American sign language to improve deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) English reading comprehension skills

Abstract

Palestinian Sign Language (PSL) is used for teaching English language for DHH students in their schools. This hinders Palestinian deaf students communication with deaf foreigners. Hence, the use of American Sign Language (ASL) can solve the aforementioned problem. ASL is considered as an international sign language, thus, it can be useful for DHH students to learn this language to be able to communicate with their peers all over the world. This study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of American Sign Language (ASL) program in developing the Palestinian DHH students' English reading comprehension skills. in addition, the study explored the advantages and drawbacks of the ASL Program. The researchers used the quasiexperimental approach. One experimental group of (30) DHH, selected from Elrafie school for deaf in Gaza city, was assigned as the sample of the study. Those students attended a 20-hour training program which lasted for four weeks. In addition, the instruments used in the current study was a reading comprehension skills test which students did before and after the experiment, and a semi structured interview to reveal the advantages and drawbacks of the training program from the participants' perspectives. Results showed that the ASL training program is so effective in enhancing the reading comprehension skills of the DHH students. In addition, the findings revealed that the participants of the study liked the activities of the training program and they become so motivated to read various types of English texts. In light of the aforementioned results, the researcher recommends EFL Palestinian teachers to use the ASL when teaching English language to DHH students.