A Psycholinguistic Description of Selected Deaf Children Reading in Sign Language

THIS RESEARCH DESCRIBES the reading in Sign of 25 stories by four deaf readers for the purpose of developing a theoretical model of the reading process of the deaf. Evidence provided by cloze, miscue analysis, and retellings suggests that the process closely resembles that of hearing readers, as proposed by Goodman, with the following variations: deaf readers have more options than hearing readers-fingerspelling, pantomime, and a variety of sign systems; deaf readers are not bound to English syntax in the same way that hearing readers are. Major implications for instruction are that deaf readers be allowed to read whole stories in any communication system they prefer without interruption and that preteaching vocabulary and syntactic patterns to deaf readers may not be as necessary as is currently believed.