Four American Sign Language Learner Groups: Are They Really Different?

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Deaf Studies
• Second Language Acquisition

Background:

• Many Deaf individuals acquire American Sign Language (ASL) as a delayed first language due to limited early exposure.
• Second language learners of ASL may benefit from cross-linguistic transfer from their native spoken language.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the receptive ASL skills of four distinct learner groups.
• To identify specific areas of difficulty in ASL receptive skills across these groups.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the 42-item ASL-Receptive Skills Test (ASL-RST).
• Assessed four groups: Deaf high school students, Deaf college students (signed/spoken preference), and hearing ASL second language learners.

Main Results:

• All four groups achieved comparable overall scores on the ASL-RST, averaging approximately 77% correct.
• Lowest performance across all groups was observed in number-distribution, spatial verb location, size-and-shape-specifiers, and role-shifting.

Conclusions:

• Receptive ASL skills are comparable across diverse learner profiles, including Deaf students and hearing second language learners.
• Specific grammatical features require focused instructional strategies for all ASL learners.