Cross-modal transfer in Thai deaf students' narratives

This exploratory study examined associations between Thai Sign Language (ThSL) narrative competence and written Thai proficiency among deaf students with varied backgrounds and ages of acquisition, using correlational and linguistic-discourse analysis of Frog, Where Are You? retellings. Positive correlations emerged in complex sentence production and noun phrase use; given the small sample (n = 6), findings are preliminary and hypothesis-generating. Native signers and bilingual-bicultural program students scored descriptively higher than Total Communication peers. Qualitative analysis showed ThSL features (role shift, classifiers, spatial mapping) scaffolding written Thai discourse. In directive constructions, ThSL encodes directive force via role shift while written Thai requires an often-omitted clausal complementizer, documenting not only the presence but also the structural limits of cross-modal transfer. These findings suggest ThSL competence as an essential cognitive foundation for written Thai literacy, inform debates on the specificity and boundaries of bimodal transfer, with implications for curriculum design and teacher education.