Teaching languages to the deaf has been a field of controversial debate for decades.
For a long time, sign languages were not recognized as languages at all; instead, signs were assimilated with gestures and signing was even thought to be harmful for learning spoken languages (Takala & Sume 2016). Salmi and Laakso (2005) describe the history of deaf education starting from the times of Carl Oscar Malm. Before Malm founded the first school for the deaf in Finland in 1846, the closest school was located in Sweden. Malm himself had studied in there and merged his learnings to the teaching in the new school; he used sign language while teaching and emphasized learning sign language, fingerspelling, and written language, aiming for bilingualism.
In general, he stated that in his school the deaf could learn reading, writing, calculus, religion, and other sciences (Salmi & Laakso 2005).
Takala and Sume (2016) state that after Malm died in 1863, deaf education began to move towards oralism. The aim was no longer for the deaf to become all-round sophisticated, but to get them to work. Speaking skills were included in the curriculum in the 1870’s, and in the 1890’s the use of sign language in schools was banned altogether (Takala & Sume 2016). Salmi and Laakso (2005) describe how it was thought that while sign language was a useful first step in teaching, it was now time to move on towards spoken languages. As the deaf were expected to learn to speak, some succeeding better than others, they were divided into three categories (a, b, c) based on their skill levels. Signing was not allowed, but using gestures and hand movements were, in some cases, allowed (Salmi & Laakso 2005).
Even though the status of sign language was still unstable after it became an official subject in schools in 1993, using sign language was now allowed and many teachers started using it as well as they could, some even taking courses in it to improve (Salmi
& Laakso 2005). Slowly bilingual teaching returned to the schools, slightly improving the academic results of the deaf, but the lack of qualified teachers and knowledge of how to teach literacy to those born deaf still had an impact on the deaf education in general (Takala 2004).
According to Takkinen (2013b), the University of Jyväskylä has offered some courses in sign language since the 1980’s and since 1992 it has been an official, graded subject.
In the mid-90’s, the Basic Studies programme was formed, followed by the Subject Studies in 2008. In 2004 began the training of sign language teachers and it is also when the Finnish Sign Language received its status as an independent subject in the University. The University of Jyväskylä is still the only Finnish university offering Sign Language as a full subject (Takkinen 2013b). The university also hosts the Sign Language Centre, founded in 2010, which is responsible for the academic research and education in the field of sign languages in Finland (Takkinen & Puupponen 2017).
Nowadays, there are fewer deaf students in the schools targeted for the deaf and hard of hearing. With the increase in the use of cochlear implants, many deaf children now go to a mainly hearing school (Takala & Sume 2016). There are several aspects to consider when planning the teaching of deaf students. For example, the size and diversity of the group should be considered; if the group is either too big or too small, or it consists of both deaf and hearing students, it might prove difficult to individualise the teaching well enough (Bajkó & Kontra 2008). It is possible that the integration of deaf students to a hearing school can prove to be problematic in the future if their needs are not taken into account while planning everyday learning at schools.
Finnish National Agency for Education and their national core curriculum regulates the education of every Finnish student equally. The current Finnish national core curriculum (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014) states that in the teaching of
sign language users, strengthening their own identity and connection to their culture and the sign language community is emphasized. It also states that those who have sign language as their first language have the right to receive teaching in sign language, and hearing sign language users will receive sign language teaching if possible. Those who study sign language and literacy will also receive teaching in
‘Finnish for Sign language users’, or Swedish, if they study in a Swedish-speaking school. When it comes to foreign languages, including English, the Finnish national core curriculum describes it as part of the formation of a multilingual and multicultural identity. Communicational skills are also emphasized, and one of the aims is to provide the students with means to communicate and form networks using foreign languages, even globally (Finnish National Agency for Education 2014).
However, the deaf learners and their goals of learning are not separated from the hearing learners’. It is difficult to determine whether or not the required level of communication skills has been achieved in the teaching of the deaf or hard of hearing learners so far, as the current situation has not been studied widely (see, however, Hanni 2007; Tapio 2013).
3 LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
This Chapter discusses learning foreign languages especially from the point of view of deaf learners. In addition, the focus will be on English as a foreign language, although some statements are valid for other foreign languages as well. The Chapter begins with definitions of the essential terms of mother tongue / first language, second language, and foreign language (3.1), then moving on to describe the role of English as a foreign language in Finland (3.2). Chapter 3.3 presents some of the possible ways of teaching languages, aiming to provide a picture of how foreign languages have, could, and perhaps should be taught in practice. Due to the small number of previous studies on how languages are taught to deaf and hard of hearing learners, the Chapter will
describe language teaching practices in general. In Chapter 3.4, the concept of language learning environments is introduced and as many of the popular learning environments proved to be a part of a media, Chapter 3.5 will discuss media as a learning environment in more detail.