ABSTRACT
In this study, we examined the strategies used by five teachers when they read a book to their deaf students. For example, when reading to the children, did they follow the book word for word? Or, did they reconstruct the story when they read the book? The observed teachers were equally divided between hearing and deaf users of Manually Coded English (MCE) and American Sign Language (ASL). They were asked to read the picture book Five Chinese Brothers (Bishop & Wiese, 1965) to their classes. There were five research goals for our project: (a) to transcribe five videotaped reading activities; (b) to identify and analyze what interpersonal involvement strategies teachers used for first-person discourse when reading; (c) to examine how closely the teachers followed the use of first-person discourse in the book; (d) to determine how often the teachers translated from third-person discourse to first-person discourse in the book; and (e) to analyze the factors that influence the quality and quantity of constructed dialouge, specifically, the teachers’s own dependence on visual and/or auditory stimuli and the instructional mode of communication (MCE or ASL) that the teacher used. Before describing our research project, we discuss differences in spoken and written discourse, and more specifically, how episodes of dialogue are reported in these two types of discourse. Following this discussion, we explain how constructed dialogue is expressed in ASL.
