ESL Applications for Hispanic Deaf Students

Abstract

The needs of deaf children from linguistically diverse families are often overlooked by educators. The fastest growing ethnic group among deaf and hard of hearing students is Hispanic, who now represent over 16% of the school-age population. Many of these students, both literate and preliterate, are immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. This article focuses on approaches used in a trilingual program with middle-school Spanish-literate students, and with elementary-aged students with limited literacy skills. There is a need for deaf education to recognize the trilingual/multicultural experience of Hispanic deaf students in order to improve educational outcomes for these students. Schools and programs for deaf students must begin to provide more special programs to meet the needs of immigrant students. Furthermore, teachers of deaf students need retraining in multicultural, bilingual and ESL theory and pedagogy in order to teach an increasingly diverse student population.

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