Understanding The Writing Conventions of Deaf Urban Latino Youth

The thesis project analyzes the trajectory and components of English writing conventions of Deaf Urban Latino Youth. It is an analysis of writing features and strategies in punctuation, organization, paragraph writing, neatness and portions of English grammar. The lessons call for real world everyday experiences of communication for Deaf youth in conjunction with English writing. Deaf Latino students in particular undergo a contention of acquiring English writing skills while experiencing other linguistic and cultural diversity, thus the need to develop an authentic bilingual approach to Deaf Education. The project goals reinforce student writing awareness, distinguishing social and academic language, glorifying students of their multicultural/language capabilities and using modern technology for their writing development. The curriculum executes the treatment of English and ASL as separate, distinct and unique languages during the teaching and learning process. Few of the many predictable and observable findings that were confirmed were habitual writing errors in common specific misspelled words, ASL and English syntax order, spacing and size of letters, plurals/singulars, paragraph writing and capitalization. Social dialogue draws attention onto their academic writing skills, demanding writing consciousness and defining linguistic cognizance in an ASL and English context. Do Deaf students understand the appropriateness and value behind the distinction of academic and social language? Do their multicultural/lingual knowledge distort target language acquisition? The thematic writing assignments include daily thought provoking journals known as Daily Reflections, however segmented into a schematic core known as Texting Thursdays and Facebook Fridays to strengthen their formal English writing conventions. The project creatively incorporates technology, the distinction of social and academic language, bilingualism of ASL and English and the variations of writing tasks through handwriting, typing and texting.