Gallaudet Research Institute

First Wednesday Research Seminar Series

The GRI's First Wednesday Research Seminar Series provides an opportunity for the Gallaudet University academic community and visiting scholars to share insights from current research.

The lectures are held from 12:00 noon until 1:00 p.m. usually on the first Wednesday of the month in the Student Academic Center (SAC) and are open to the public. Sometimes, the lectures come on the second Wednesday morning, depending on circumstances. Sign language and voice-over interpreters are provided.

The GRI will provide technical assistance to presenters. If you are interested in doing a presentation on your research or related topic, contact Senda Benaissa, senda.benaissa@gallaudet.edu.

The Gallaudet Research Institute oversees Gallaudet Priority Research Fund which is designed to support research projects at Gallaudet (by faculty, students, and staff) that address areas that have been determined to be of high priority to the University (http://gri.gallaudet.edu/priorities.php). If you are interested in applying to the Gallaudet Research Priority Research Fund for financial support for your project, please contact us. Detailed information and an application form can be found at http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Funding/.

Click on the date above each presentation to add it to your .

GRI Research Lectures in Fall Semester 2008

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September 17, 2008
Effects of Bilingualism on Word Order and Information Packaging in ASL

Deborah Chen Pichler Department of Linguistics, Gallaudet University

This project aims to study the development of information packaging by ASL monolingual and ASL/English bilingual children. Information packaging refers to the ways in which speakers organize old and new information during discourse with an interlocutor. Recent reports in the acquisition literature have demonstrated that Deaf children as young as 1;6-2;0 appear to make use of topic and focus structures. However, the extent to which these structures adhere to target-like discourse/pragmatic requirements is not clear. It is also not clear from these reports whether children accurately produce the nonmanual (prosodic) features or noncanonical word order that accompany such information structures in adult ASL. This study will collect both longitudinal and experimental data with the goal of uncovering the developmental patterns for topic and focus constructions, as well as their effects on word order and nonmanual prosody. In addition, inclusion of both mono- and bilingual signers will allow investigation of possible cross-modality transfer effects between English and ASL. Bilingualism across two modalities presents opportunities for a wider variety of potential transfer effects than traditional monomodal bilingualism on which current models of transfer are based, and can thus serve as a crucial test case for refining this aspect of linguistic theory.

This presentation is now available as a Portable Document Format (PDF), Open Document presentation, Shockwave Flash and Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

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October 1, 2008
Guided Viewing Action Research: Instructional Approaches to Academic American Sign Language Acquisition

Alexander Zernovoj ASL/English Bilingual Teacher (KDES) & Instructor-Researcher (Gallaudet) Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center

In Guided Viewing, the teacher works with a small group with similar receptive skills. The teacher introduces new videos and supports children while viewing the video by stopping to make teaching points during the viewing process. Our action research focuses on how deaf students view, analyze and discuss clips from different ASL genres (e.g., literature, instructional, informative) guided by the teacher. This research is groundbreaking in that it is a new way of aiding in academic ASL acquisition of deaf students who need it. While the benefits of Guided Reading are well known, many benefits of Guided Viewing were identified in our research, e.g. expansion of students' ASL linguistic repertoire.

This presentation is now available as a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

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November 5, 2008
Families who are Deaf: A Photographic Essay

Barbara Bodner-Johnson Department of Education, Gallaudet University

Beth Benedict Department of Communication Studies, Gallaudet University

This project (in progress) is conducting a photo-documentary study of the everyday lives of families who have family members who are deaf and who use ASL. Using semi structured depth interviews, we collected information directly from families relating to various aspects of their life experience. Family portraits and photographs of the families "in action" were made. An important focus was to document how the families who use ASL, and those whose children also have cochlear implants, move back and forth between Deaf and hearing cultures and ASL and spoken languages in the context of home, school, and community. This project will result in a book that will include a narrative of family members' "voices" from the interviews—juxtaposed with family photographs, a summary of topics and themes that emerge from the family interviews, and related information from the literature that elucidates and expands the topics.

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