The information on this page arises primarily from a Facebook discussion about whether anyone had experience teaching biblical languages to students who are deaf. What follows is the content of some of my posts, expanded at the request of the participants.
In 2015, I began developing online Hebrew courses for Anderson University. I asked a colleague who was the director of a Deaf ministry for referral to anyone who was Deaf and who had studied biblical languages. My desire was to build accessibility into my course. I thought at the time that I would figure out how to build in transcripts if I was doing videos. Transcripts are helpful, but I learned that they are not really the best way for a Deaf person to learn language.
Deaf (with capital D) refers to people whose native language is sign. There are sign languages that are linguistically different, e.g. American sign, British sign, and sign languages used in countries around the world. It is possible to teach an entire language course using American sign language and Hebrew sign.
A deaf person (lower d) is a person who is culturally hearing though they are physically deaf. They think in English, not necessarily ASL.
When I was developing my Hebrew course, I was put in touch with several Deaf people who studied Hebrew and Greek. They explained to me that they had all studied in standard classes but their experience would have been better if they had been able to learn through ASL. They could do the pronunciation exercises by writing out transliterations, etc. But this didn’t really render the sounds of Hebrew meaningful to them since they were culturally and profoundly Deaf, and their goal was reading and translating and not speaking.
Understand the Student’s Needs
We who are English speakers need to be able to speak Hebrew words to communicate to each other and to those we teach. A person who is Deaf needs to be able to sign Hebrew and to sign the translation of Hebrew to be able to communicate it to their ministry context. If the Deaf person desires to teach in a context where they will have hearing students, then certainly learning the pronunciations of Hebrew is important for them. But it is prudent to talk with them about the way to do this that is meaningful and non-stigmatizing.
One year I taught a student who was significantly hearing impaired. He was not a user of sign language. He did drills faithfully but could not reproduce the sounds of Greek, even when I spoke words in front of him. His pronunciation was better in my presence, where he was watching my mouth, but it was still laborious and time-consuming. It was greatly anxiety-provoking for him and was eating into the time he needed for learning grammar. From that point on I used transliteration with him and he was greatly relieved. I did not require him to precisely pronounce the words. Instead I asked him to focus on recognizing the word and finding it in his vocabulary list. I asked him to locate the correct form faithfully and show me that he could translate meaning within context.
Troubleshooting on Our End
It is important to evaluate all of our activities in the language class and to ask the question: Are these activities accomplishing the goal that we have actually set? Are they assessing what we are trying to assess? Are they assessing things we are not trying to assess that are unfair to the student?
- Pronunciation exercises assume knowledge of hearing concepts, ability to hear and reproduce sounds correctly.
- Not using transliteration assumes ability to learn a new alphabet and master unfamiliar phonetic sounds. This requires a keen familiarity with all kinds of sounds and ability to hear them demonstrated.
Reverences and Resources
Buchholz, Noah. “Teaching Ancient Languages to Deaf Students.” Journal of Disability and Religion 21, no. 4 (2017), 381-394. Accessed January 26, 2018.
Buchholz was one of my early contacts. He shares information from his own personal journey about being a Deaf student in a hearing class.
Sutherland, Ian M. “Everybody Wins: Teaching Deaf and Hearing Students Together.” In Worlds Apart: Disability and Foreign Language Learning, edited by Tammy Berberi, Elizabeth C. Hamilton, and Ian M. Sutherland. New Haven, Ct: Yale University, 2008, 42-74.
Sutherland shares practical strategies for classroom adaptations, especially in the online environment.
Ben Putnam’s Comments on Interpreting
Ben Putnam says:
I’ve interpreted Greek class for Deaf students before. Working together with the students, we came up with a modified version of the ASL fingerspelled alphabet to use for the class. Rather than adopting the full modern Greek fingerspelled alphabet, we left most letters the same as in ASL for ease of use, with only a few modifications as needed to better represent some of the Greek letters. Some of these were the way Deaf Greeks do them, and others were our own inventions that made more sense with ASL.
The class was taught with an grammar-translation approach, which is not at all how I would teach it to Hearing or Deaf students, nor do I believe it is the best methodology for teaching any language. The description on the IBLT-CDS page above would be the most effective pedagogical approach in my view. (Speaking as a fluent ASL signer and certified/licensed interpreter with 20 years of experience in the Deaf Community and also as someone who has taken biblical language classes for several years and done independent study of biblical languages using both grammar-translation and communicative approaches.)
Check out the video. Center for Deaf Scriptures on vimeo.com