英语论文哪里有？笔者认为老师应该从事一些活动，使他们了解聋生和D/HH学生的特点和学习需求，并记录学生在不同技能方面遇到的所有困难和取得的成功，以便将来进行研究或交流意见。
1 Introduction
Despite the common understanding that the ability to comprehend written material not only in one’s first language but also in foreign languages is essential for success in education and everyday life, many deaf individuals still struggle with reaching a functioning level of reading comprehension in any language. Unfortunately, foreign language instructors of deaf learners lack research-based knowledge as well as examples of good practice that could be used to support their choice of efficient teaching techniques and procedures in all areas of foreign language teaching. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge in the field of foreign language instruction for deaf learners, concentrating in particular on reading skills.
This paper presents some of the activities conducted for a doctoral dissertation which concerns the reading skills of deaf students of English as a foreign language (EFL). One of the objectives of the doctoral dissertation research is to study the effects of explicit reading strategy instruction on the reading process of learners and on their attitudes towards reading in EFL and in general. This reading strategy instruction consists of a series of interventions performed during a one-semester EFL course; its effects are studied using a qualitative approach.
3 Deafness and reading
3.1 The reading process
Contemporary specialists view reading as a complicated, interactive process that combines language processing with cognitive processes, enabling the connection of new information with existing knowledge. Conclusions are subsequently drawn from this process and stored in memory. This view applies to reading a first language (L1) as well as a foreign language (L2) (Bernhardt, 1991; Carell, Devine, &Eskey, 1988; Grabe, 2009). Van den Broek and Kremer (1999) claim that comprehending a text means that the reader can “construct a mental ‘picture’ of the text: a representation in memory of the textual information and its representation” (p. 1).
Two types of processing, bottom-up and top-down, work together to create mental representations. Treiman (2002) explains the difference between these two types of processing by stressing the source of the stimuli processed. In bottom-up processing the primary source of information comes from the language of a text (such as the words that form sentences). In top-down processing the primary source of information is the reader and his or her prior knowledge and expectations of the contents of the text. Readers then use the actual elements of the text to confirm or disconfirm their hypothesis of the contents (which can allow them to skip some of the elements) (Treiman, 2002).
5 The application of reading strategy interventions
5.1 Instructing metacognitive strategies
To better illustrate the actual procedures adopted during the interventions, the following part of the paper presents the instruction of the metacognitive strategies for evaluating comprehension and dealing with comprehension problems as employed with one of the participants.
First, the teacher chose a suitable book written in L2 to model these strategies: Everything is Illuminated by Johnathan S. Foer (2002). This novel contains rather complicated language, particularly due to a specific dialect used by one of the main characters, and understanding it requires a certain amount of previous knowledge. The teacher read several paragraphs and thus demonstrated a real-life situation in which she, as a reader, encountered a number of unknown words and comprehension problems. The teacher modelled how she was continually evaluating her comprehension during the reading process. When she realized her reading comprehension had failed, she then applied suitable strategies to solve the problem.
For example, the teacher-reader re-read previous parts of the text, read ahead and then came back to re-read the problematic part of the text, employing different techniques to guess the meanings of unknown words based on context or morphological structure. The teacher thought out loud, verbalized her thoughts (mostly in English but in justified cases in Czech as well) using the online chat program, and communicated with gestures, occasional use of sign language and finger spelling. Thus, the teacher modelled the comprehension problems of a proficient L2 reader.
7 Teaching techniques
7.1 Vocabulary
During classes on vocabulary practice students were very interested in finding similarities between PJM and ASL, as was mentioned above. It was typical for our lessons that when learning a single word or a phrase,we checked how it would be shown in PJM to support understanding and also looked for equivalents in ASL, which sometimes caused surprises. Such a situation took place when we were working on computer and Internet vocabulary. Students quickly discovered that foreign loanwords such as laptop, Facebook, tablet and e-mail are signed in the same way in both sign languages. With every passing lesson one could notice the students’ growing interest in ASL as a source, which led to the growth of vocabulary. The students’ experience in processing visual information through their native sign language (PJM) helped them in the acquisition of ASL.
In teaching vocabulary I would like to emphasize the importance of paraphrasing or rephrasing and context. Epstein (2014) maintains that repeating the same words or sentences does not help in making the meaning of the words understood. She has been a strong supporter of looking for the meaning of words in English dictionaries and searching websites. What she also underlines is context. She believes that when we show the context to our students, they will understand the whole text and discover the meaning of the key words. The level of comprehension will rise significantly then. It is advisable to give the students some kind of background information such as historical context to help them understand a word or expression better. For example when teaching the word uprising, to make the meaning clear I would give the example of the Warsaw uprising, a historical event very well-known not just to Poles but to people of many other nations.
8 Conclusion
Teaching EFL to deaf and hard-of-hearing students turns out to be a challenging task. All the above experiences bring us to two types of conclusion. Some are related to the students, but need to be applied by the teachers. First, the students should inform the teacher about what classroom conditions are good for them and how a teacher can best provide them. In other words, what classroom conditions should a teacher create so as to make the educational process as convenient as possible for the students. The next important thing is to help establish a defined code of communication which is going to be of great use in transferring knowledge. Every student should make it clear to the teacher which method is best for communicating with them: sign language, speech and speech reading, showing, displaying, finger spelling or using cued speech.
The next set of conclusions concern both the students as well as the teachers: both parties should make the most out of the time spent together on the course. The course is not very long, so the students should try and show the utmost interest in the subject and gain as much knowledge from it as possible. It is vital to share information, news and jokes obviously in English. Students should never hesitate to ask, clarify or speak in English, as well as write all their correspondences in English via texting and emails, because only practice makes a man perfect.
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