SIGN LANGUAGE LITERACY IN THE SIGN LANGUAGE CURRICULUM

Abstract

The Sign Language curriculum is a contemporary development which few countries have officially implemented to teach a national standard Sign Language as a first language (L1) and/or mother tongue in the school grades. In these, Sign Language is a mandatory unit, which the deaf child needs to study and develop metalinguistically, as is the case in learning spoken languages as L1. A Sign Language as a metalanguage also means that the curriculum teaches explicit linguistic knowledge for the child to understand gradually how SL functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when attending the language. In other words, the Sign Language curriculum addresses the importance of developing the child’s Sign Language literacy. Traditionally, literacy is linked to reading and writing and for its learning the language curriculum sets five essential early literacy components: comprehension, phonological awareness, phonics, print convention knowledge and fluency. The paper discusses these components in support of Sign Language literacy as a verbal (non-print) form of literacy, based on a documental study among the Sign Language and indigenous curriculum.

Full text

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SIGN LANGUAGE LITERACY IN THE SIGN LANGUAGE CURRICULUM
Maria Mertzani
1
Abstract: The Sign Language curriculum is a contemporary development which few countries have
officially implemented to teach a national standard Sign Language as a first language (L1) and/or mother
tongue in the school grades. In these, Sign Language is a mandatory unit, which the deaf child needs to
study and develop metalinguistically, as is the case in learning spoken languages as L1. A Sign
Language as a metalanguage also means that the curriculum teaches explicit linguistic knowledge for
the child to understand gradually how SL functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for
meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when attending the language. In other words, the Sign
Language curriculum addresses the importance of developing the child’s Sign Language literacy.
Traditionally, literacy is linked to reading and writing and for its learning the language curriculum sets
five essential early literacy components: comprehension, phonological awareness, phonics, print
convention knowledge and fluency. The paper discusses these components in support of Sign Language
literacy as a verbal (non-print) form of literacy, based on a documental study among the Sign Language
and indigenous curriculum.
Keywords: Sign Language. Curriculum. Literacy. Early literacy components.
ALFABETIZAÇÃO NA LÍNGUA DE SINAIS NO CURRÍCULO
DE LÍNGUA DE SINAIS
Resumo: O desenvolvimento de currículos de línguas de sinais é um acontecimento contemporâneo que
poucos países puderam implementar oficialmente para ensinar a Língua de Sinais padrão nacional como
primeira língua (L1) e/ou língua materna nas séries escolares. Nestes, a Língua de Sinais figura como
uma disciplina obrigatória, que a criança surda precisa estudar e se desenvolver metalinguisticamente,
como é o caso do aprendizado de línguas faladas como L1. Uma língua de sinais como metalinguagem
também significa que o currículo ensina conhecimentos linguísticos explícitos para que a criança
compreenda gradualmente como a língua de sinais funciona em diferentes contextos, para que faça
escolhas efetivas de significado ou estilo e para que compreenda os conteúdos de forma mais completa
ao estudar a língua. Em outras palavras, o currículo de língua de sinais aborda a importância de
desenvolver a alfabetização na língua de sinais para a criança. Tradicionalmente, a alfabetização está
ligada à leitura e à escrita e, para sua aprendizagem, o currículo de línguas estabelece cinco componentes
essenciais da alfabetização inicial: compreensão, consciência fonológica, fonética, conhecimento de
convenções de escrita e fluência. O artigo discute esses componentes em apoio à alfabetização na língua
de sinais como uma forma de alfabetização verbal (não escrita), a partir de um estudo documental entre
o currículo da língua de sinais e o currículo indígena.
Palavras-chave: Língua de Sinais. Currículo. Alfabetização. Componentes de alfabetização precoce.
1
Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics of Sign Languages, Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, U.K. Visiting
Professor, Institute of Education, Federal University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande, RS-Brazil. E-mail:
maria.d.mertzani@gmail.com

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ALFABETIZACIÓN EN LENGUA DE SEÑAS EN EL CURRÍCULO
DE LENGUA DE SEÑAS
Resumen El currículo de Lengua de Señas es un desarrollo contemporáneo que pocos países han
implementado oficialmente para enseñar la Lengua de Señas estándar nacional como primera lengua
(L1) y/o lengua materna en los grados escolares. En estos, la Lengua de Señas es una materia obligatoria,
que el niño sordo necesita estudiar y desarrollar metalingüísticamente, como es el caso del aprendizaje
de lenguas habladas como L1. Un Lengua de Señas como metalenguaje también significa que el
currículo enseña habilidades lingüísticas explícitas para que el niño entienda gradualmente cómo
funciona la Lengua de Señas en diferentes contextos, tome decisiones efectivas de significado o estilo
y comprenda más completamente cuando estudie el idioma. En otras palabras, el currículo de Lengua
de Señas aborda la importancia de desarrollar la alfabetización da Lengua de Señas de un niño.
Tradicionalmente, la alfabetización está ligada a la lectura y la escritura, y para su aprendizaje, el
currículo de lenguas establece cinco componentes esenciales de la alfabetización inicial: comprensión,
conciencia fonológica, fonética, conocimiento de las convenciones de escrita y fluidez. El artículo
discute estos componentes en apoyo de la alfabetización en Lengua de Señas como una forma de
alfabetización verbal (no escrita), basado en un estudio documental entre el currículo de Lengua de
Señas y el currículo indígena.
Palavras-clave: Lengua de Señas. Currículo. Alfabetización. Componentes de alfabetización temprana.
Introduction
Throughout this paper, literacy is coined to literate thought, to our ability to access and
interpret (comprehend and apply) learned information (PAUL, 2018). Traditionally, literacy is
represented as synonymous to acquiring a written code by developing decoding (reading) and
encoding (writing) skills of typographic texts (JACOBS, 2013). Due to this close relationship
to reading and writing, sometimes the term print literacy is preferred (MCCARTY, 2013). In
addition, literacy has been regarded an autonomous, universal skill and its instruction as
“culturally neutral” (GARCA, FLORES, 2013). Since the 1950s, in the UN and UNESCO
definitions, literacy is set as a fundamental human right (and hence, a linguistic one) and the
foundation for lifelong learning (BROWNING, 2016).
From the 1980s onwards, literacy is understood to be a socially and historically
determined construct rather than a neutral process (STREET, 2005; 2008), and what counts as
a text and literate behavior are determined by the community’s socio-cultural, historical, and
political context (JACOB, 2013). Literacy then encompasses understanding these contexts in
which it is practiced (GARCA, FLORES, 2013; C. D. LEE, 2013; J. S. LEE, 2013), and its
learning is enabled and/or constrained by power relations that may privilege some of its types

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and subjugate others, especially when two (or more) languages are involved (GARCA,
FLORES, 2013; MCCARTY, 2013).
Literacy as a socio-cultural construct means that education builds on the child’s mother
tongue (MT), the first language (L1) students learn from birth, identify with (thus they are
identified as native users of that language by others), know best, understand, and use
comfortably in their communities (GORTER, 2013; SKUTNABB-KANGAS, 1994; 2013;
2014; SKUTNABB-KANGAS, MCCARTY, 2008). For linguistic minorities in particular, a
MT-medium instruction means that an educational program uses first the students’ L1 for early
literacy learning to gradually introduce them to the second language (L2) (see UNESCO, 2005),
often
2
a national language, and to its literacy.
In this context, most schools adhere to the concept print literacy and to the catholic idea
that all children learn to read and write (even in the same way) their L1. However, not all
languages have a written system and thus, they are characterised mainly by oral literacy.
Moreover, because language use varies considerably from one context to another, education
shifted to teaching language (and hence, literacy) according to such real-life uses.
Consequently, new definitions of text appeared (e.g., online chats, video messages, audio files),
involving new “semiotic landscapes” with complex meanings of the encoding and decoding act
(JACOBS, 2013).
In line with this, the paper discusses the literacy of SL, the language of deaf communities
and Sign Language Peoples (BATTERBURY, LADD, GULLIVER, 2007). The aim is to
question the traditional definition of literacy, following current scholarly work on deaf literacy
that is not tied up to the literacy of spoken languages only (to mention a few: CZUBEK,
SNODDON, 2016; KUNTZE, 2016b; KUNTZE, GOLOS, ENNS, 2014; PAUL, 2018;
SNODDON, 2012). Apart from considering SLs as minority languages in the wider mainstream
society (see SKUTNABB-KANGAS, 2014), the paper also considers studies that demonstrate
an interdependence between SL knowledge and proficiency and deaf children's development of
literacy skills (HRASTINSKI, WILBUR, 2016; NOVOGRODSKY, CALDWELL-HARRIS,
FISH, HOFFMEISTER, 2014). Accordingly, it argues that deaf children must be given the
2
English is taught in the national curriculum in the place of the dominant language of a country (UNESCO, 2005).

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opportunity to acquire and become literate in a natural SL, in the same way they develop their
spoken language literacy by acquiring reading and writing.
Back in 2018, during the study of the Brasilian Sign Language (Libras) Curriculum of the
city of Rio Grande (MERTZANI, TERRA, DUARTE, 2020), we have conducted an
examination of what it means to learn literacy for spoken languages, including for minority
languages, especially in the early years of the L1 curriculum. The construction of this
curriculum involved, firstly, an examination of the SL competence in the existing SL curricula
(some are represented in this volume) from the kindergarten to the final years of elementary
education, which demonstrated a developmental approach to SL learning. Hence, it became
clear that the SL curriculum aims at the deaf child’s “later language development” (RAVID,
TOLCHINSKY, 2002, p. 418) and hence, metalanguage, through an increase learning of
vocabulary and morpho-syntactic structures for various discourse genres and texts. Secondly,
it examined the content of the spoken language minority curriculum, the indigenous curriculum
in particular, for it represents the teaching and learning of languages with oral literacy and
limited use of reading and writing (see BROWNING, 2016). This through-the-air
3
(see PAUL,
2018; PAUL, WANG, 2012) element of the indigenous language is comparable to SLs since
they do not have a writing system, and, in this sense, are oral, verbal languages too. The paper
discusses these comparisons.
Literacy in the curriculum
The hearing child, monolingual or bilingual, has access to the morphological and
syntactic structures of the language(s) involved before entering school, as she/he has already
acquired the linguistic repertoire of his/her MT. During his/her schooling years, this repertoire
will be used to consciously access his/her own linguistic knowledge and to view language (L1
and L2) from various perspectives. Thus,
To be ‘linguistically literate’ means to possess a linguistic repertoire that
encompasses a wide range of registers and genres. Once literacy is part of an
individual’s cognitive system, it interacts with other components of linguistic
knowledge to shape the emergence of its key property […] Developing
3
The realization of language through the air, captured in the air, and not in writing. This through-the-air realization
can be captured in video.

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linguistic literacy means gaining increased control over a larger and more
flexible linguistic repertoire and simultaneously becoming more aware of
one’s own spoken and written language systems […] (RAVID,
TOLCHINSKY, 2002, p. 419-420).
Table 1: Early literacy stages.
LITERACY STAGES
SCHOOL YEAR
Pre-literacy
The child develops a foundation for learning literacy. For example,
the child becomes more adept with the phonology of their language
system (e.g., what sounds are similar in words). The child develops
concepts about writing (e.g., writing goes from left to right and top
to bottom), phonemic awareness and knowledge of how to handle a
book.
Preschool and Kindergarten
Decoding
This stage reflects the beginning of formal literacy instruction. The
child begins to develop some basic correspondences between letters
and sounds and to apply this knowledge to books and other texts.
The child usually acquires an understanding of the alphabetic
principle and should have ample opportunities to “decode” words.
First year
(6 - 7 years old)
Confirmation
The child confirms the knowledge they learned in earlier stages and
becomes more fluent in these skills. It develops what is called
automaticity (the automatic reading of words), with less emphasis
on decoding. As her reading becomes more fluent, she begins to
develop the ability to read in a way that reflects natural
conversational rhythms (or prosody). She knows how to use proper
phrasing, emphasis and intonation in her reading.
2nd to 3rd year
(around 8 years old)
Source: Beers, Beers and Smith (2010, p. 3).
For hearing children, literacy learning officially commences at school, at the age of four
(in the kindergarten), and continues up to the first two years of elementary education, around
the age of seven. Thus, literacy instruction covers the so called pre-literacy and decoding stages
(see Table 1). By the third year of elementary education, the child must confirm his/her
knowledge and fluency in reading and writing by demonstrating capacity in automaticity; that
is, his/her skill in reading words automatically, with less emphasis on decoding, and with proper
word intonation use. After the eighth year of age, the expectation is that the student becomes
more fluent in reading different texts for various information (fiction, non fiction, etc.), and by
the fifteen years of age in secondary school, he/she is more able to critically evaluate any

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information and synthesize his/her own perspective on a subject (BEERS, BEERS, SMITH,
2010). This literacy process is traditionally integrated in the official curriculum and determines
children’s academic achievement and progress.
These same stages apply for hearing children of minority communities, where, for
instance, the schools either adopt the indigenous writing system (where applicable) and teach
it, or directly teach the official, dominant language, thus skipping teaching the child’s MT. In
the first case, literacy is associated to the learning of the child’s minority maternal language,
where the child also learns to read and write using the writing system of the minority language.
In contrast, in the second case, literacy is linked to the language of the majority, independently
of the nature
4
of the bilingual program at school. More often though literacy involves the
country’s official language, and the minority language is used to serve the child to be proficient
and literate in that dominant language (BAKER, 2001; SKUTNABB-KANGAS, 2013). Even
though a minority language may appear as an instruction language for the delivery of the
curriculum, or in the first year of elementary education as an L1, the formal bilingual program
aims at transiting the child to use the dominant language rather than to learn and maintain
his/her minority MT (GORTER, 2013; SKUTNABB-KANGAS, 2013). Hence, literacy
(especially at the pre-literacy and decoding stages) is equated to the systematic early teaching
of the sounds and letters of that official language and to the development of its reading
automaticity.
Essential learning components of early literacy
Whether the teaching refers to a minority or majority spoken language, there are four
essential components of early literacy
5
in the curriculum that involve and transcend the four
skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing (ALGOZZINE, MARR, MCCLANAHAN,
BARNES, 2012; EPSTEIN, 2007). The first is the comprehension, “the process of deriving
meaning from action, speech and text by connecting what one is learning to what one already
knows” (EPSTEIN, 2007, p. 4). In particular, this component involves: (i) vocabulary (e.g.,
learning new words and concepts); (ii) prediction (e.g., saying what will happen next in a story);
4
The nature of the bilingual programs is explained by Baker (2001) and Skutnabb-Kangas and McCarty (2008).
5
All four involve the two first literacy stages in Table 1.

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(iii) connection (e.g., relating pictures and text to real life); and (iv) retelling (e.g., recalling
actions and events from stories) (p. 142).
The second is the phonological awareness, the process of recognising the sounds that
make up words, including rhyming (e.g., words that end with the same sounds or syllable),
alliteration (e.g., words that begin with the same sound), and segmentation (breaking words
into syllables) (ALGOZZINE et al., 2012; EASTERBROOKS, BEAL-ALVAREZ, 2013;
EPSTEIN, 2007). The third component is the phonics (or the alphabetic principle for alphabetic
scripts; for ideographs see HO, WONG, YEUNG, CHAN, et al., 2012), which involves
systematic instruction of letter-sound relations (e.g., auditory discrimination, letter-sound
knowledge; see STALLMAN, PEARSON, p. 15-16) to reading and spelling words accurately
and quickly, including name recognition (e.g., identifying one’s own printed name), name
writing (e.g., writing one’s own name), letter recognition (e.g., naming the letters of the
alphabet), and letter-sound correspondence (e.g., knowing a letter’s sound or a sound’s letter)
(EASTERBROOKS, BEAL-ALVAREZ, 2013; EPSTEIN, 2007).
The fourth component refers to the knowledge of print convention, such as knowing how
print is organised on the page and how it is used for reading and writing (EPSTEIN, 2007, p.
5). It involves: identifying book parts (e.g., front and back cover, title page, story pages);
orienting books for reading (e.g., recognising front and back, top and bottom, and right side
up); distinguishing between pictures and words (e.g., recognising the differences between
illustrations and text); and understanding the direction of text (e.g., flowing left to right,
returning or “sweeping” left at the end of a line, continuing on the next page) (p. 143).
The National Reading Panel (2000) for the English language adds fluency as an essential
early literacy component, which refers to reading quickly, accurately, and with appropriate
expression. Fluency is an indicator of skilled reading and facilitates rapid integration of
concepts in sentences and text. It is measured by having students read a grade level passage
aloud for one minute and the number of correct words produced (from the passage) is the oral
reading fluency rate (ALGOZZINE et al., 2012, p. 10).

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Table 2: Extract of oral communication and oral tradition learning objectives.
Listening and Speaking
Reading and Viewing
Interacting
Listen and speak formally and informally to
Elders, teachers, familiar adults and classmates
when learning in school, in the community and
on Country.
Read and view with understanding
some simple written and visual
(picture) texts and the natural
environment.
Listening to and telling stories about
experiences at school, at home, in the
community and out bush
• preparing and presenting simple oral
presentations, e.g.:
- recounting an experience
- giving information or explanations
- explaining a picture or story, including who it
is about, what is happening, where it is, why it
might be happening
- talking about something they like such as food,
characters in stories and films, games and
activities (swimming, football, running) and
why they like these things.
Reading and interpreting simple charts
and diagrams, such as family trees,
classification charts, maps
• viewing photos, books or youtube
videos to find information about a
culture topic, community history or
events
• showing some understanding of
visual texts such as paintings, photos,
designs, sand drawings and signs
within the natural environment, by
retelling and acting out with costumes,
props or actions,describing the main
characters and key events
• talking about the meaning of
pictures, posters, paintings and
symbols the see in the community
• talking about ownership of stories
Listening to stories, songs and poems and
responding by:
- remembering and talking about key ideas, new
words
- drawing pictures
- talking about their favourite parts
- roleplaying the main characters
- answering questions about what they have
seen or heard
- saying what they think some words might
mean
Source: The NTILC (2017, p. 10-11).
Of these components, comprehension involves unconstrained skills that develop slowly
over the child’s schooling and lifetime, whereas the remaining (e.g., print concepts, phonemic
awareness, phonics) are constrained and involve the learning of a finite set of items, which the
child masters within a relatively short period of time (HARTMAN, NICOLARAKIS, WANG,
2019). In addition, it is the component phonics with the knowledge of the print convention,
which strictly apply to the learning of the written form of a spoken language (its reading and

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writing), and hence, its print literacy. The remaining, comprehension and phonological
awareness, can also refer to oral literacy. The following section discusses how these two
components are represented in the indigenous curriculum, as indigenous languages are verbal
languages and as such, their curriculum relates to the learning of their oral literacy.
Literacy in the indigenous curriculum
Based on an online search, the following curricula were met and examined qualitatively:
the Canada curricula from the provinces of Ontario (East-central Canada), Manitoba (East
Canada) and Alberta (Western Canada), and the Northern Territory Indigenous Languages and
Cultures Curriculum of Australia - NTILC (2017). Other indigenous curricula were also
accessed (like the Samoan and Hawaiian curricula), but a critical reading resulted to the use of
the selected ones, for they provide rich and culturally oriented objectives that can be mapped
to the components under study. In these, the focus was on the study of their L1 and/or language
revitalization pathways for the kindergarten and the first three grades of elementary education,
the years that correspond to the early literacy stages (and their essential components). While
they have different structures, the curricula prioritize the teaching of oral rather print literacy
by focusing on the oral communication and oral traditions (e.g., stories by the Elders, songs,
various customs).
In the oral communication objectives, the focus is on listening to the language
(especially to the Elders of the community) and speaking it every day, with a particular
reference to its use in various social interactions (with the community, family, closest
environments, etc.), to language variation (to the differences in language and language changes
over time), and to interpreting, translating and transcribing (moving between languages and
cultures firstly orally and secondly, in writing, from the fourth grade onwards). An example is
presented in Table 2 from the NTILC curriculum, which also displays objectives regarding the
reading and viewing the community’s visual texts (photos, pictures, sand drawings, signs, etc.).
The strengthening of children’s oral language is seen in the community’s need to maintain in
the future its language, and for this reason, children are viewed as the future keepers of such
knowledge.
The preservation and enhancement of Aboriginal languages is a matter of
national pride and honour. Language retention is also critical to the ongoing

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existence of the distinctive cultures of Aboriginal peoples. By participating in
a First Language Program students are able to maintain and enhance their
language and deepen their understanding of Aboriginal cultures. As
generations before them have been, these students will be the future Keepers
of Knowledge. (Western Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Basic
Education, 2000, p. 65).
In the Native Languages - The Ontario Curriculum Grades 1-8 (MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, 2001) oral communication is the priority through all eight grades, especially in
the first three grades of elementary education, in which the emphasis is on the teaching of
listening and speaking skills. It is from the fourth grade onwards that the learning focuses also
on print literacy, and hence, on the reading and writing of the indigenous language, using the
writing code that the community may have developed.
Table 3: The land as text in the indigenous curriculum.
Level 1 (K–Gr. 1)
Level 2 (Gr. 2–3)
Students will demonstrate
understanding of:
Aboriginal people are the first
people of the land.
Aboriginal people have stories
about how they came to be the
first people on the land.
• Stories of Long Ago—when the
world was new and when
creatures talked.
• Creation stories that introduce
place and identity—important
natural features, important
creatures, important values, first
people.
• Creation stories as showing the
importance of “land” or place to
people, and that it is a gift from
the Creator.
• Places where they feel “at
home” or belonging, such as
home, grandfather’s place,
homeroom, group of friends,
community or neighbourhood.
• Family stories about ancestral
lands or traditional territories.
• Geographical features of
ancestral lands that are
mentioned in the
• Traditional narratives of
families/clans, such as
mountains, inlets, coulees,
valleys.
• Flora and fauna of ancestral
lands that are mentioned in
traditional narratives of
families/clans, such as turtles,
buffalo, maple trees, berries,
bears
• Cultural products or practices in
the families today that can be
tied to the land, such as berry
picking, summer travelling,
mountain camping.
Source: Western Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education (2000, p. 44).

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The NTILC (2017) and the Common Curriculum Framework for Aboriginal Language
and Culture Programs - CCFALCP (2000) consider the land as text and as such, necessary the
learning on country and its natural environment mainly from the Elders. For this purpose, the
curriculum sets objectives for students to experience visits on country, identify different
environmental features, explore ways to talk about location and directions, and to identify clan
totems, Dreamings, body designs and dances (see Table 3). In this context, oral literacy learning
is bound to the stories of the community’s past, in which ancestral lands, identities and cultural
practices are presented. Thus, the curriculum involves language skills to “understand and use
language required to be sustained by nature, physically and spiritually” (Western Canadian
Protocol for Collaboration in Basic Education, 2000, p. 21).
Knowing an indigenous language entails using the language in ways and for purposes
valued by the community, in close relationship to strict cultural knowledge, whose scope and
content students learn gradually. In the Kindergarten to Grade 12 Aboriginal languages and
cultures Manitoba Curriculum Framework of Outcomes (2007), the indigenous language is
explicitly stated to be a cultural skill.
In the Framework, Aboriginal language use is considered to be a cultural skill.
All languages are used for basic communication. Beyond that, certain skills
and knowledge of a language enable a person to engage more fully in a given
culture. Each culture values and emphasizes different language skills. This is
apparent when people make what seem to be social blunders in another culture
(e.g., speaking too loudly, speaking too softly, speaking too much), when they
are actually incorporating a valued component of their language into another.
Knowing a language is more than knowing vocabulary, grammar, and
culturally relevant topics. It includes using language in ways and for purposes
valued by the cultural community. (Manitoba Education, Citizenship and
Youth, 2007, p. 9).
Such knowledge is not entirely entrusted to the school, it is private, and is passed down
by the Elders, the Keepers of Knowledge of each community. In this sense, certain objectives
are presented as discretionary (e.g., objectives concerning ceremonial texts).
Most of the Aboriginal cultures practice a very strict code with respect to who
should be the carriers of this kind of knowledge. Considering that the cultures
have had to survive through intense assimilative pressures and, in many cases,
government banning of practices, it is likely that not all cultural practices will
be passed down through the school system. Trusting the wisdom of their
Keepers of Knowledge, developers should be sensitive to the balance that

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needs to be kept between what is public and what is private so that a helpful
partnership can be created and maintained between the school and the people
it is meant to serve. (Western Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Basic
Education, 2000, p. 24).
As already seen above, certain indigenous traditional symbolism and/or hand
gestures/signs are part of the community’s heritage and literacy, and thus, the objectives require
the child to learn their use in the oral telling of stories, such as in the sand stories, and to talk
about their meanings (see NTILC, 2017). From the second grade onwards, children learn to
understand how these symbols associate with the community’s oral traditions (songs, dance,
music, etc.) and social practice (e.g., hunting, sorry business).
The correct use of the indigenous language (orally and in writing) is also defined, and for
this purpose, the curriculum teaches grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. There are
objectives for understanding different intonation patterns (especially with regards the
articulation of oral traditions) and for different kinds of utterances (statements, questions,
commands, etc.). Moreover, the curriculum explicitly states that it is the members of each
community (and not the teachers themselves) that determine the dialect and orthography to be
used in the L1 programs. It is in the first grade of elementary education that the objectives
concern the phonemic awareness of the indigenous language, and hence, the recognition of its
sounds and sound patterns of the words, and of the syllables and their separation in the words.
In this same grade, the child is required to show awareness that speech and/or parts of it can be
written down using the community’s cultural symbols (including the conventional
orthography). Thus, the phonological and morphological awareness of the indigenous language
is taught primarily verbally, although it can employ other visual modes.
Early literacy in the SL curriculum
After studying the indigenous curriculum, the focus was on investigating whether and
how the literacy components exist in the SL curriculum, especially those associating with oral
literacy. For this purpose, an online search was conducted and located seven SL curricula, from
which the following four were chosen and examined: the Greek Sign Language (GSL)
Curriculum (Ministry of Education - Pedagogical Institute, 2004); the ASL Content Standards
(2018), the Australian Sign Language (Auslan) Curriculum (ACARA, 2017) and the New

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Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2006). Similarly to the
indigenous curriculum, the communication skill is emphasized in all curricula. Thus, the aim is
the deaf student to use the SL, to communicate with his/her immediate environment and develop
social and communicative skills. In fact, SL communication is to be taught while the child
acquires language, a SL.
The majority of deaf children grows with hearing parents who do not know SL, prefer
their child to be implanted and hear, and thus, focus, since his/her birth, on speech training
(SNODDON, 2012; 2014). When the deaf child enters school, he/she is not fluent in SL, does
not have a language and/or has a delayed language (both a SL and spoken language), a reality
that complicates the definition of objectives in the language curriculum (L1, L2, etc.). There is
only a small number of deaf children who comes from deaf families
6
and whose SL is a maternal
language. The Auslan Curriculum may be the only curriculum so far that provides SL learning
pathways, considering the different learner profiles of deaf students (see Carty, Bontempo e de
Beuzeville in this volume). Independently though of this language heterogeneity (see also
Carmo e Carvalho in this volume), the SL curriculum sets its objectives following the
developmental stages of the native deaf population, assuming that the child arrives at school
with age-appropriate SL. For example, in the ASL Content Standards (2018, p. 8) it is clearly
stated:
The Standards are not remedial. It is beyond the scope of the Standards to
address all that is important in educating deaf or hard of hearing students (e.g.,
social, emotional, physical development) and the Standards also do not—
indeed cannot—encompass the potential range of content areas into which
ASL may be integrated. Deaf and hard of hearing children entering
kindergarten are expected to arrive at school with age-appropriate ASL
fluency; the standards are not intended to provide remedial ASL for non-
signing deaf children or deaf children beginning to learn ASL. The starting
point for the Standards is the assumption that children have arrived with
grade-level fluency in ASL.
Regarding the comprehension component, learning vocabulary objectives are met across
the curricula, although the ASL Content Standards (2018) appear to have a richer content,
following the structure and strands of the Common Core State Standards for English Language
6
These children are the native users of SLs.

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Arts and Literacy
7
(CCSTELAL) (2010). In this, the objectives also involve the multiple uses
of fingerspelling in the production of signs (see Table 4). Moreover, comprehending different
genres of signed texts is also the aim. Hence, the SL curriculum has objectives that require the
student to learn to ask and answer questions about key details in signed texts, retell their content
(including their key details), demonstrate understanding of central messages and/or lessons, and
describe characters, settings, and major events.
Table 4: Vocabulary learning objectives.
Kindergarten
CCSTELAL
ASL STANDARDS
Vocabulary Acquisition and Use:
Determine or clarify the meaning
of unknown and multiple-meaning
words and phrases based on
kindergarten reading and content.
Determine or clarify the meaning
of unknown and multiple-meaning
signs,fingerspelled words, and
phrases based on kindergarten
viewing and content.
- Identify new meanings for
familiar words and apply them
accurately (e.g., knowing duck
is a bird and learning the verb
to duck).
- Use the most frequently
occurring inflections and
affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-,
pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the
meaning of an unknown word.
a. Use context to identify the
meaning of unknown signs,
fingerspelled words, and
phrases.
b. Identify new meanings for
similar signs and apply them
accurately (e.g., SAME vs.
LIKE, BUT vs.
DIFFERENT).
c. Use the most frequently
occurring in ections (e.g., SIT-
FOR- A-LONG-TIME, SHE-
GIVES-HIM) as a clue to the
meaning of an unknown sign.
d. Use the most frequently
occurring a xes and compound
words (e.g., LAW-PERSON,
WOOD+CUT-PERSON,
TREE+HOUSE) as a clue to
the meaning of an unknown
sign.
Source: CCSTELAL (2010), ASL Content Standards (2018, p. 44).
The verbal and visual nature of SLs introduces a new concept of text, the signed text,
based on past and modern uses by its native signers (deaf and hearing) (CHRISTIE, WILKINS,
7
The CCSTELAL can be accessed at: <http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/>.

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1997; CZUBEK, 2006; BYRNE, 2016): video recorded (without physical contact) or live (with
physical contact) (e.g., in face-to-face settings, online, films) as well as static, such as SL in
printed books, drawings and other. In these texts, SL turns into an academic subject and as such,
its literacy involves the comprehension of their linguistic and conceptual aspects and demands
(see: KANEKO, MESCH, 2013; LOEFLER, 2014; MIRZOEFF, 1995; SUTTON-SPENCE
2005; 2014; SUTTON-SPENCE, NAPOLI, 2010) and the ability to use it in an accurate and
coherent way
8
. The act of reading diverse signed texts depends on both sign decoding and
linguistic comprehension (the semantic processing of SL).
Current research with native signers (deaf and hearing) demonstrates that phonology is
not exclusively sound-based. Instead, sign phonology is processed in the identical brain tissue
as spoken phonology, even though SLs have evolved in the absence of sound (PETITTO, 2014;
2016). Thus, as in the spoken language curriculum, SL phonology has its place in the SL
curriculum and phonological awareness is taught in the first years, partially in the kindergarten,
and fully in the first and second grade of elementary education. Thus, sign phonology is an
early constrained skill to be learned and as such, it does not appear in the third year of
elementary education. The comparison shows that the learning objectives concern mainly the
phonological parameters of the signs. For example, the Auslan curriculum (ACARA, 2017) sets
the objective under the Auslan L1 learner pathway: “Recognise the main formational elements
of handshape, movement and location in Auslan signs, and understand that a sign is the same
as a spoken or written word even though it can be iconic”. Similarly, in the GSL curriculum:
“to understand all basic handshapes used in GSL” and “to produce, when asked, examples from
any phonological feature of GSL meanings: handshape, location, movement, palm orientation,
non-manual markers” (Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 43).
In the first grade, the child learns to identify and distinguish the phonological parameters
as well as to segment signs into their syllables. These are clear (de)coding skills, similar to
those involved in the literacy of spoken languages, involving the segmental (e.g., syllable
manipulation, rime, phonemes) and suprasegmental (e.g., intonation patterns, stress placement,
8
For spoken languages, the ability to express oneself fluently and grammatically in speech is called oracy.
Equivalent is suggested the term signacy (GARCIA, COLE, 2014), which some SL curricula also use (e.g., the
ASL Standards, the Libras curriculum of the city of Rio Grande in Brasil).

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rhythm) phonological awareness of a SL. As the child progresses at school, he/she is expected
to consciously and rapidly recognise and produce proper signing, to confirm his/her
phonological knowledge acquired in the first years, and to demonstrate proper phrasing and
intonation.
SLs are polymorphemic languages and the SL curriculum aims at teaching explicitly their
structure. This teaching begins in the first grade of elementary education, which, through a
spiraling approach (following the child’s developmental stages), increases in content as the
child progresses to the final years of elementary education. For example, in the first years the
child learns to recognise that signs are articulated in the signed space, using personal pronouns
and basic directional verbs to indicate spatial relationships. From the third grade onwards,
grammar teaching is systematic, involving the learning of classifier constructions,
compounding, derivation, verbal and nominal inflection, and syntax (e.g., sentence types,
clause structure, coordination and subordination). As soon as the child starts learning the spoken
language, SL structures are taught through a contrastive approach to spoken language. This
latter particularly appears in the objectives of SL interpreting and translating in the Ausland
Curriculum as in the examples: “comparing Auslan expressions used in everyday interactions
such as greetings with equivalent English expressions, for example, HOW-ARE-YOU?
compared to How are you?”.
Among the examined curricula, the ASL Content Standards appear to involve to a greater
extent objectives (based on the structure of CCSTELAL) about the fourth component and the
conventions of signed texts (printed, video-based, etc.) (see Table 5). Therefore, the aim is to
teach to identify their parts (e.g., the play or stop buttons in the videos), distinguish signing
from other visuals (e.g., from other symbols, illustrations), and at understanding the direction
of signing (e.g., reading the flowing of signing in a book). Thus, SL reading refers not only to
the act of watching a signed video (live and/or recorded), but also to the reading of printed
signed texts (e.g., from SL dictionaries, SL picture books). In these, the child needs to learn
how signing is organized (on a page of a book; in a video sequence, etc.), to ask questions about
their content, to identify their structure, to retell their information, and discuss about it.

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Table 5: Objectives about the signed text conventions.
Kindergarten
CCSTELAL
ASL STANDARDS
Craft and Structure:
With prompting and support, ask
and answer questions about
unknown words in a text.
1. With prompting and support,
ask and answer questions about
unknown signs and fingerspelled
words.
Identify the front cover, back
cover, and title page of a book.
2. Identify the beginning, body,
and ending of a text.
Name the author and illustrator
of a text and define the role of
each in presenting the ideas or
information in a text.
3. Name the author and signer of
a text and define the role of each
in presenting the ideas or
information.
Source: CCSTELAL (2010), ASL Content Standards (2018, p. 18).
Moreover, the ASL Content Standards also involve the fluency component throughout
the grades in Kindergarten and elementary education. For the first three years of schooling,
fluency refers to the production of signed texts with purpose, sufficient accuracy and
appropriate rate and expressions. Recitation is also included when literary texts are involved
(e.g., prose, poetry), as well as using context to confirm or self-correct sign recognition and
understanding.
Discussion
SL curriculum is a relatively new development, and very few countries have officially
published one for the teaching and learning of SL as an L1. Discussing, then, about SL literacy
within this curriculum is an even more recent affair for the additional reason: literacy is
traditionally connected to the reading and writing of spoken languages. SLs are not written
languages - at least not under this classic sense of having a written code - and as such, can be
compared with those spoken languages whose literate activity is not confined to a written
system (see BROWNING, 2016). Due to this verbal similarity then, the paper sought to
examine how literacy is represented in this language minority curriculum, and to discuss its
realization through, primarily, a “through the air” mode (see PAUL, 2006; 2018; PAUL,
WANG, 2012). Since literacy for spoken languages is taught in the first three years of
schooling, the focus was on the established five components that the curriculum sets for
children to become literate and under which their literacy performance is measured

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(ALGOZZINE et al., 2012; COOPER, 2008; HARP, 1996). Of these, comprehension and
phonological awareness are present in both curricula through this verbal mode.
Phonemic awareness is a component that does not need writing to be acquired. It involves
listening and viewing alone. It does not involve recognition of letters or names of letters, and
even when visual tools are used (including printed letters), these are for display reasons (to help
students see what it is demonstrated) with no intend to teach alphabetic knowledge
(EASTERBROOKS, BEAL-ALVAREZ, 2013, p. 118). It refers to the the ability to notice,
think about, and work with the individual phonemes of spoken/signed words through detection,
discrimination, and identification of individual phonemes. Its importance in the SL curriculum
is research-based since deaf children’s levels of SL phonemic awareness is positively correlated
with SL proficiency, which, in turn, is used metalinguistically when they acquire spoken
literacy skills (SNODDON, 2014, p. 81).
The comprehension component also relates to the understanding of verbal texts.
Regardless of its format (e.g., live, recorded), like the written text, it can be an important source
of information through which the child can expand his/her knowledge, skills, and experience.
In both curricula, students learn how to comprehend a verbal text and are called to become
familiar with its various genres, to develop the ability to interpret them and to make connections
to prior and/or present knowledge. In this sense then, literacy “pertains not only to written
language but also to oral/signed discourse” (KUNTZE, 2014, p. 658). As these texts have
differentiated forms, the objectives set also different conventions for reading them. For
example, the indigenous curriculum prioritises the traditional narrative in its verbal literacy,
which has a different function and structure (e.g., uses rhythm) from an informative text (e.g.,
oral presentation) (PAUL, WANG, 2012, p. 8).
Thus, similar to the print convention component of the spoken language curriculum, the
SL curriculum sets objectives that require the child to get to know the various forms of signed
texts, especially the video-based ones, since their reading implies different cognitive procedures
(e.g., controlling eye movement, perceiving visual information, processing linguistic
information; see BOSWORTH, STONE, HWANG, 2020; ROSENBURG, LIEBERMAN,
CASELLI, HOFFMEISTER, 2020). Photos, images, and videos show most often a frontal view
of a signer, requiring the child to rotate 180o the displayed signing and perform a visual

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perspective shift (EMMOREY et al., 2009). Moreover, children base their SL acquisition in
various imitating strategies, and while reading these material, they may produce incorrect
signing. For example, they may produce what they see from their perspective (when using a
visual matching strategy), or they may produce a mirror image of the modeled signing (through
a mirroring strategy) (SHIELD, MEIER, 2018).
In the indigenous curriculum, literacy is strongly bound to the community practice. Thus,
the curriculum contains objectives that allow its realization in and outside school, with a direct
contact with and/or interference of community members (such as the Elders), especially when
discretionary cultural knowledge is involved. The SL curriculum involves objectives that
motivate the deaf child’s contact with the local deaf communities, the learning of their culture
and history, though it does not set objectives that could invite their greater participation in such
learning.
SL literacy is tied up to the recognition of SLs as languages (SNODDON, 2012).
Although there is plethora of sign linguistics studies (see updated research in QUER, PFAU,
HERRMANN, 2021), there are still negative attitudes from a considerable number of educators
and policy makers who do not embrace SL competencies as learning goals for deaf children
(KRAUSNEKER et al., 2020). Such attitudes also affect what we consider literacy at schools.
As mentioned previously, print literacy is the only form that is associated with children’s
schooling. However, it is the proficiency in the verbal form of a language that contributes
significantly to the development of print literacy in that same language. This form “is the real
engine for thought and communication” upon which the print literacy (reading and writing) is
based (PAUL, WANG, 2012; PAUL, 2018). In fact, “it is doubtful that individuals can reach a
competent level of literate thought” in the secondary, captured mode (e.g., reading, writing),
“without also having competence in the primary or through-the-air mode [the verbal]” (PAUL,
WANG, 2012, p. 2).
This present examination demonstrates that elements of the essential literacy components
appear in the indigenous and SL curriculum. In these, reading the textual compositions of these
languages can provide similar benefits as the print literacy. Thus, new vocabulary can be
learned, content can be predicted, reciting and retellings can be practiced and connections can
be made to real-life events, all abilities that involve the comprehension component of spoken

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language literacy (see also GOLOS, 2010a; 2010b). There are set objectives that cover basic
language skills (e.g., identifying phonemes, words, parsing sentences) and higher-order skills
(e.g., reasoning, problem solving), following the child’s developmental stages. It is worth
noting that, by stressing the significance of SL literacy, the intention is not to promote a
dichotomy on the deaf child’s overall literacy. The paper emphasizes the need to develop
literate thought in a natural language as SL is for the deaf child (with/without a cochlear
implant).
Conclusion
This documental analysis aimed at discussing literacy as an all-encompassing term for
language, spoken and signed, and in doing so, presented how literacy components appear in
two language curricula that represent non-print, verbal languages. The SL curriculum is a new
development, coming after the widespread acceptance of SLs as true languages with linguistic
properties. However, there is still resistance for its integration in the official curriculum, and
when it appears, there is little discussion about what constitutes the learning of a SL as an L1
and hence, its literacy. Based on both “oral” and visual signed texts, the deaf child needs the
formal study of a natural SL, of its grammar, vocabulary, pragmatics and discourse genres,
including the stylistic and register forms found in SL literature, to think about SL and to reason,
to reflect specific information, to organize knowledge and communicate it in his/her immediate
environment. In doing so, the child becomes literate in a SL too.
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Submitted in: 20/05/2022
Accepted in: 07/06/2022
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