Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
Volume 11 (2021) Issue 1, pp. 93-114
Modality-Focused L2-Instruction
in Swedish Sign Language
Ingela Holmström (Stockholm, Sweden)
Abstract (English)
Most second language (L2) learning happens in the same modality, i.e., a learner who has a spoken language as the first language most commonly learns additional spoken languages as L2. In such language acquisition cases, learners can build on what they already physically know about how to express language. But, if they begin to learn a sign language, they have to learn how to express language in a new modality, i.e. the visual-gestural one. It requires expressing the language using hands, arms, face, and body instead of the speech organs, and this is very unfamiliar for them. Furthermore, learners need to learn specific linguistic features that largely differ from those of spoken languages, such as spatiality, iconicity and simultaneity. In this paper, the teaching of such modality-specific features in a cohort of first-year hearing L2 students, who are learning Swedish Sign Language at the university level, is examined and described. This empirical study shows a language teaching context that largely differs from other language teaching contexts and how students experience this new language learning process.
Keywords: Sign language, visual modality, second language, instruction, action research
Abstract (Swedish)
Det vanligaste är att andraspråksinlärning sker inom samma modalitet som förstaspråket. Det betyder att inlärare som har ett talat språk som förstaspråk (L1) oftast lär sig andra talade språk som andraspråk (L2). I sådana fall av språktillägnande kan inlärarna utgå ifrån vad de redan vet om hur man uttrycker språk rent fysiologiskt. Men om inlärarna som har ett talat språk som L1 istället börjar lära sig ett teckenspråk som L2 måste de samtidigt lära sig att uttrycka språket i en ny modalitet, dvs. den visuellt-gestuella. Detta innebär att de istället för att använda talorganen uttrycker språket med händerna, armarna, ansiktet och kroppen, vilket kan upplevas som väldigt annorlunda och främmande. Inlärarna måste också lära sig teckenspråkets specifika särdrag som till stor del skiljer sig från det talade språkets, såsom spatialitet, ikonicitet och simultanitet. I föreliggande empiriskpå universitetsnivå. Studien skildrar en form av andraspråkundervisning som till stor del skiljer sig från annan sådan undervisning och beskriver också hur inlärarna själva upplever denna nya språkinlärningsprocess.a studie undersöks och beskrivs hur undervisningen av sådana modalitetsspecifika särdrag ser ut med utgångspunkt i en årskull förstaårsstudenter som läser svenskt teckenspråk som L2
Nyckelord: Teckenspråk, visuell modalitet, andraspråk, undervisning, aktionforskning
1 Introduction
“It was extremely difficult! It’s something brand new!” the student responded in a written interview regarding her initial experience from learning Swedish Sign Language (STS) at the beginner level in a university class. This utterance captures the common perception among sign language teachers and researchers that one of the most unfamiliar things with learning a sign language (when having a spoken language as the first language) is to learn to express the language with hands, arms, face, and body instead of the speech organs (e.g. Chen Pichler & Koulidobrova 2015, Woll 2013). This is described as learning to express a language in a new modality, i.e. the visual-gestural modality.
The most common case is that learning additional languages after the first language (L1) has been acquired happens in the same modality. In other words, a learner who has a spoken language as his or her L1 most commonly learns additional spoken languages as second languages (L2). Also, signers with sign language as the L1 may learn an additional sign language as their L2. In such language acquisition cases, learners can build on what they already physically know about how to express language. This is not the case when having a spoken language as L1 and learning a sign language as L2, and vice versa. In order to differentiate between L2 learning in the same modality (unimodal L2 learning) and the learning of an L2 expressed in another modality (bimodal L2 learning), it is usual to use the abbreviation M2-L2, where M2 stands for ‘second modality’ (e.g. Chen Pichler & Koulidobrova 2015).
One such empirical study was conducted by Boers-Visker (2020), who examined the effects of form-focused interventions in three groups learning Sign Language of the Netherlands. Her focus was on the L2 learning of the agreement verb system, and the three groups examined were instructed through different teaching strategies, each one using different degrees of explicitness. One of the groups was a control group that did not receive input focused on the agreement verb system, at all. Boers-Visker (2020: 298) concludes that the form-focused intervention was beneficial for the two groups who had received more explicit instruction in the form of input flood only, or input flood together with rule presentation and explicit corrective feedback.
The overall aim in Boers-Visker’s doctoral thesis was to study how hearing L2 learners of sign language learn how to use a specific modality characteristic of sign languagee: the space in front of the body. This characteristic has been identified as particularly difficult for M2-L2 learners and has engaged several researchers in the sign-language L2-field on different linguistic levels. For example, Shield & Meier (2018), who focused on the phonological level of single signs, suggest that sign language learners have four imitation strategies at their disposal when learning to sign and use space:
● anatomical strategy: they activate the same muscles as the signer, and thus, they may produce the sign with their non-dominant hand instead of their dominant as is correct);
● mirroring strategy (they produce a sign that is a mirror of the signer’s, leading to incorrect reversal movements)
● visual matching strategy: they incorrectly produce the sign as perceived from their own perspective, which leads to the use of incorrect inward or outward movements or palm orientations), and
● reversing strategy: they correctly produce the sign from the signer’s perspective.
Shield & Meier (2018 15) found that adults learning a sign language typically tend to use the mirroring strategy but also use the visual matching strategy and sometimes the anatomical strategy. More skilled signers instead employ the (correct) reversing strategy.
The fact that adult sign language learners struggle with the learning of spatial features has also been found by Ferrara & Nilsson (2017). They examined a group of students learning Norwegian Sign Language and found, among other things, that students had difficulties placing signs in the signing space, and coordinating and positioning their hands in relation to each other. Ferrara & Nilsson also found another feature among their students that can be related to modality: the latter preferred to use more lexical signs (in line with how spoken language is expressed) rather than depicting signs i.e. signs that are part of the productive lexicon and dependent on the context, which can depict a movement, a shape, a location or the handling of an object. These findings can inform sign-language teachers in their teaching of M2-L2 learners.
Morett (2015) also touches on the field of sign language pedagogy. She found that hearing adults’ acquisition of sign language can be enhanced through a teaching method that combines mental imagery, i.e. explicit instruction that students create a mental image of the meaning of a given sign in their minds, and enactment, i.e. students were asked to re-enact new signs that they learned. Morett argues that such a teaching method “strengthens the conceptual links between sign referents, resulting in improved encoding and recall of signs by novice adult hearing L2 sign learners” (Morett 2015: 272).
The research presented here represents a contribution to the field of sign language pedagogy and is an empirical study focusing on the M2-L2 acquisition of modality-specific features. The study examines the approaches used by STS-instructors to teach modality-specific features to hearing beginners during the first eight weeks of instruction.
In the next section, the characteristics of sign language modality will be described more closely.
2 Characteristics of the Sign Language Modality
There are many shared properties between sign languages and spoken languages the most important of which are the following ones:
● They both have conventional vocabularies, which are productive; new vocabulary is added through borrowing and compounding, for example
● They have similar syntactic structures, e.g. the same parts of speech), and
● They have the same language acquisition milestones). (Meier 2002, 2006).
There are, however, also several differences between the languages, which primarily depend on the fact that they are expressed in different modalities, e.g. the visual-gestural vs. the oral-aural. Meier (2002) suggests four possible sources of modality effects on linguistic structure:
1. the articulators’ different properties,
2. the different perceptual system,
3. the visual-gestural system’s greater potential to iconic / indexic representation, and
4. the youth of sign languages and their non-linguistic roots in gestures (Meier 2002: 6f).
Thus, sign languages build on what can be expressed through hands, face and body, and on what can be perceived through the eyes. The signs are composed through a combination of the parameters of handshape, movement, location and orientation and can be combined into sentences and inflected for various purposes.
Three particular characteristics of sign languages are their iconicity, spatiality, and simultaneity. Iconicity means that a large proportion of the signs are visually motivated, having a resemblance between form and meaning. In other words, iconic signs look like what they mean, and thus, it is possible to figure out their meaning (Taub 2012: 389ff). These iconic signs consist of fixed, conventionalized signs and depicting signs. The former are lexemes that resemble enactment (e.g. write , swim) or show a feature of size or shape of an object (e.g. ball), while the latter are signs that depend on the context and do not have any fixed forms, e.g. signs which show how entities move or are handled as in ‘open’ that depends on whether the object being opened is a door, a bottle or a water tap. Depicting signs are often used in situations where the signer describes the environment, as seen by him or herself or by a character, or takes on the role of a character who is handling objects.
Spatiality means that sign languages use the place in front of the signer’s body to produce signs. This space is used for the articulation of lexical signs, but also for grammatical and discourse purposes (Boers-Visker 2020, Perniss 2012). For example, the direction of a sign can indicate the subject and object in an utterance, and the placing of signs at different locations can organize information or referents in a given narrative.
Simultaneity is about the fact that sign languages favor producing different features or structures at the same time, while the oral-aural modality of spoken languages entails sequential structures (Meier 2002, 2006). Simultaneity can be found in that the two hands can express different signs in tandem, but also through the fact that the signer's hands can express manual signs with lexical content while the face at the same time adds grammatical content to the utterances.
Another characteristic of sign languages is the manner in which the interaction takes place. For example, eye contact is essential for sign language communication because if the interlocutors do not look at each other, they cannot communicate. The addressee thus needs to pay visual attention to the signer, and this also regulates how turn-taking takes place in sign language communication. While in the oral-aural modality, it is possible to just take the turn, it must be obtained in the visual-gestural one. As a consequence, the signer has to seek the addressee’s attention in visual or tactile ways. For example, the signer can touch the addressee, wave with the hand in the addressee’s field of vision, bang on a surface (to create vibrations), or switch the light on and off (Baker & van den Bogaerde 2012).
As shown in the description here, the properties of the sign language modality thus occur at different levels, from phonological to discourse and conversational levels. It is, therefore, not sufficient to simply point out to what “modality-specific” instruction should contain. In this article, however, exercises that aim to train the four specific aspects mentioned here (iconicity, spatiality, simultaneity, and visual attention) will be examined.
3 The Study
In 2016, a project was initiated at Stockholm University, whose aim was to enhance teachers’ knowledge about effective ways of teaching STS as an L2. The project, UTL2 (Teaching Swedish Sign Language as a second language), was initiated by two deaf STS teachers, who experienced a lack of scientific knowledge to rely on in their teaching. Together with a (deaf) researcher (the author of the present paper), they began to prepare for the project. The project group decided to use action research as their method, because this method takes its point of departure in the teachers’ own teaching practice and provides opportunities for teachers to learn more about it and give them prerequisites to improve it (e.g. McAteer 2013). It has also been used in sign language teaching research previously (Rosen et al. 2015) and inspired the team to use this approach.
The action research process (McAteer 2013, Rönnerman 2004) can be seen as a cycle (Figure 1) which starts with the identification of a problem to be examined in depth: