On the relation between the signing and reading skills of deaf bilinguals

Abstract

In this paper, we will describe the theoretical underpinning of many bilingual education programs for deaf children: Cummins' Linguistic Interdependence theory. Then, we will review some of the studies that have been conducted on the relation between reading and signing skills, and discuss how difficult it is to interpret their findings within Cummins' framework. We will present new data on the relation between deaf children's vocabulary knowledge and morpho-syntactic skills in Sign Language of the Netherlands and spoken Dutch that imply that Cummins' theory may be too narrow as an educational model of bilingual programs for deaf children.