Won't SignWriting
Take Time From
Learning To Read & Write English?
One More Thing To Learn!
My personal experience, when teaching children, is that children
start to read signs quite quickly, and they oftentimes teach
the adults, who can be skeptical and frightened of it.
SignWriting seems to help Deaf kids learn to read English words
faster. That is why we started the SignWriting
Literacy Project - to study this issue to see if this is
true for other teachers too.
Having a written form for both languages can be useful in a bilingual,
bicultural setting - at least from my experience.
It is my guess that people learn their second language faster,
if they have a written form for it, and the reverse is true too...people
learn their second language faster, if their NATIVE language
has a written form. Perhaps this is because both languages need
an equal foundation so that the learner can compare both languages
equally.
Valerie Sutton
DAC@SignWriting.org
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