Hearing parents as sign language learners: describing and evaluating the ASL skills of parents learning ASL with their deaf children

Hearing parents who endeavour to learn American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with their deaf children are a unique but understudied population of adult language learners. In this study, we assessed the expressive and receptive ASL skills of hearing parents of deaf children (n = 55). Expressive ASL skills were evaluated through elicited language samples, and scored using adapted rubrics from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. For a subset of participants (n = 20), an additional language sample was obtained and coded for lexical and grammatical features of ASL. Receptive ASL skills were measured using the ASL-Comprehension Test. Across measures, participants demonstrated language skills in the beginner to intermediate range. Parents' signing samples showed a range of ASL linguistic features including classifier constructions. Our findings suggest that hearing parents can learn ASL and should be encouraged to do so to support language development in their deaf children.