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Title
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Heritage signers: language profile questionnaire
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Creator
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Su K Isakson
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Degree Name
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Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies
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Project Type
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thesis
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Date
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3/10/2016
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Abstract
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The instruction of American Sign Language historically has employed a foreign language pedagogy; however, research has shown foreign language teaching methods do not address the distinct pedagogical needs of heritage language learners. Framing deaf-parented individuals as heritage language learners capitalizes on the wealth of research on heritage speakers, particularly of Spanish. This study seeks to address three issues. First, it seeks to ascertain whether the assessment instrument developed successfully elicits pedagogically relevant data from deaf-parented individuals that frames them as heritage language learners of ASL. Second, it seeks to draw similarities between the experiences of deaf-parented individuals in the United States and heritage speakers of spoken languages such as Spanish. Third, after considering the first two, it addresses the question of whether deaf-parented individuals may therefore benefit from the pedagogical theory of heritage language learners. Using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, an assessment instrument was distributed to individuals over 18 years of age, who were raised by at least one deaf parent and had used and or understood signed language to any degree of fluency. This study seeks to test the soundness of the instrument’s design for use with the deaf-parented population. A review of participant responses and the literature highlights similarities in the experiences of heritage speakers and deaf-parented individuals, gesturing toward the strong possibility that deaf-parented individuals should be considered heritage language learners where ASL is concerned. The pedagogy used with deaf-parented individuals therefore should adapt the theories and practices used with heritage speakers.
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Committee Member
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Amanda R. Smith, Kara Gournaris, Maribel Gárate
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Rights
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Western Oregon University Library has determined, as of 6/26/2018, this item is in copyright, which is held by the author. Users may use the item in accordance with copyright limitations and exceptions, including fair use. For other uses, please ask permission from the author at the email address listed above.
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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Language
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eng
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Date Available
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3/11/2016
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Type
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Text
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Identifier
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theses/27
