Storytime Volume 1 and ASL Storytime Volume 2 to create a taxonomy of contextual cues in ASL narrative texts. We completed a linguistic gloss of each story, and then analyzed the fingerspelled words for part of speech and type of in-text contextual cue, if present. Of the 148 fingerspelled words present in the stories (out of a total 3480 signs), 69 were common nouns and 31 were proper nouns. Thirty-seven of the common nouns (53%) and one proper noun had context, falling in the categories of classifier (18), part-whole relationship (11), synonym (6), description (2), and antonym (1). These categories align with the types of contextual cues often taught to children learning to read (Elder, 2008).
Of the twenty verbs that were fingerspelled, all of them were lexicalized fingerspelled words, and none had in-text contextual cues before or after their occurrence. Likewise, the fourteen function words that were fingerspelled were produced without context. The knowledge of which parts of speech have a high prevalence of in-text context and which do not lends itself to the future development of curricula to teach students to use contextual cues to help decipher fingerspelled words.
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ASL Storytime, Vol 1 & 2., Gallaudet University RIEC
Gorman Jamrozik's project looks at in-text context surrounding fingerspelled
words in ASL first person narratives.
Relevance of the Work:
(As is customary with ASL scholarly research presentations, here is a video of the relevance of my project in ASL only: Relevance of Project: https://youtu.be/0yn4gn6qNaY )
Fingerspelling in a signed language is the manual representation of a writing system of language. The letters of words that are fingerspelled are produced at a rapid speed, and in order to decipher a fingerspelled word a person receiving the message must serially process each letter and then mentally form it into a complete word. The process of comprehending fingerspelling is considered to be one of the most difficult tasks in using ASL by non-native learners (Grushkin 1998).
ASL students are often told to “use context” to help them decipher the fingerspelled word (Patrie and Dannis, 2007, Taylor, 2002, Mendoza, 2006). However, unlike children learning to read a language who are taught how to use contextual cues to help them figure out unknown words, ASL students are not taught what context is present in a text or how to use such context to help them understand fingerspelling. In 2008, I collaborated with researchers at DePaul University to study the impact of prior knowledge of a subject on the comprehension of a fingerspelled word, the results of which was presented at several national conferences. To my knowledge there is no research that looks at in-text contextual cues that could help the receiver of the message comprehend the fingerspelled word.
In my teaching practice, I have always tried to have a clear answer to “Why are we doing this activity? How will it help me?” My interest in looking at the use of contextual cues to help decipher fingerspelling began right when I began teaching over 20 years ago and I saw firsthand how much new learners of ASL struggled with fingerspelling comprehension. I found myself saying “use context” much like my teachers had but realized that I had nothing to back up that claim or any linguistic patterns in-text to point to students that would help them. My future goals are to develop curriculum to teach students to better utilize the context surrounding fingerspelled nouns in ASL narratives, and then to continue this work on expository texts next.
Sources:
Elder, J. (2008). Exercise your college reading skills: Developing more powerful comprehension. McGraw-Hill Companies.
Grushkin, D. A. (1998). Lexidactylophobia: The (irrational) fear of fingerspelling. American annals of the deaf, 143(5), 404-415.
Mendoza, E. (2006). ABC 1-2-3: Fingerspelling and Numbers in ASL. Student Workbook. RID Press.
Patrie, C. J., & Dannis, J. (2007). ASL skills development. DawnSignPress.
Taylor, M. M. (2002). Interpretation skills: American sign language to English. Interpreting Consolidated.