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Deafness and Education International Deafness Educ. Int. 8(3): 144168 (2006) Published online 7 July 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/dei.195

Bilingual Language Profiles of Deaf Students: An Analysis of the Written Narratives of Three Deaf Writers with Different Language Proficiencies

MARIA KOUTSOUBOU, National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy, Institute of Education, London, UK; ROSALIND HERMAN, Department of Language and Communication, City University, London, UK; BENCIE WOLL, Department of Human Communication Science, University College London, London, UK ABSTRACT Literature on bilingual education suggests that the material used in teaching second language writing has an impact on the quality of the text. In addition, the material interacts differently with the level of bilingual proficiency of the students. This paper attempts to explore the written stories of three deaf students, which were produced under two different conditions: translation from a signed narrative vs. direct composition from a picture narrative. The three deaf students represent three language groups, with different proficiencies in Greek Sign Language and written Greek. It will be shown that a) each representative produces a unique writing style in accordance to his/her language proficiencies and b) each representative reacts differently to the stimulus material facilitating (or not) different aspects of writing. The narratives were explored in terms of their discourse and technical characteristics. Implications for deaf education and the teaching of writing are discussed. Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: studies Deaf writing; writing styles; bilingual education; narrative; case

Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students INTRODUCTION: BILINGUALISM AND DEAFNESS Deaf people who function largely through the use of two languages (sign and spoken/written) have started being viewed under the prism of bilingualism. The nature and degree of a two-language interaction are the main areas that theoretical bilingualism tries to explain. The classical bilingual models and particularly that of Cummins (1991) claim that the languages of the bilingual share a common cognitive function whereby the skills developed in the first language (L1) will transfer to the second language (L2), especially with regards to literacy. This principle has also been used to justify deaf bilingual education (Grosjean, 2001; Powers et al., 1998). However, these theories have been developed to describe hearing bilinguals with whom deaf bilinguals have some striking differences, the most notable being the L1 acquisition. As frequently reported, 95% of deaf babies are born to hearing parents. We cannot therefore assume that deaf babies will grow with a grounded L1 sign or spoken language which is the case for hearing babies (Turner, 2000). However, there are arguments why deaf people can be considered within a bilingual framework. Language acquisition in many deaf children seems to be similar to hearing children learning a L2, in that the deaf children learn, rather than acquire, their language (Paul, 2001). Paul (2001) explains that the L2 for hearing bilinguals may be not fully acquired because of inadequate exposure but for deaf individuals is an issue of incomplete exposure, which has to do with the conveyance of the auditory-based signal itself. That is why deaf people are naturally oriented to visual communication, which for many may be the only opportunity to acquire a natural fully-fledged language. Due to natural visual orientation, the written mode of language could be considered as a special complete linguistic input once acquired. However, this is also an area of difficulty for many deaf students and it is influenced by the different bilingual proficiencies that many deaf students exhibit as explained below. DEAF WRITING When deaf students operate in two languages sign language and spoken/ written language these may interact in various ways, depending on the level of their proficiency (Mayer and Akamatsu, 1999; Paul, 2001; Swanwick, 2002). This interaction predicts the existence of different writing styles from deaf students just like hearing students. Established research in L2 writing has shown that this interaction manifests itself on the surface of the written text via different styles (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992). However, in deaf bilingual writing the level of proficiency in both languages becomes more challenging than in hearing bilingualism because it is not always clear which of the two languages is the L1 and which is the L2.
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Koutsoubou et al. Research has only recently considered the complicated nature of deaf bilingualism by including as a factor the sign language proficiency of the deaf students (Singleton et al., 2004). Also, very little research has considered the interaction of sign language proficiency with written language proficiency. Viewing deaf writing and deaf education from a bilingual perspective inevitably raises all the issues of bilingual education, the most prevalent being the role of the L1 in teaching the L2 (for bilingual debate see Porter, 1998; Hakuta et al., 2000). Research on bilingual writing accepts that L1 facilitates the cognitive aspects of writing, but not necessarily the linguistic aspects of text (Cohen, 2000). However, the degree of facilitation depends on many other factors including the language proficiency of L2 and the genre of writing. For many deaf writers, writing is even more complicated because they do not always enter education with a grounded L1, either in sign language or spoken/written language (Paul, 2001). Another issue to consider in deaf writing is the similarities and differences between sign languages and written mode of spoken languages.1 Sign languages despite their differences are characterised by some common properties. In brief, sign languages, because they are visual, employ the signing space, the face and body of the communicator for linguistic functions. Visual perception has the capacity to process all these elements concurrently. On the other hand, phonetic-based languages are characterised mainly by linear syntactic properties. This linearity is even more evident in writing as the paralinguistic effects of spoken communication disappear. This concurrent vs. linear processing of signed and spoken/written language has various alleged effects on memory, attention and possibly on literacy acquisition and production (Marschark et al., 1997). This paper will address some of the above issues and in particular it will explore the influence of the different language proficiencies of deaf writers sign language and written language and the effect of the language input in the production of a written text (sign language input vs. no language input). The paper considers the qualitative findings of an earlier mixed method study in the light of literature on bilingual writing and the analysis of narratives (Koutsoubou, 2004b). BILINGUAL WRITING AND THE GENRE OF NARRATIVES A review of bilingual writing brings up two areas of interest: the stimuli used to initiate writing and the genre of writing. The stimuli used for the writing
1

There are great differences among sign languages themselves as well as written/spoken languages, which are beyond the scope of this paper to describe. Comparative linguistic analysis is also restricted from the fact that sign languages have not been researched as well as spoken/ written languages yet. However, there are a few studies which compare signed and spoken linguistic properties: Anderson (1993) and Sutton-Spence and Woll (1999).

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Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students activities of this research were translation and direct composition (see Cohen, 2000; Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992; Uzawa, 1996). Translation tasks are used to see how the discourse of one language is converted into the discourse of another. Languages differ from each other in terms of form, rules for constructing sentences and discourse structures. These differences influence the way meaning is conveyed. So, when translating a text, there are many subtle ways in which the translator can render the meaning from one language to the other. Another issue with translation is that a simple one-word utterance in one language may require a multiple-word sentence in the other and is therefore less easily rendered in that language (Malakoff and Hakuta, 1991). Translation as a linguistic task is a rather burdened and biased one (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992). Translation skills are usually taken for granted as an aspect of bilingualism, yet this is far from the truth. Many bilinguals face difficulties in translating, especially when writing (Malakoff and Hakuta, 1991). The task of direct composition presents the writer with a different process to that of translation: there is no other language explicitly intervening apart from the language that the mind uses to construct meaning. Direct assumes direct access to L2. If L2 proficiency does not allow that, then the L1 is summoned and direct composition may resemble translation in varying degrees. Especially on the level of planning and revision, L1 is important in its influence (Wang and Wen, 2002; Cook, 2001). The problem with direct composition therefore is that we do not know how direct it is. In the context of the present research, the two tasks of translation and direct composition assumed different purposes. Translation was used as a linguistically biased task. The task of direct composition was used to uncover any difference in the texts produced. The design of the two tasks each assumed an educational situation. The translation task, which is closer to a bilingual situation, uses sign language as a tool to mediate between a story and its written form. The direct composition task, which is closer to direct L2 teaching situation, does not use any language at least not explicitly. A comparison of these techniques may reveal how students with different proficiencies in the two languages make use of these educational situations. The genre of writing used in this study is the narrative because narrative can reveal how the discourse methods (grammar, reference, coherence and cohesion) of the languages interact (Hickmann and Hendriks, 1999). Also narratives are more naturalistic and less academically defined (Reilly et al., 2004). Narratives are considered to be therefore predictable in their structure. Because of this predictability, various scholars have developed models for analysing narrative content/information. Stein and Glenn (1979) developed story grammar content analysis which defines narratives as a standard sequence of information (i.e. a Setting, an Initiating event, an Internal response, an Attempt, a Consequence and a Reaction). Also Labovs high point content
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Koutsoubou et al. analysis (1997) has similar categories but operates on two levels: a) the reference level which is similar to the above sequence of information and, b) the evaluation level which gives information about the attitudes of the narrator for the events/characters of the story and can take place throughout the reference level. A second aspect of narratives is the organisation of the content. The organisation of the content, attempts to reveal relationships between language form and content of the story. Certain words (surface structure) are linked to deep structures (meaning) of the narrative. The idea that surface and deep structure are hierarchically organised has been entertained by various scholars (Langer, 1986; Mann and Thompson, 1988; ODonnell, 2002; Torrance, 2002). Semantic categories are identified to determine the deep structures used (e.g. conjunction, cause, antithesis, etc.) and then connected to surface structure linguistic items in use: Conjunction = and, Cause = because, Antithesis = but, etc. Finally, narratives can be analysed by looking at their technical characteristics on the surface level. Research shows that certain features are reliable indicators of text quality. For example, number of words, adjectives and adverbs can indicate lexical diversity. Length of a sentence, number of clauses per sentence, subordination and coordination can indicate grammatical complexity. The use of cohesive ties such as pronouns, conjunctions and demonstratives can indicate cohesion in the text, to name just a few (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996; Polio, 2001; Kamberelis, 1999). METHODOLOGY: THE DESIGN OF THE STUDY The material presented is based on a mixed-method study, which analysed the written narratives of 20 Greek deaf students (eight male and 12 female) aged between 1823 and attending the last two years of lyceum (Koutsoubou, 2004a, 2004b). The sample came from three different deaf schools in three major Greek cities and although small in number can be considered as typical of the deaf population attending deaf education (for population numbers in Greek deaf education see Lampropoulou, 1994). The research investigated the written narratives of the students in two situations: a) translation from a Greek sign language (GSL) video story into written Greek and b) direct composition in written Greek from a picture story without words. Both materials used two stories without words: the Frog, Where are you? (Mercer, 1969) and The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher (Bang, 1986) [from now on: Frog Story and Strawberry Lady]. Both were signed and videotaped by a native deaf signer and also made into a picture booklet. Half the students received the Frog Story in sign and the Strawberry Lady in pictures and the other half received them the other way round, in order to control for story effects. Prior to the experiment, they were assessed in both GSL and written Greek language proficiency. The assessment procedure was complicated as there are
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students no standardised assessments for GSL or for writing as an expression of sign bilingualism. The researcher constructed a rating scale of four levels each defined in terms of general linguistic and pragmatic characteristics. The description of the assessment criteria is beyond the scope of this paper (but see Koutsoubou, 2004b). Two assessors (students schoolteachers) were used for GSL and written Greek. The assessors gave rates of 1 for low proficiency to 4 for high proficiency but they could also give median rates such as 1.5. The students final assessment comprised the means of the two ratings. Following assessment, three groups emerged: Sign language dominant group (GSL high, written Greek low) six students, Weak balanced bilingual group (GSL low, written Greek low) six students, Strong balanced bilingual group (GSL high, written Greek high) eight students.

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The texts were coded and explored on three hierarchical levels of writing: information level, organisation level and surface level. The highest level information only explores content. The second level organisation links content to form. Finally, the third level focuses only on the linguistic forms. The coding of the three levels is summarised below. Coding of the texts Information level Based on Stein and Glenns (1979) and Labovs (1997) narrative analysis, the information in the stories was measured in two ways. Amount of Information: a. Basic structure of the story, consisting of four structural components, same for both stories (Table 1, first column). b. Basic story lines (Table 1, second column). Type of information: a. Descriptive information (Table 1, third column). b. Affective information (Table 1, fourth column). The amount of information was calculated against the four basic structural components and the six or seven story lines of the respective story (i.e. if only two out of the total four components were present, it meant that 50% of the
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Table 1: Amount and type of information: elements, definitions and examples.

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Amount of information Basic structure (story grammar) 1. Lady buys strawberries 2. A man follows her All the clauses of which verbs describe some kind of state or action. E.g.

Frog story

Basic story lines Strawberry lady

Type of information Descriptive info Affective info

1.

SETTING = introduction of main characters/temporal and spatial orientation.

1. Boy and dog have frog

Koutsoubou et al.

e.g. The evening. The boy is 7 years old. And has a dog. PELPAN 3. The man tries to snatch the box 4. He starts chasing the woman She always escapes

2. Frog escapes

Any information about the inner state of the characters, evaluations, comments, attributes, thoughts, desires/ intentions or story animation. E.g.

3. Boy and dog go to find frog

2.

State: A boy is 7 years old PELPAN Action: The woman climbs up the tree ARILIA

4. They get involved in adventures 5. 6.

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Inner state: The boy and the dog are happy. PELPAN Intention: Bad wants very much will take the strawberries GOPLAST Also all clauses modified with any type of adjective or adverb: e.g. suddenly, happily, angrily, etc. and clauses with emotive verbs:

5. He finds a bush with other fruit and forgets her She arrives home and gives strawberries to family

They find frog with family

REASON = the trigger for the development of the story (e.g. Frog Story: the frog escaped from the house. Strawberry Lady: a strange man wants to snatch the ladys strawberries). e.g. The strange thief tried to steal the strawberries from the lady. But the lady holds them tight run and getinto the bus PELPAN 7.

6. Boy and dog take a new frog back home

e.g. scared, loves, worried, envies, etc.

3.

ACTION = the development of the story.

Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

4.

CLOSURE = the resolution of the story.

e.g. The woman goes to his house. The family we eat the strawberries ARILIA

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students story grammar was present. If two out of the six basic story lines of the Frog Story were present it meant that there was 33% present). The type of information was calculated against the total amount of the clauses combined: for example, a 6% affective info and 94% descriptive info means that 6% of the total narrative had affective information and the remaining 94% was descriptive. Organisation level This level was measured with Langers (1986) tree diagrams adjusted (Appendix A). The branching points of the tree diagrams are based on clauses and are determined from connectors and other grammatical words. The basic relationships found in the narratives are the following: Sequence: temporal sequence of episodes. At the top of the tree diagram as the superimposed rhetorical structure of the genre of narrative. E Event: action taking place (signified by verbs of doing). D Description: attributes, states, setting (signified by verbs of state for example, be, have, become, etc). Exp Explanation: signified by words such as: because, because of, etc. Ev Evaluation: a comment by the narrator on some aspect of story. C Cause: causal relationship between two clauses (signified by words such as: so, in order to, etc.). Adv Adversative: an alternative given (signified by words such as: but, or). Res/ Rem/ Q-A Response/Remark and Question-Answer: dialogues, monologues, inner thoughts. S The tree diagrams are organised in levels of hierarchy where the topmost level is the rhetorical pattern (sequence is the default for narratives) and the subordinate levels of the content can undergo various levels of elaboration (Level 1, Level 2, etc.). The deeper the levels go, the more elaborated the story is. The more nodes in each level the more information-rich they tend to be. The more variety in the nodes, the more sophisticated the story (Appendix A). Surface level These are standard measurements in writing as mentioned in the literature review, connected with the text quality. The measures used here are:

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Koutsoubou et al. number of words, number of sentences, number of clauses, clauses per sentence, sentence length, subordinate clauses, coordinate clauses and sentence complexity (use of adverbials, adjectives, rare vocabulary, and complex structures) (Fraser, 2001; Silliman et al., 2000). A category of Unknown structures was added to allow counting of deviant structures. As for the text characteristics, both absolute numbers of occurrences and percentages are given. The percentages in text characteristics were calculated against the total clauses of the text (e.g. 25% subordination meant that 25% of the total clauses in that narrative were subordinate clauses).

The relationship between the quantitative and qualitative context of the study The quantitative strand of the research showed that there were several significant group differences and one reported interaction between the group and the material. Regarding group differences, the strong bilingual deaf students outperformed the weak bilinguals but not the sign language dominant in the type of information and the organisation of the story. However, in the surface level measurements the strong bilinguals outperformed both the other groups. There was no difference on the amount of errors of the groups. Overall, these results suggest that high proficiency in one language has an impact on the higher levels of writing but not on the surface of the text. With regard to the interaction effect the three groups reacted differently to the stimulus material on the affective information of the stories. The strong bilinguals significantly increased the amount of affective information in their stories in response to the translation (video material); the weak bilinguals significantly increased the affective information with the direct composition (pictures material) and the sign language dominants did not produce any difference according to the type of material. This suggests that each group took a different route to writing as a result of their different language profiles. However, a quantitative analysis cannot give insight into the language routes that deaf students took or how the material may have influenced this. This is an area better explored by a qualitative analysis of the written texts. This paper will describe the different bilingual profiles that the deaf students exhibit through the stories of three deaf writers, each representing a different language group.
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students THE CASE STUDIES The case study writers have been chosen as typical representatives of their groups both in their language assessments and the style of texts they produced according to the quantitative results. The pseudonyms of the three representatives are: Arilia (weak balanced bilingual group) Pelpan (strong balanced bilingual group) Goplast (sign language dominant group) Here only the translated English texts of the case studies will be presented,2 followed by a summary of measurements of the texts and their profile analysis. ARILIA (weak balanced bilingual) Arilia is an 18-year-old male student, comes from a hearing family and attends the last class of lyceum. He has been deaf from birth. Both his language proficiencies were rated as average to low (on a scale of 14: GSL = a mean of 2.25 / written Greek = a mean of 2) and therefore placed in the weak balanced bilingual group. His two stories (Tables 2 and 3) and summary table of his text measurements (Table 4) are shown here. Weak balanced bilingual: analysis and results of the writing profile At the information level, it is clear that one of the stories is unfinished. This was not unusual most of the stories in this group (10 out of 12) were not completed, suggesting that they faced difficulties constructing them. Again on information level, Arilia only reported two structural components of the overall four from the direct composition story, however, these two components were adequately elaborated, sometimes with detail (such as the dogs fall from the window). The basic storylines are only 33% of the total episodes, again as a direct result of the story being incomplete. It seems that although the conceptualisation of the story was fine, Arilias low skills in Greek writing did not permit finishing the direct composition story despite the effort to elaborate in certain areas. The translation text is more complete but less elaborated (used fewer words than the direct composition and the Action is almost missing). The reason for this may be that, due to low sign language skill he only understood the basics of the signed story without much detail.
2

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It should be reported that many features of Greek discourse do not map onto English discourse and therefore the English translations may lack something of the original impression.
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Table 2: Weak balanced bilinguals direct composition story. THE FROG STORY The child sees from the frog. The dog hold vase. The frog is in the vase. The child and the dog to-sleep on his bed. The frog climbs-on the vase. Two windows has small the child and dog sees the vase because leaves the frog. The child wake-up to put-on the clothes. The dog is in the vase. The child calls. The dog has inside vase because hurts his head. The dog fell down. The child sees from the dog. The child hugs the dog. The vase brakes down.

Table 3: Weak balanced bilinguals translation story. THE STRAWBERRY LADY The The The The The The The The The The mother will go to the town. mother buy the strawberries. woman asks 1 kilo the strawberries. bad is watching the woman. bad catch the woman because eats the strawberries. woman climbs up the tree. bad looks for the woman because have tree. bad goes to the tree because eats the strawberries. woman goes to his house. family we-eat the strawberries.

The type of information in the direct composition is slightly more varied than the translation as it was not only descriptive but also involved affective information. This trend was more obvious in the writings of his group where the affective information of the direct compositions was more significant than the translation stories (Koutsoubou, 2004a). At the organisation level, the two stories do not differ greatly. Both reached the fourth level of the tree diagram and that was mainly due to the few subordinate clauses of the because of type. The third level was where the majority of clauses were concentrated which means that none of the stories posed particular complexity in the organisation of the information. Most of the propositions were either Descriptions or Events and both stories generated three different types of relationships.
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

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Table 4: Weak balanced bilinguals summary of measurements: comparisons between direct composition and translation. Results from direct composition (picture) Information level: Amount of information: Story grammar: 2/4 (50%) Basic storylines: 2/6 (33%) Type of information: Descriptive info: 95% Affective info: 5% Organisation level: Results from translation (video) Information level: Amount of information: Story grammar: 3/4 (75%) Basic storylines: 4/7 (71%) Type of information: Descriptive info: 100% Affective info: 0% Organisation level:

I II III IIII Seq

Seq Seq

I II Seq Seq EE

Seq Seq Seq EEE EE

DDDDEDEEEEEEEEEEE Expl Expl

III E E E IIII

C Exp C

(Level: II 2, III 16, IIII 2) 3 different relationships: Event, Description, and Explanation Surface level: Number of words: 89 Sentence complexity: 0 Number of sentences: 14 Sentence length: 6.35 (mean) words Number of clauses: 18 Subordination: 2 (11%) Coordination: 0 Unknown structures: 2 (11%) Clauses per sentence: 1.28

(Level: II 4, III 10, IIII 3) 3 different relationships: Event, Cause and Explanation Surface level: Number of words: 65 Sentence complexity: 0 Number of sentences: 10 Sentence length: 6.5 (mean) words Number of clauses: 13 Subordination: 3 (25%) Coordination: 0 Unknown structures: 1 (1%) Clauses per sentence: 1.3

On the discourse style, both Arilias texts have very little cohesive elaboration particularly with regard to reference. There is a complete absence of cohesive devices (e.g. manipulation of pronouns, determiners, etc.) other than the repetition of nouns. In both his stories he is introducing his characters by definite determiners, which is not used to introduce new information but only to maintain old information. His narratives therefore are highly contextualised (typical characteristic of oral discourse). For example, the following are the
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Koutsoubou et al. introductory sentence and the maintenance sentence of the Strawberry Lady. The second sentence does not use any anaphoric devise even though the mother has just been mentioned:
For example: The mother will go to town. The mother buy the strawberries.

The stories resemble a collection of sentences the majority of which have the same word order of Subject-Verb-Object (S-V-O). This may be the effect of years of drilling grammatical exercises in a language whose discourse techniques have not been mastered. The sentences do not only resemble each other structurally but they are also arranged one under the other as a list of items. This was also a distinct characteristic of his language group. On the surface level, Arilias texts have very little grammatical elaboration. The simplicity of the sentences is obvious as their length is nearly equivalent to one clause. Modification is absent (adjectives, adverbs) and therefore there is no sentence complexity. Nevertheless, there is some subordination in both stories (all measurements in Table 4). Here, we must again bear in mind that the direct composition is incomplete and has already produced almost the same amount of subordination as the translation story. However, none of the attempts to subordinate is grammatically correct. The stimulus material has not affected the narratives dramatically as far as grammar and text characteristics are concerned. However, two things are of importance. First, it seems that there is an effect of the material on information level. The translation story, which is a complete story, is lower in general information and elaboration in comparison to the direct composition story. The direct composition story only comprises the first two structural components, however, they are reported with great detail. This may mean that this story was better perceived but low writing skills did not allow task completion. In the translation, however, the story was not perceived in detail and low writing skills did not much hinder the production of a brief narrative. Second, the direct composition story being incomplete produced the same results as the translation story. This may indicate that direct composition, as stimulus was more appropriate for this student. Most students in his group did not favour the translation material because they did not master GSL and could not use it as an appropriate tool for literacy purposes. Summary of weak balanced bilingual profile The writing style reads as unconnected due to rare use of reference means. The narratives can be described as item-lists where the sentences are just placed next to each other without connections. The material most successful in developing information, elaboration of story and surface characteristics of the story is the direct composition.
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

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Table 5: Strong balanced bilinguals direct composition story. THE STRAWBERRY LADY The lady went to the shop of the fruits and bought the strawberries. She-walked in the corridor but suddenly she-had behind her a strange thief and follow her often. The strange thief tried to steal the strawberries from the lady. But the lady holds them tight run and get-into the bus. The strange thief had disappeared. The lady had relieved. And got-off in the woods and walk, then suddenly and again idea the strange thief. The lady run towards her house. But the strange thief has company with same faces. And stay in the woods to look-for the food. The lady stays to her house and they-gave her family with strawberries her family ate the strawberries. The basket is empty for the strawberries.

Table 6: Strong balanced bilinguals translation story. THE FROG STORY The evening. The boy is 7 years old. And has a dog. The boy and the dog are happy because has frog they-slept. The frog has been lost because went out of the window. Then until the morning, they-wake up and they didnt see anything frog and they begin to worry about the frog. They-look everywhere in his house and nothing. The little dog fell from the window, the boy found his little dog and look the woods but I-found the frog, suddenly saw the mouse and looks for and I-saw the tree, there was a hive. The little dog jumps and jumps, one hive fell and many bees fly to attack the little dog. The little dog with the frog on his head and fell into the river, they were nearly drown the boy they-save and they-breath. The boy and the little dog with the frog they believe that there are there the wood fell and there-is inside. The frog with little frogs. The frog is happy because he-has a lady-frog. The frog told him boy that give a little frog. The boy said thanks went to take the little dog told him to leave. The frog with a lady-frog and their little ones stay at the forest. The boy holds a frog and together the dog they-go home.

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Koutsoubou et al. PELPAN (strong balanced bilingual) Pelpan is a 19-year-old female student, comes from a hearing family and attends the last class of lyceum. Her language proficiencies were rated average to high (on a scale of 14: GSL = a mean of 2.75 / written Greek = a score of 3). She was therefore placed in the strong balanced bilingual group. Her texts (Tables 5 and 6) and measurements of analysis (Table 7) are shown here.
Table 7: Strong balanced bilinguals summary of measurements: comparisons between direct composition and translation. Results from direct composition Information level: Amount of information: Story grammar 4/4 (100%) Basic lines 6/7 (85%) Type of information: Descriptive info 95% Affective info 5% Organisation level: Results from translation Information level: Amount of information: Story grammar 4/4 (100%) Basic story lines 6/6 (100%) Type of information: Descriptive info 85% Affective info 15% Organisation level:

Seq Seq Seq Seq Seq Desc Seq

Seq

EEEEE EEEEEv l EEEE??? EEEE Cau Adv

Level: II 4, III 21, IIII 1, IV 1 4 different relationships: Event, Evaluation, Cause and Adversative, Surface level: Number of words: 96 Sentence complexity: 75% Number of sentences: 12 Sentence length: 10.16 Number of clauses: 23 Subordination: 2 (8%) Coordination: 8 (34%) Unknown structures 1 (3%) Clauses per sentence: 1.91

DDDDE EEEEval EEDDEE???EEE Expl Expl ExplExplResp

EEEE?EEEDEEEEEEE

Com Com Expl

Level: II 4, III 38, IIII 8 6 different relationships: Event, Description, Comment, Response, Explanation and Evaluation. Surface level: Number of words: 204 Sentence complexity: 62% Number of sentences: 16 Sentence length: 12.75 Number of clauses: 46 Subordination: 9 (19%) Coordination: 11 (23%) Unknown structures: 6 (12%) Clauses per sentence: 2.8

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Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students Strong balanced bilingual: analysis and results of the writing profile Pelpans stories are complete. That was the case for most of the stories of the strong bilingual group (from the 16 stories, only two were incomplete). This means that they did not face major problems constructing them. On the information level Pelpans stories have all the basic structural components of a narrative. However, the direct composition story is not totally complete. On the other hand, the translation story is complete with all the basic story lines included. In the type of information, the direct composition story comprises mainly descriptive information (95%) and only a small amount is affective (5%). The translation story, on the other hand, has much more balanced descriptive and affective information (85% descriptive and 15% affective). On the organisation level, the direct composition is a shorter narrative and the majority of its clauses are aggregated in the third level in the form of Events. At some point though, it reaches the fifth level mainly because of one causaladversative link. However, the overall organisation of the story is simple and produced four kinds of relationships. The translation story produced a more balanced organisation where the majority of clauses gather on the third level but the fourth level is also very well represented. The organisation has produced six kinds of relationships. On the discourse style despite the errors, there is a variety of cohesive tactics used to link sentences and clauses together. In general that was true for most stories of the strong bilingual group. There was still a dominance of using noun repetition as a cohesive strategy just like the weak bilingual but she has also used anaphora via person in verb inflection as well as other cohesive devises mainly for inter-clausal connections. The same applies to writings of the strong bilingual group. Some examples of the variety of the cohesive structures that she used are: Anaphora: The lady went to the shop of the fruits and bought the strawberries. She-walked in the corridor but suddenly . . . The frog has been lost because went out of the window. Then until the morning, they-wake up . . . The boy and the little dog with the frog they believe that there are there the wood fell . . . The frog has been lost because went out of the window.

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Time relations:

Subordination via complimentisers:

Subordination via other connectors:

The more cohesive discourse style of Pelpan compared to that of Arilia is also enhanced by the use of a complex vocabulary, use of adjectives and adverbials:
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suddenly she-had behind her a strange thief the lady holds them tight They were nearly drown

It is obvious that in both stories the discourse style is qualitatively different from the weak bilinguals stories. We need to know though which of the two materials had a greater effect on the degree of using this style. From the results of the surface level it seems that the translation was more facilitative than the direct composition. Firstly, the translation was more productive (204 words vs. 96 words) with more clauses. Subordination, longer sentences and more clauses per sentence were greater in the translation story. However, the direct composition produced slightly more complex sentences than the translation. Perhaps the most notable advantage of the direct composition against translation is that it produced fewer unknown structures (all measurements in Table 7). This should be interpreted in the context of the other text characteristics particularly the increased productivity. The translation story appears to be more adventurous than the direct composition, which may involve more experimentation and therefore more errors. In brief, it seems that the translation task has enabled Pelpan to write in a slightly more effective way in all three levels. This is a very representative profile of her language group, as the same pattern of discourse appears in the other stories of the group. Summary of strong balanced bilingual Despite the erroneous language, there is a L2 style albeit of low proficiency.3 Both stories make frequent use of various cohesive techniques, which means that the stories are not rigid and blunt. The method most successful in almost all levels of story production is translation. GOPLAST (sign language dominant) Goplast is an 18-year-old female student in the last class of lyceum. She comes from a hearing family. She was found by all assessors to be very good in GSL (a mean of 3.5 on a scale of 14) but not in written Greek (a mean of 1.75). Consequently, she was placed in the sign language dominant group as her GSL was above average and her written Greek was below average. Her texts (Tables 8 and 9) and measurements (Table 10) are shown here.

By L2-writing style we do not assume homogeneity in bilingual writing but we assume some common characteristics among bilingual writers, which show experience in discourse techniques of a L1, for example, the use of various cohesion techniques (even in the absence of grammatical correctness).

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Table 8: Sign language dominants direct composition story.1 THE STRAWBERRY LADY A THE LADY WILL GO TO THE FRUITS. WANTS WILL BUY STRAWBERRIES. A BAD WANTS VERY MUCH WILL TAKE THE STRAWBERRIES AND ENVIES HER. WANTS EFFORT WILL TAKE AND CANNOT. AFTER FOLLOWS HER. THE LADY LEFT. WILL GO OUT TO THE WOOD. AND IS FOLLOWING HER. IS VERY THIRSTY. THE LADY GAVE HIM THE STRAWBERRIES.
1

She wrote her story in capital letters.

Table 9: Sign language dominants translation story.1 THE FROG STORY A THE CHILD HOW OLD IS HE? 7 HE IS. HE LIKES THE DOG BOY. AT NIGHT SLEEP. AND HIS ROOM BESIDE THE DOG BOY. AT NIGHT DOG LEFT. IN THE MORNING THE CHILD WOKE UP THE DOG WHERE IS. IS LOOKING WHERE. THE WINDOW HE-CALLS IT. SEES THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG. THE WINDOW FELL THE DOG THEY-GO WHERE LOOK-FORYOU-SEE A THE TREE. THEY-LOOKFOR THEY-ARE SCARED A THE MOUSE. THEY CANNOT THEY-GET OFF FROM THE TREE. AND THEY SCARE OWL. IT-LOOKS-LIKE DEERS. THE BEHIND DOG TOGETHER DEER. FELL THE RIVERS. THE CHILD HELP THE DOG. THEY-RUN THEY-SEE THEY-GET-MARRIED. THEY ARE BORNED EITHER FOUR OR FIVE LITTLE-DOGS. THE DOG DOESNT WANT IT AT HIS HOUSE. HE-WANTS TO STAY THE TREE. GIVE A LITTLE DOG GO TO HIS HOUSE. ALRIGHT.
1

She wrote her story in capital letters.

Sign Language dominant: analysis and results of the writing profile Starting from the information level (amount of information), only the translation story is complete. The direct composition does not have the closure element. The basic story lines are incomplete in both stories; however, the direct composition story is more affected. As far as the type of information is concerned, the two materials were almost the same (all measurements in Table 10). In general though, translation has produced a greater quantity of details. The above behaviour is characteristic of the sign language dominant group. The different stimuli made an impact on the amount of information but not on the type of information where both materials were treated the same by the sign language dominant writers. On the organisation level the effect of stimuli has started to disappear. Both stories have produced more or less the same complexity of organisation. The
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Table 10: Sign language dominants summary of measurements: comparisons between direct composition and translation. Results from direct composition Information level: Amount of information Story grammar 3/4 (75%) Basic story lines 4/7 (57%) Type of information Descriptive 82% Affective 18% Organisation level: Results from translation Information level: Amount of information Story grammar 4/4 (100%) Basic story lines 5/6 (83%) Type of information Descriptive 84% Affective 16% Organisation level:

Seq Seq E Seq Seq Desc Seq

Seq Seq Seq Seq

DDEEE EEEEEE

DDDDEDEEEEEDEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEE D D

Expl Expl Com Com Expl, Expl Expl, Expl

(Level: II 3, III 12, IIII 4) 4 different nodes: Event, Cause

(Level: II 5, III 33, IIII 4) 3 different nodes: Event, Description, and Explanation Surface level: Number of words: 109 Sentence complexity: 14% Number of sentences: 27 Sentence length: 4.77 Clauses: 37 Subordination: 2 (5%) Coordination: 1 (3%) Unknown: 14 (37%) Clause per sentence: 1.37

Surface level: Number of words: 52 Sentence complexity: 27% Number of sentences: 11 Sentence length: 4.72 Clauses: 16 Subordination: 0% Coordination: 3 (18%) Unknown 3 (18%) Clause per sentence: 1.45

direct composition appears to be poorer on the higher levels but this is because it is incomplete and lacks important episodes. Both stories present the third level as the most crowded. Even though the translation produced considerably more narrative clauses, this did not facilitate a more complex organisation (deeper links).
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students On the surface level there are areas facilitated by the translation, such as productivity (109 words in translation vs.59 in direct composition). Other areas had no difference such as sentence length, clauses per sentence and subordination. Eventually there are areas facilitated by the direct composition such as unknown structures. One cannot compare this style of treating the material with any of the other two writers. The strong bilingual favoured the translation whereas the weak bilingual seemed to favour the direct composition. It seems that the sign language dominant writer does not favour either material or the material has a mixed effect depending on the aspect of writing. In addition, the general discourse style is distinct from both other writers. The most notable characteristic is packed information where the text is fused and un-segmented and the pieces of information mingle with each other without clear boundaries. This effect is created mainly from a predisposition to grouping 1) verbs and 2) nouns without the use of links:
1) For example, serial verbs: THEY-RUN THEY-SEE THEY-GET-MARRIED. THEY-ARE-BORNED EITHER FOUR OR FIVE LITTLE-DOGS. (Translation) 2) For example, serial nouns: SEES THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG. (Translation)

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Another notable characteristic contributing to the packed discourse style is the non-use of existential and communication verbs such as to be, to have, to say, etc. Sign language influence is obvious in the writings of Goplast, particularly the translation. For example:
For example, A THE CHILD HOW OLD IS? HE 7 HE IS.

This is a typical rhetorical question used in sign language to draw attention to new information. It has also been described as a type of topic-comment structure (Sutton-Spence and Woll, 1999). In fact, looking at the translation story the topic-comment structures occur throughout. Some examples followed by possible interpretations:
For example, (3) . . . THE TOY BOX INSIDE THE DOG = It is the toy box where the dog was inside (4) THE WINDOW FELL THE DOG = It is from the window that the dog fell

The above constructs do not exist in the direct composition. The topiccomment structure was very common among sign language dominant writers as well as among the strong balanced bilinguals, which supports the possibility that it originates from sign language influence. As a last comment on the translation story one should mention the confusion of two referents: the dog with the frog. This adds to the confusion when
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Koutsoubou et al. reading the story as the three main characters are now reduced to two. Before we assume that the writer either does not know the Greek word for frog or that she did not understand the video, we must consider again the influence of sign language. In sign language, the default way to refer to the story characters involves using space plus the signers body as a referent. The economy of sign language predicts that the space will provide X-1 referents, as the signernarrator will act the missing referent (Ahlgren and Bergman, 1990) (referent confusion was not uncommon among the other members of this group). It would appear that this student was confused as to the referent. The direct composition appears to have a more written Greek style. Sentences are slightly shorter and adopt more the S-V-O order, which makes it easier to read. The direct composition is simpler than translation, which probably indicates that the writer was preoccupied with a less onerous task: in the video story there is a more adventurous approach as translation from a language gets in the way and the final product is restricted by low written skills. So it may be the case that, direct composition from pictures reduces the chain of tasks involved in writing. Summary of sign language dominant The writing style can be described as packed where the narration reads fused and sometimes incomprehensible. Much of the apparent confusion can be explained as a sign language transfer. Neither method/material was particularly favoured. DISCUSSION AND CONSIDERATIONS The analyses of the written stories revealed a different writing profile for each representative of a language group. The weak bilingual adopted an item-list profile where the sentences of his story resemble an unconnected list of items. The strong bilingual adopted a more L2 writing profile making use of various cohesion means. The sign language dominant produced a packed information profile where the written story is presented all-in-one-breath without clear boundaries between events. As far as the stimulus material is concerned it has been suggested in the literature that its effect varies within different proficiency groups. Using translation, for example, may help low level bilingual students, particularly on the information and organisation level (Kobayashi and Rinnert, 1992). In our case studies, this effect was corroborated: the strong bilingual favoured the translation material, the weak bilingual favoured the direct composition material and the sign language dominant student showed a variety of results. The groups that they represent therefore may use the stimulus material for different purposes. Also, it seems that from all the bilingual deaf writers, it is the strong bilingual that behaves similarly to low proficiency hearing bilinguals. Therefore
Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei

Bilingual language profiles of deaf students many deaf students (i.e. weak bilinguals and sign language dominants) do not fit a known L2 profile. The above considerations hold great educational interest for deaf education: Deaf students, despite their differences in their language proficiencies, are taught in the same classes trying to follow a curriculum designed for hearing students whose language experience is relatively homogeneous. The present paper places deaf writing in a unique bilingual context whereby none of the languages involved can be taken for granted and therefore deaf education has to deal with multiple bilingual profiles in a single classroom. The material used in bilingual writing may facilitate different aspects of the text. For example, deaf writing has the reputation of having a dry style (Everhart and Marschark, 1988). This may reflect the need to facilitate affective information. Also, deaf writing has been described as having varying degrees of unintelligibility, which may reflect the need to facilitate text organisation. The importance of explicitly drawing attention to non-manual aspects of sign language during the teaching of deaf students (Swanwick, 1999). Proper interpretation of non-manual cues may help ameliorate the phenomenon of extreme presence of visual cues from certain students, most apparent in the packed information as demonstrated in the present paper. If the processing of sign language is less sequential than spoken/written languages, this is something that contrasts with writing which is sequential-linear. Here, educational practice may need to work on contrastive translation between languages.

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Finally, this study suggests that manipulating the linguistic input as well as taking into account proficiency in both languages can have some effect on different aspects of writing. The fact that this effect is not global on all aspects of writing may put in perspective our expectations from bilingual methods in general and, in specific, their application in deaf education. Realising the potentials and limitations of bilingual approaches will help deaf education its goals, methods and students become better defined.

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Koutsoubou et al. APPENDIX A: FRAGMENT OF A TREE DIAGRAM FOR STORY ORGANISATION

Temporal Sequence

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode X

Episode X+

Event Event Event Description 18 20 21 23

Description 19

Adversative 22

Explanation 24

This is an example of how a tree diagram shows the relationships in a story. It has 4 levels, the deepest has 3 clauses, and there are 4 different types of relationships presented (Event/Description/Adversative/Explanation). The numbers under the relationships indicate the clauses of the narrative. E.g.: [. . .] 18) Some other time again he saw a lady 19) who has the strawberries 20) was running 21) and followed 22) but lady disappeared in the wood 23) is boy disappointing 24) because not is-found the strawberries [. . .] REFERENCES
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Address correspondence to: M.Koutsoubou, Research Officer, National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL. (E-mail: m.koutsoubou@ioe.ac.uk)

Copyright 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Deafness Educ. Int. 8: 144168 (2006) DOI: 10.1002/dei