1. Translating as a technique during
guided reading: The balancing act
JESSICA SCOTT, Ed.M.,
Ed.D. Candidate
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
MARLON KUNTZE, Ph.D.
GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY
INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION
MAY 1, 2012

2. Agenda
 Background
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Discussion and future directions

3. Rationale
 Deaf children, on average, graduate from high school
with a fourth grade reading level (Strong & Prinz, 1997; Trezek
& Wang, 2006; Wauters, Van Bon, Tellings & Van Leeuwe, 2006)
 Schools for the deaf seek new methods of teaching
reading to their students
 But there has been limited research on the use of guided
reading and translation between ASL and English as an
instructional strategy
 We focused on a bilingual school where students are
being taught in American Sign Language (ASL) and
acquiring English as a second language

4. Why Guided Reading?
 Guided reading is an instructional strategy designed
to create independent readers (Guastello & Lenz, 2005)
 Guided reading is a small group of children with
similar needs reading a text that they would not be
able to read without the support of the teacher
(Scharer, Pinnell, Lyons & Fountas, 2005; Mooney, 1995)
 Reaching deaf children in their zone of proximal
development (Vygotsky, 1978) may allow for more targeted
reading instruction

5. Guided Reading and ELLs
 Guided reading has been used successfully with students
learning English as a second language (Chaaya & Ghosn, 2010)
 Guided reading instruction has been modified to meet the
particular needs of the English Language Learners (ELLs),
i.e., visual supports and building of background knowledge
(Stinnett, 2009)
 Guided reading provides the ELLs who knows little English
with the kind of exposure they need to learn English. (Avalos,
et. al., 2007)

6. Guided reading in deaf education
 Some schools for the deaf have started using this
method
 Minimal research on how this instructional method
is used or modified with deaf students has been
done. A few studies to date:
 Malik, 1996
 Schirmer & Schaffer, 2010a and 2010b
 Jeffries, 2010
 Kuntze & Scott, 2011

7. How does it work in deaf education?
 The approach in this program is one-on-one
 The student signs to the teacher as they read
 However, some important questions arise:
 What kind of reading is fostered when the student signs while
reading?
 Does it help or will it hurt in the long run?

8. Agenda
 Background
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Implications and future directions

9. Static Mediation
Access to
printed through
Text
word ASL

10. At issue:
 How does signing during reading help deaf children?
 Signing while reading is not representative of good ASL
 What is the function of signing while reading?
 Is it translation?
 Is it an unnecessary cognitive burden?
 How may it affect the trajectory of reading development?
 Does it change as the child develops reading skills?

11. Motivation of the Study
 Learning what each word means is an important
component of learning an unfamiliar language.
 However…signing word for word fosters lexical level reading at
the expense of comprehension at the sentence level.

12. Long Term Goal of the Study
What is there to know about the act of translation as a
feature of reading instruction that will help yield an
understanding of and a set of criteria for assessing
and indexing reading development among signing
deaf students?

13. Language: Negotiating Meaning
 How do we make meaning?
 Spoken English  Meaning
 Written English  Meaning
 ASL  Meaning
 Sometimes we need another language to mediate a
less familiar language before meaning can be
obtained
 Language B  Language A  Meaning
Less familiar More familiar
 For deaf students who are unfamiliar with English,
they may need to use their ASL knowledge to
mediate meaning making in written English text

14. Hypotheses of the Study:
Current
 As a child develops written English vocabulary and
knowledge of English grammar, the ability to use
different levels of translation increases
Future
 As the child develops skills to translate at higher
levels, the child ideally relies less on translating as a
mediative device
 The more skilled a reader becomes, the more
selective he becomes in using translation as an
intermediary

15. Agenda
 Introduction
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Discussion and future directions

16. Participants
 First grade
 14 out of 15 students participated
 7 Male
 7 Female
 3 teachers (ranging from 5 to 25 years of experience)
 1 student teacher
 At a large state school for the Deaf

17. Data Collection
 Data were drawn from Kuntze’s larger longitudinal
study of language and literacy in the deaf education
classroom.
 36 guided reading sessions 10 minutes in length,
collected over a 2-day period in 2010 were selected
to create the dataset used in this analysis

18. Agenda
 Introduction
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Discussion and future directions

19. Annotations and Coding
 Videos viewed and annotated by second presenter
 Annotations described the actions of the student and the
teacher
 Coding focused on how closely students were
following the English text (how much were they
translating into ASL?)
 Videos were coded by the second presenter, then
verified by the PI

20. Agenda
 Introduction
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Discussion and future directions

21. Overall…
 In general, we found two major sets of translation
levels
 Lexical Level
 Individual words fingerspelled, either lexicalized or
non-lexicalized
 Individual words either signed word-for-word
regardless of meaning, or translated in the case of
multiple meaning words
 Multilexical Level
 Phrasal and sentence level translations

22. Levels of Translation
 Level 0 = Fingerspelling – non-lexicalized
 Level .5= Fingerspelling – lexicalized
 Level 1 = One to one match (one sign per word)
 Level 2 = Multiple meaning match (one sign per
word)
 Level 3 = Multiple signs for one word
 Level 4 = One sign for multiple words
 Level 5 = Multiple signs for multiple words

23. Lexical Level 0: Fingerspelling (non-lexicalized)
 When a student  Example: Student
fingerspells a word, fingerspells B-A-G
especially one that has when encountering the
an ASL sign equivalent English word bag.
 The student likely
spells slowly, letter-for-
letter, indicating that  Example: It, are
this has not been
lexicalized

24. Level .5: Lexicalized fingerspelling
 When a student  Text: Stay away, and
fingerspells a word that don’t come back.
would be fingerspelled in
 Student translation:
everyday conversation
STAY-AWAY AND
 Often fingerspelled
CAN’T COME lexfs-
without all letters
BACK
included, because the
fingerspelling form has
been lexicalized

25. Lexical Level 1: One to one match
 Student signs one ASL  Text: Grandma, why do
sign for every English we call the earth our
word appearing in the mother?
text – signs may not be  Student translation:
appropriate for GRANDMA WHY
multiple meaning DO(FS) WE SUMMON
words THE EARTH OUR
MOTHER?

26. Lexical Level 2: Multiple Meaning Match
 When a student  Text: I love mother
identifies the correct earth too,
ASL sign for an English grandmother, like I
word with multiple love you.
meanings  I LOVE MOTHER
EARTH SAME
GRANDMOTHER
SAME I LOVE YOU

27. Multi-Lexical Level 3: Multiple Signs for One
Word
 The student identifies  The boys walked
multiple appropriate  BOY+ WALK FINISH
signs to use as a
translation for a single
English word

28. Multi-Lexical Level 4: One Sign for Multiple
Words
 The student identifies  Text: Tyrannosaurus
one sign for use as Rex went around and
translation for multiple around triceratops.
words  Student translation:
REX GO-OUT
AROUND+++
TRICERATOPS

29. Level 5: Multiple words for multiple signs
 The student uses  Text: Come in and
multiple signs to splash your feet
express multiple  Student Translation:
English words in an COME IN AND
accurate ASL MOVE-FEET-UP-
translation: May DOWN SPLASH
include up to a full
sentence translation

30. Levels
 These translations can happen on multiple levels:
 Word level (lexical translations)
 Phrasal level (multi-lexical translations)
 Sentence level (multi-lexical translations)
 It is possible that more advanced readers could
operate on even higher levels, such as the multi-
sentence or paragraph level
 Future research should look at advanced/older readers in
middle and high school

31. Agenda
 Introduction
 Theoretical framework
 Participants and data collection
 Methods
 Findings
 Discussion and future directions

32. Discussion
Children in this data set are beginning readers and
used translation relatively infrequently
 However, some started to use more translation
 Use of multi-word seemed to increase with the difficulty
of the reading material
 As their knowledge of English words develop, they are
prodded to use higher levels of translation.
 Teachers are selective when higher level of translation is
needed to ensure the needed level of comprehension
(e.g., one ASL sign for “look for”)

33. Discussion
 Signing while reading provide educators with
valuable information and instructional
opportunities
 How accurately the student is reading
 Opportunities to provide instant feedback to help enhance
comprehension
 However, signing while reading create undesirable
cognitive load that may affect comprehension
 Especially considering the differences in grammar/structure
of ASL and English

34. Discussion
 Encouraging students to use higher levels of
translation may help students develop metalinguistic
awareness of how ASL and English differ
 Words, phrases and sentences that may include English or ASL
idioms, multiple meaning word choices, etc.
 The higher level of translation helps the student
develop the capability to understand meaning that is
beyond the lexical level by looking for meaning in
larger chunks of English (phrase and sentence levels)
 As well as allows the teacher and student to focus more energy on
comprehension and less on word recognition

35. Directions for Future Research
Future research should:
 Determine if these levels of translation satisfactorily
include all aspects of English to ASL translation
 Examine the consistency of the extent to which the use of
translation to mediate meaning decreases as student
English language proficiency increases
 Determine the usefulness of different translation
strategies as a student progresses in reading
development including translating a paragraph or a
passage after having read the piece.
 Examine what the translation process from ASL to
English during the writing process may look like

36. Acknowledgements, thanks, and contact info
 This study is made possible by a subaward to Kuntze through the
National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (number SBE-
05419530) to Gallaudet’s Science of Learning Center on Visual
Language and Visual Learning (VL2).
 Much gratitude is given to the students, teachers, and parents at
the school where the data were collected for their participation
and collaboration.
 For info on VL2, visit:
http://vl2.gallaudet.edu/
 For additional information about
our study and references, please email:
kuntze@bu.edu
jes077@mail.harvard.edu

37. References
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