Week 8: Kids Just Wanna Have Fun

This week, I focused more heavily on finding and putting together research from outside sources and studies. However, before I begin discussing what I found, I want to bring up an interesting realization I came to this week. The kids I work with are kids. Bam. Huge discovery. They are kids. They love anything different, and they love to have fun. In so many ways, sign language intrigues children; the quick motion of signing is like a dance. As almost all teachers strive for, with sign language, learning becomes fun. I realized this when I saw a few kids at CEID attempting to sign along with the teacher during music time and asking for the signs of anything they see. Intuitively, because the children truly enjoy learning, they will acquire and attain more vocabulary. Who knew “it’s fun” could be a reason to support total communication?

Now, onto the arguably less fun aspects of the project. Thanks to my advisor Mr. Vermouth, I was able to read through and analyze a few journal studies about sign language, children with cochlear implants, and total communication. Although most of the journal was inapplicable to my project, after a few hours, I found a few pins in the haystack. Specifically, what stood out to me was the connection between total communication and vocabulary. In the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, researchers Carol McDonald Connor and Teresa A. Zwolan explore sources of influence on reading comprehension skills of cochlear implanted children. To describe the relationship between reading comprehension and vocabulary, they write, “SEM results indicated that a child’s early vocabulary and ongoing vocabulary growth are important predictors of reading comprehension.” With regards to total communication, it was found that “classification in the TC group was associated with higher pre-implant vocabulary…” However, although the researchers do find that there exists a difference in vocabulary, the difference is negligible when it comes to reading comprehension. But, all-in-all, it can be said that deaf children acquired more vocabulary through total communication. Additionally, in Enhancing Hearing Children’s Memory With American Sign Language by Bethany C. Larson and Joyce Chang, it was concluded that “learning a visual-gestural language such as LIS (Italian Sign Language) may improve children’s attentional abilities, visual discrimination and spatial memory.” Although the improvement was slight, there was a difference between the experimental and control group of hearing children.

While I would love to write on vocabulary differences in the children at WCC and CEID, unfortunately, I cannot. While there is a difference, the age difference among the two groups could be accountable for all it. At CEID, I work with children ages 2 to 3 while at WCC, I work with children ages 4 to 6.