Welcome to the website of the 2014 Symposium on Sign Bilingualism and Deaf Education
Updated: July 14, 2014
The emergence of sign linguistics as a sub-discipline of linguistic research in the 1960s has triggered a growing interest in examining the role of natural sign language in bringing up or educating deaf students in a sign bilingual model. Since then, sign bilingualism has been practiced in some deaf school settings. In recent years, however, it has gradually been introduced in regular school settings through the concept of co-enrollment. Therefore, sign bilingualism has acquired a new interpretation, which is to promote sign language as well as the written and oral mode of spoken language development of deaf children. Within this context of mainstream education, advancements in hearing technology as well as speech and language therapy have also made parents and educators for the deaf question whether or not acquiring a sign language impedes deaf children's spoken language development. The symposium is meant to address these issues, in response to the call for an evidence-based approach towards bilingualism and bilingual programming in deaf education research. In this symposium, special focus will be on examining the ingredients for implementing sign bilingualism in deaf education in both the deaf school and regular school context, and hopefully to chart directions for future research in deaf education.
We are honoured to have the following scholars and experts as our keynote speakers and invited speakers in the symposium:
Keynote speakers (in chronological order):
- Bencie Woll (University College London)
- Rachel I. Mayberry (University of California San Diego)
- Anne E. Baker (University of Amsterdam)
- Shirin D. Antia (The University of Arizona)
- Carl J. Kirchner (National University - San Diego)
Invited speakers (in chronological order):
- Kathy Yuet Sheung Lee (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
- Takashi Torigoe (Hyogo University of Teacher Education)
- Min-Hua Hsing (National University of Tainan)
The official languages of the symposium will be English, Cantonese and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL). In addition to these official languages, interpretation to and from Mandarin will be provided.
DATES
19 - 21 June 2014
VENUE
Lecture Theatre 5,
Lee Shau Kee Building,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
