ABSTRACT
The topic of bilingual education for deaf students is receiving increased attention among educators in North America (e.g., Mashie, 1995). As American Sign Language (ASL) is incorporated more and more into the instructional process, questions are being raised regarding the appropriateness of bilingual approaches for deaf learners. Of particular interest is the issue of whether the relation between ASL proficiency and English literacy can be considered analogous to the proposed underlying relation between first and second spoken language skills, a concept that serves as one of the theoretical justifications for bilingual programs in hearing populations.
