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Teaching L2/Ln sign language fingerspelling

Leah C. Geer

Introduction

Fingerspelling is a process used in some sign languages to represent written words manually (Padden & LeMaster, 1985, Wilcox, 1992). In American Sign Language (ASL), French Sign Language (LSF), and Mexican Sign Language (LSM), among others, one-handed manual letters represent the characters in the English, French, and Spanish alphabets, respectively. Other languages, like British Sign Language (BSL) and Turkish Sign Language (TİD) use two-handed systems.

Fingerspelling is most commonly used to represent words of the ambient language for which there is no direct lexical translation. Names, nouns, and adjectives account for 77% of fingerspelled tokens in Padden and Gunsauls (2003). Fingerspelling can also be used to show emphasis (y-e-s-y-e-s) or to show semantic nuance; spelling p-r-o-b-l-e-m to talk about a math problem, as opposed to an interpersonal problem is one example (Padden & LeMaster, 1985; Keane, 2014). Signed and spoken languages are in persistent contact and fingerspelling is one way to borrow words from spoken languages (Sutton-Spence, 1994; Adam, 2012) in order to extend the vocabulary of sign languages. Some deaf signers reject fingerspelling as part of their language because they feel it embodies the oppression of sign languages by spoken languages; others consider someone who fingerspells often to have native proficiency (Padden, 1991; Lucas & Valli, 1992; Sutton-Spence, 1994). Thus, the sociolinguistic situation of fingerspelling is an interesting and complex one.

The focus of this chapter is on teaching fingerspelling because it occurs frequently in some sign languages, ASL in particular. Fingerspelling may be non-native, in which case it is produced more slowly and with letters closer to their citation form. It may also become lexicalized, or nativized, through extensive phonological restructuring (Battison, 1978; Brentari & Padden, 2001, Cormier, Schembri, & Tyrone, 2008). Even in lexicalized forms, fingerspelling is structured differently than lexical signs. This could be the sticking point for adult learners who struggle with this aspect of language acquisition more than others (Quinto-Pozos, 2011; Wilcox, 1992).

This chapter provides a description of theoretical issues related to fingerspelling that bear on its instruction. A brief history of fingerspelling instruction is given first. Three currently used fingerspelling curricula are described next. Of these, two are specific to fingerspelling instruction and the other is part of an ASL text. The chapter ends with suggestions for future research projects and ways sign language teacher-scholars can improve fingerspelling teaching methods.

Theoretical perspectives

The perception and production of fingerspelling are one of the most difficult areas in ASL acquisition (Wilcox, 1992; Quinto-Pozos, 2011), and there is little empirical work which examines exactly what is happening cognitively during this process. Deaf people whose primary language is ASL vary in performance in comprehension tasks (Schwarz, 2000) and certified ASL-English interpreters who are otherwise highly skilled in ASL still struggle with fingerspelling comprehension (Patrie & Johnson, 2011). Emmorey et al. (2008) showed that retrieval of fingerspelled words and lexical signs engaged the same cortical regions, but that fingerspelling also activated a premotor region, possibly related to the motor planning and sequencing demands of fingerspelling not required for production of lexical signs. This section addresses some of the reasons learners experience difficulty with fingerspelling comprehension.

Fingerspelling is structured differently than lexical signs, which may impact language processing. Lexical signs consist of simultaneously layered linguistic features ‒ a sign’s handshape and palm orientation are articulated at some location in the signing space with the required movement while spoken languages are primarily sequentially organized (Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Brentari, 2002).

That the basic structure of lexical items is different in spoken and sign languages is relevant for two reasons. First, spoken languages are articulated more quickly than signs, in large part because they use smaller articulators. Despite this, it is possible to convey expressions of roughly equivalent meaning in the same amount of time in English and ASL (Bellugi & Fischer, 1972; Hwang, 2011). This is accomplished by simultaneously layering linguistic information. Second, linguistic structure is related to the sensory system predominantly responsible for language processing. The visual system is better suited to processing information that is layered, like sign languages, while the auditory system is better suited for processing sequentially presented information, like spoken languages (Hirsch & Sherrick, 1961; Green, 1971; Welch & Warren, 1986; Kohlrausch, Püschel, & Alphei, 1992; Chase & Jenner, 1993; Meier, 1993; Brentari, 2002). So, while the structure of lexical signs is well suited to visual processing, the sequential structure of fingerspelling is not. This could explain why fingerspelling comprehension is more difficult (Bregman, 1990).

To combat the difficulty learners experience with fingerspelling comprehension, some instructors have developed curricula specific to this aspect of the language. Many ASL curricula are developed based on anecdotal evidence rather than theory-driven, empirically tested methods of foreign language instruction. This chapter argues that that L2 sign language instruction must commit itself to leaping into empirically tested waters, rather than relying solely on instructor intuition. Of the fingerspelling curricula detailed in this book, not all are based solely on intuition but there is still a crucial part missing. Curricula should be developed through a combination of organic classroom interactions and research. Once developed, training tools should be piloted in the classroom setting. Instructors should seek feedback from their learners and make refinements to the training as needed. Then, the program needs to be assessed experimentally, and finally returned to the classroom.

The pedagogy of fingerspelling

It is necessary to separate fingerspelling pedagogical practices developed for the purpose of teaching deaf children English and those systems developed to teach adults – most of whom are native English speakers – ASL as a second language. The focus of this review is on fingerspelling comprehension, but production will be mentioned as well. This section is divided in two: a subsection about educational practices that involve fingerspelling and some of the empirical work that launched the field of fingerspelling studies and a subsection on why we need to continue our empirical work on fingerspelling, particularly with respect to teaching ASL as a second language.

Fingerspelling as an educational tool

Likely the best-known system of instruction involving fingerspelling is The Rochester Method. Implemented by Zenas Westervelt, Superintendent of the Rochester School for the Deaf (RSD) in 1886, Westervelt thought producing speech and fingerspelling simultaneously would provide deaf children access to English phonetic information, allowing them to more expediently acquire written language (Guillory, 1966; Rosengerg-Naparsteck, 2002). As a result of this system, some of the earliest empirical examinations of fingerspelling were collected at the Rochester School.

Fant (1964), who had no association with RSD, agreed that ASL fingerspelling was a valuable tool for teaching English to deaf children. He also developed instructional materials for adults to acquire ASL, encouraging learners to avoid rigid finger movements and producing fingerspelling in a quick, smooth manner. Fant argued that fingerspelling comprehension begins with recognition of individual letters but also noted that deaf people see groups of letters, rather than individual symbols. This notion of seeing groups of letters is important and will become relevant for the discussion of currently used pedagogical practices.

Falberg (1963) encouraged ASL learners to begin with fingerspelling. Like Fant (1964), he stressed that comprehension should precede production. Falberg, however, believed that deaf people are only able to understand fingerspelling when each letter is produced clearly. A number of later experimental studies have disproved this notion (Reich & Bick, 1977; Hanson, 1981; Akamatsu, 1985; Schwarz, 2000, Geer & Keane, 2014, 2018; Geer, 2016). Guillory (1966) noted that while adult learners can learn to produce fingerspelling by studying flashcards, this will not help them to learn to perceive words as wholes. This notion of seeing the whole word seems to relate to seeing groups of letters, as Fant (1964) explained.

Reich and Bick (1977) collected segments of up to 100 contiguously produced fingerspelling utterances from teachers at The Rochester School. Researchers coded data for how closely each letter matched the citation form according to a printed chart of the manual alphabet. They found that only 20% of the fingerspelled letters matched the chart. They also noted that final letters are held longer, a finding which has been replicated (Keane, 2014). More recent and ongoing corpus work on Auslan and NZSL (Johnston, 2012), ASL (Hochgesang, 2018), and other languages should (re)evaluate the extent to which Reich and Bick’s (1977) findings hold up across languages. Table 13.1 presents the websites for various corpus/Sign Bank projects.

Reich and Bick’s (1977) findings suggest that skilled signers’ comprehension is not dependent on seeing each fingerspelled letter clearly articulated. They see groups of letters (Fant, 1964), or even whole words (Guillory, 1966; Hanson, 1981). In addition, Schwarz (2000) showed that even when a hold segment (held fingerspelling posture) is obscured, deaf adults are still sometimes able to understand the word. When they do not, they can make educated guesses about the missed letter consistent with the shape of the obscured letter (e.g., the letter E (short) is more likely to be mistaken for M (short), rather than tall letters L or B; see Figure 13.1). This suggests an ability to extract information from the transitions surrounding the obscured letter. Forty years of research has shown that fingerspelled letter production is highly variable yet, for the most part, this has yet to be incorporated into fingerspelling curricula. This will be addressed further in a below section.

Figure 13.1Examples of tall, up letters (-b- and -l-) and short, fist letters (-m- and -e-)

Why empirically tested fingerspelling curricula are necessary

In an effort to draw attention to the fact that few ASL instructional materials are evaluated for their efficacy, Thoryk (2010) assessed one fingerspelling curriculum to determine if it actually helps learners improve their fingerspelling comprehension. Her article does not specify which curriculum she examined, but the method by which she explored its effectiveness is summarized below. This assessment is used to frame the discussion of currently used fingerspelling curricula and argue for more empirically tested pedagogical materials.

The supplementary fingerspelling program that Thoryk (2010) examined was developed by several individuals based on their experience in teaching at a community college. This curriculum consisted of 16 lessons on sundry topics. Preparation for pre- and post-tests is also included in the curriculum. Learners from a university with a large main campus and several smaller regional campuses participated in this study. Most of the teachers were deaf and holders of at least BA-level degrees. Learners were divided into classes that received the supplementary fingerspelling instruction or classes that did not. Results revealed that the supplementary curriculum was not effective in improving fingerspelling comprehension. Some learners in the treatment group actually performed worse on the post-test than on the pre-test (Thoryk, 2010). Finally, recognizing that fingerspelling is highly variable, learners lamented the inclusion of only one signer in the curriculum videos.

Thoryk’s (2010) article uncovers a deep need for testing pedagogical materials developed for fingerspelling specifically, but also language-teaching generally. While research on sign language teaching is relatively new, the rich literature on spoken language teaching can be exploited. Some aspects of sign language teaching may be modality-dependent, but much is not. Engaging in academic conversations in the second-language acquisition and teaching literature may afford improvements to sign language teaching practices and materials. This work, in turn, may prove useful in helping spoken L2 teachers answer questions that have long-since plagued them, by offering insights from teaching a language in a different modality.

Pedagogical practices

Teaching fingerspelling, particularly as its own course, is a budding subfield, though there is little empirical work which examines the efficacy of various teaching approaches and curricula. Fingerspelling for L2 adult learners serves a slightly different purpose than it does for skilled signers. New signers may fingerspell words for which they lack vocabulary or fingerspell to request new vocabulary. Thus, it is important to have an effective curriculum. This section addresses how fingerspelling is taught in the widely used Signing Naturally curriculum (Smith, Lentz, & Mikos, 2008) as well as two fingerspelling-specific curricula in fairly wide use. The first (Keast, 2017) has a basic and advanced version; the second is Fingerspelling Word Recognition through Rapid Serial Visual Presentation by Patrie and Johnson (2011).

Signing Naturally curriculum

The Signing Naturally curriculum is one of the most widely used for ASL teaching in the US and Canada. The revised and expanded Units 1–6 include several lessons on fingerspelling spread out in units 1–5 (Smith, Lentz, & Mikos, 2008). These lessons are divided into more general information and “reading tips” (Unit 1: Lesson 3), “fist letters” (-a-, -o-, -s-) (1:3), “up letters” (-l-, -r-, -w-) (2:5), “moving letter -z-” (3:4), “down letters” (-p-, -q-, -y-) (3:11), “moving letter -j-” (4:6), and “-g- & -h-” (5:3).

Smith, Lentz, and Mikos (2008) begin with a general tip on fingerspelling production; learners should work on a smooth fingerspelling flow devoid of “bouncing” or “stamping” (p. 8). Their reading tips encourage learners to

(1)recognize the shape and movement of letters and letter combinations (consistent with some of the earlier fingerspelling instructions (Fant, 1964; Guillory, 1966) and with the sensory system bearing the lion’s share of the processing load),

(2)catch the first and last letters of fingerspelled words, and

(3)ask for repetition when needed.

The first is the most controversial of these tips, with respect to other fingerspelling curricula and empirical work on L2 learners’ fingerspelling comprehension and methods to improve their comprehension.

The concept of “shape” in fingerspelling is not new. Akamatsu (1985) coined the term “movement envelope” to refer to the shape of the hand as it moves in the air when fingerspelled words are produced. In her work on child acquisition, Akamatsu (1985) noted that, while young children lack the dexterity to form individual letters, they are able to mimic the gestalt consistent with adult target forms. Akamatsu’s famous example is of the store named Safeway and may provide some insight as to why Smith, Lentz, and Mikos (2008) decided to split the manual alphabet into the groups indicated above. The schematic depiction of this fingerspelled form (Figure 13.2) shows two short (or fist) letters (-s-, -a-), a tall (or up) letter (-f-) followed by a short (-e-) then tall letter (-w-), followed by a short letter (-a-), and ending with a down letter (-y-).

Figure 13.2Schematic representation of fs-safeway

Source: recreated from Akamatsu (1985).

Keast (2017) also discusses the concept of “shape” as it pertains to fingerspelled words. Experimental work on fingerspelling lends credence to this analysis. Stone, Bosworth, and Petitto (2016; 2017) found that deaf adults prefer lexicalized fingerspelling that retains the same schematic shape as more carefully fingerspelled forms. Patrie and Johnson (2011) reject the notion of shape, however, arguing instead that there can be no shape to fingerspelling because the form cannot be “reinspected like a printed word” so the “shape” cannot be exploited to help read the word (p. 30). There is compelling evidence for a shape analysis even if the form cannot be reinspected; this “shape” seems to be significant in a number of ways.

From L1 acquisition research, Amakatsu (1985) shows that children are sensitive to these fingerspelling gestalts; before they have the dexterity to produce adult forms, children produce forms with a similar contour. Data from second-language learners shows that fingerspelled words with more distinct “shape,” intensified by letters with non-default orientation, like ASL letters -g- and -h- which face inward and -p-and -q- which face down and inward, as opposed to default orientation in which the palm faces outward, are more difficult to comprehend (Geer & Keane, 2014, 2018), even with explicit phonetic training in fingerspelling (Geer & Keane, 2018). It may be possible to ameliorate this challenge with targeted training on those items with more distinct transitions, which is a type of training that has been found to be successful for L2 learners of a second spoken language (Giannakopoulou, Uther, & Ylinen, 2013).

After the general tips, Smith, Lentz, and Mikos (2008) give a number of more specific instructions for fingerspelling production, some of which are detailed in Table 13.2. As this shows, fingerspelling is presented highly prescriptively but with some acceptable variation.

Table 13.2 Description of how certain letters of the ASL manual alphabet should be produced

Category

Letter

Instructions

Fist letters

-e-

“At least two fingers must sit on the thumb” (p. 11).

Up letters

-r-

The thumb may, or may not make contact with the ring finger depending on the letter which precedes or follows the -r-.

-x-

The default orientation of the palm is used when -x- appears word-initially, but has a different orientation when it appears word-medially or word-finally.

Moving letter -z-

-z-

The location of the letter -z- influences the location of fingerspelling for the rest of the letters in the word.

Down letters

-y-

Downward orientation specified (but practice examples are only word-medial and word-final).

-p-

One variant specific to -p- which precedes the letters -l- and -r- and one variant for other contexts.

Moving letter -j-

-j-

Specific rules about how -j- impacts production of the subsequent vowel; each is listed individually but the result in each case is a change in orientation.

-g- & -h-

-g- & -h-

Hand position varies but text does not specify how.

Source: adapted from Smith et al. (2008).

These tips are simultaneously overly prescriptive and non-descript. For example, -e- is highly susceptible to influence from surrounding letters (Keane, Brentari, & Riggle, 2013) but described as having a single acceptable form. The (a) variant in Figure 13.3a is considered canonical and is the variant presented in the Signing Naturally text. But native and near-native signers frequently produce the other forms as well (Figure 13.3a‒d). Geer (2016) and Geer and Keane (2018) show that learners benefit from explanations like the various -e- forms and when one or another can be expected. Despite the rigidity in -e- production, Smith, Lentz, and Mikos (2008) do provide a simplified explanation for variation in -r-, -x-, and -p-. What seems to be missing here is a corpus-based explanation of how they arrived at their rules or a list of references to these explanations that learners can look up if they so desire. Linking language instruction to corpora has been suggested for other sign languages as well (Cresdee & Johnston, 2014; Leeson, 2008).

Figure 13.3Various productions of -e-

The fingerspelling instructions given in Signing Naturally (Smith Lentz, & Mikos, 2008) are part of a larger curriculum; the focus is on developing competency in ASL as a whole. Sometimes instructors supplement Signing Naturally, or other ASL curricula, with a curriculum for a specific skill within ASL. Two such fingerspelling-specific curricula are discussed next.

The ASL Inside fingerspelling curricula

The ASL Inside fingerspelling curricula (Keast, 2017) have been adopted by around 40 US institutions in their ASL and Deaf Studies programs. The basic curriculum is designed for learners in ASL 1 or 2 and includes 13 lessons. The advanced curriculum includes 19 lessons. The following discussion focuses on the basic curriculum.

The first lesson begins with “Rules and Concepts” for fingerspelling. Three rules Keast (2017: 5, and https://youtu.be/HCTMNOOTMxg) shares are:

(1)Avoid practicing fingerspelling by only spelling the alphabet in alphabetical order;

(2)If you experience pain while you practice fingerspelling, you’re doing something wrong;

(3)Fast fingerspelling is not (necessarily) an indication of good fingerspelling. Focus on fingerspelling clearly.

These seem to be sensible rules but learners need explication of why these rules should be observed. It should not suffice for curricula to give rules based only on intuition (Thoryk, 2010). Experimental studies that support a particular pedagogical practice or a particular rule for fingerspelling are necessary.

For example, fingerspellers should follow the first rule because certain letters and letter-combinations are produced more frequently than others (Norvig, 2017); only practicing letters in alphabetical order does not allow learners to develop a practical ability to transition from one handshape to the next. In the second rule, in cases where learners experience pain while fingerspelling, their technique may be wrong, and it would be instructive to examine articulatory issues like learners raising their arm too high in the signing space, moving their arm too much, or over rotating. The third rule states that learners should focus on clear fingerspelling, but the definition of “clear” varies by context. If a signer spells the same word several times in a discourse, it tends to get faster with each successive use (Thumann, 2012) and if one is presenting or a large audience, fingerspelling would likely be slower since it has to be comprehensible from greater distances (Quinto-Pozos, Mellman, & DeVries, 2010). This additional information is likely to be very helpful to learners.

There is one other aspect of the basic curriculum to discuss, and this involves the notion of the “shape” in fingerspelled words. In the learner instructional video, Keast (2017) explains that lexicalized fingerspelling takes on its own shape and that some letters are omitted. Learners must know how to make sense of the word, despite this. Again, further explanation would be helpful for learners. It is not always the case that letters are omitted; instead, they may undergo phonological restructuring such that they appear to be deleted. In reality, all (or most) of the letters are there but they are coarticulated extensively (Battison, 1978).

As an example, consider recreations of Keast’s productions of the words STYLE (Figure 13.4), JOB (Figure 13.5), and FIX (Figure 13.6).1 These examples show the tendency for the parts of the fingerspelled utterance with the biggest movements to be retained. If letters are deleted, it is because they are not as visually salient and/or do not maximize changes in the openness or closedness of the hand (Brentari, 1998). These patterns hold true in longer words which may be lexicalized within the confines of a particular discourse or presentation (Brentari, 1998) and in longer words with frequently occurring letter combinations (Geer, 2016).

Figure 13.4Lexicalized production of fs-STYLE

Source: recreated from Keast (2017).

Figure 13.5Lexicalized production of fs-JOB

Source: recreated from Keast (2017).

Figure 13.6Lexicalized production of fs-FIX

Source: recreated from Keast (2017).

What each of these examples have in common is that the length of the letter string in English is not the same as the fingerspelled letter string in ASL. This is challenging for learners, particularly when they are taught, and usually practice, letters in isolation. It becomes important early in ASL-learning to understand that the string length in English does not always align with the string length in ASL. The reasons string length differs should be explained explicitly to learners (Geer, 2016; Geer & Keane, 2018). Instead of only modeling fs-STYLE, also note that -t- is deleted because the letter immediately preceding is also fully closed, so -t- deletion allows for a maximal aperture change from -s- to -y- (Brentari, 1998) and the extension of the pinky from -y- perseverates into the production of the letter -l-, resulting in an ILY handshape (Thumann, 2012; Geer, 2016). Clarify for learners that the -o- and -i- in fs-JOB and fs-FIX, respectively, are made in transition from preceding and following letters, and not deleted.

Participants in the author’s dissertation study described the process in which they learned fingerspelling. They said the explicit phonetic training was helpful. Their ASL teachers had always told them to sound words out but they never felt they had the tools to do that because fingerspelled letters are often produced differently than their canonical form (recall Reich & Bick, 1977) and indeed can vary signer to signer (Keane, et al., 2013; Keane, 2014; Geer, 2016). They were appreciative of the instruction regarding the types of variation in letter formation they might encounter and why letter formation may vary (Geer, 2016; Geer & Keane, 2018). This experiment debriefing session shows that teacher-scholars need to assess the effectiveness of pedagogical tools. A non-trivial part of that process involves engaging with learners to find out what they find helpful and how they learn best.

Fingerspelled Word Recognition Through Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

The Fingerspelled Word Recognition Through Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (Patrie & Johnson, 2011) is a three-part, more advanced curriculum used in some Interpreter Preparation Programs. It includes (1) an 11-chapter text, (2) a CD-ROM, and (3) a DVD with ASL monologues with which learners can apply their new fingerspelling receptive skills.

RSVP trains learners to process serial information presented rapidly by showing Roman letters. The authors’ justification for this is twofold: (a) learners are already skilled in reading English print, and (b) using English print will reduce the anxiety learners might experience with fingerspelled letters. Patrie and Johnson argue that developing this skill will transfer to fingerspelling comprehension with sufficient practice, but this claim is not compellingly supported. The letter span of English words is not always the same as their fingerspelled counterparts (recall the “style” example above) and the task of arriving at lexical meaning from rapidly presented, individual Roman letters, appears to be fundamentally different than the task of fingerspelling comprehension.

The disparity between English letter-string and fingerspelled letter-string can apply to longer, non-lexicalized, words as well. For example, the letter bigram u-r is very often produced as a single segment, as is the trigram g-h-t (Geer, 2016; Geer & Keane, 2018). Another issue with the RSVP approach, and related to letter-string, is the fact that many words involve extensive coarticulation. If learners are practicing only with printed Roman letters, they will not gain experience with the ways in which fingerspelled letters can blend together or be influenced by one another. This causes disruptions in word comprehension. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Patrie and Johnson (2011) have not provided experimental data which demonstrate that reception of rapidly presented Roman letters transfers to fingerspelling comprehension.

There are two other aspects of the RSVP curriculum to address here. These are the topics of effective practice and direct lexical access.

Effective practice: Citing researchers who focus on the types of practice that lead to optimal improvements (Ericsson, 2001; 2003), Patrie and Johnson (2011) contend that their approach RSVP approach with printed Roman letters is a form of “effective, deliberate” practice (p. 33). This seems to misrepresent the literature they use to support their claim.

Patrie and Johnson (2011) cite Fitts and Posner’s (1967) model of skill acquisition. This model states that there are three phases of learning any task. A cognitive phase in which a learner has to think carefully about the skill figuring out exactly how to carry it out, an associative phase in which the movement is accurate, with few errors, and fairly consistent, and an autonomous phase in which the movement is, as the name suggests, more automatic and highly regular from trial to trial (Fitts & Posner, 1967). However, this model primarily refers to the production of motor skills. Fingerspelling comprehension is a language-processing task. Works by Ericsson and colleagues (Ericsson, Kramp, & Tesch-Römer, 1993; Ericsson, 2001) describe effective, deliberate practice as unenjoyable and not inherently motivating. This likely does hold true for developing the skill of fingerspelling comprehension, though this is an empirical question, but reading these works suggests that an effective and deliberate practice for fingerspelling would need to involve actual fingerspelling comprehension and not reading of Roman letters. What is an effective and deliberate practice could take the form of learning to extract information from transition segments (Schwarz, 2000), attending to phonetic variation in letter production, and understanding particular letter combinations (Geer, 2016; Geer & Keane, 2018).

If Patrie and Johnson (2011) were adamant about using printed Roman letters, they would need to demonstrate that type of practice positively transfers to fingerspelling comprehension. A cursory review of classic skill transfer literature suggests this is unlikely. Early studies of motor skill transfer show that the dimensions of the skill to which you wish to transfer the originally learned skill must be similar (McCracken & Stelmach, 1977; Newell & Shapiro, 1976) and even still, skill transfer is not a guarantee (Adams, 1987). It does not appear that rapid serial visual presentation of Roman letters is sufficiently similar to rapid (mostly) serial visual presentation of fingerspelled letters.

Direct Lexical Access: Patrie and Johnson (2011) discuss Direct Lexical Access at length. Essentially, this refers to how language users come to associate meaning with a particular form. The process they describe presumes that skilled deaf signers are (rapidly) translating each fingerspelled letter to print then constructing the meaning of the word as a whole in their head. The basis of their curriculum is to teach learners to reduce the amount of time this translation task takes. The curriculum is not informed by how skilled signers learn to fingerspell, however. In fact, research strongly suggests this is not the task signers are engaging in when they read fingerspelling. If they were, Hansen (1981) would not have found that signers can comprehend fingerspelled words but not know how to spell them back, Akamatsu (1985) would not have found that children mimic the fingerspelling gestalts even before they have the dexterity to form letters individually (and deaf adults can understand these forms), and Schwarz (2000) would not have found that deaf signers can comprehend fingerspelling even when one letter posture is obscured or at least make an educated guess about what the word might have been. They state that “[p]‌racticing rapid serial processing with printed letters rather than watching videos of fingerspelled signs is beneficial” (Patrie & Johnson, 2011: 143) but they have not provided a compelling argument for why this should be the case.

Future trends

There has been very little experimental research on fingerspelling and in particular, experimental work on pedagogical methods for fingerspelling instruction, yet there is demonstrable need for this type of work. There are a number of ways to continue the experimental approaches discussed in this chapter. Several avenues for future research are detailed below, separated into sections on (1) future research studies and (2) future pedagogical tools.

Future research studies

Improving comprehension feedback

In their studies of cue re-weighting in Finnish and Greek learners of English, Ylinen et al. (2010) and Giannakopoulou, Uther, and Ylinen (2013) included personalized feedback in their training programs. When trials were answered correctly, participants were told their answer was right and they advanced to the next trial. On trials for which incorrect responses were provided, participants received feedback indicating this and then were allowed to repeat the trial. The feedback in the training assessed in Geer (2016) and Geer and Keane (2018) was not personalized. Future iterations of this project should personalize the feedback in the same way as the studies of Ylinen and colleagues (Ylinen et al., 2010; Giannakopoulou, Uther, and Ylinen 2013).

Targeted cue re-weighting comprehension training

In addition to changes in how feedback is delivered, the type of stimuli to which participants are exposed should be varied. Giannakopoulou, Uther, and Ylinen (2013) demonstrated that training that includes both natural and modified stimuli are more effective than natural-only stimuli. In the case of Giannakopoulou, Uther, and Ylinen the modified stimuli were those with equal vowel length, since that was the cue Greek speakers had weighted incorrectly. Geer (2016) and Geer and Keane (2018) showed that even after explicit phonetic training, learners struggle significantly more with fingerspelling comprehension when presented only with transition segments. The Giannakopoulou, Uther, and Ylinen (2013) work suggests that if learners trained more with this type of modified stimuli, in addition to natural stimuli, they would be better able to adjust their attention to information in the transition segments, which we know skilled signers make use of (Schwarz, 2000).

Unpacking issues with palm orientation

Future studies should continue to unpack the effect of palm orientation. Schwarz (2000) found an effect of the position of the masked hold, meaning that an obscured posture at the beginning of the word was more detrimental to comprehension than a masked posture later in the word. It may also be the case that the position of the letter with non-default orientation affects learner performance. For example, if a word begins with -p-, but learners perceive it as -k-, they will generate the wrong list of possible words, whereas words with -p- word-internally may be more likely to be generated in the list of possibilities learners might consider. The studies reported here did not use a word-list balanced for palm orientation, and within items with non-default orientation, balanced for position in the word (beginning, middle, or end). This is certainly something to explore in the future not only with ASL learners, but with skilled signers as well.

Understanding the role of mouthing and context

Geer and Keane (2014; 2018) and Geer (2016) tested ASL learners’ fingerspelling comprehension on words in isolation, produced by a signer who did not mouth the words. The aim of these studies was to understand the aspects of the fingerspelling signal itself, which impact comprehension. Because fingerspelling does not occur like this, it would be instructive to examine how comprehension is impacted by the addition of mouthing, context, and then mouthing and context together.

Fingerspelling production

Previous research has shown that language perception often precedes production (Flege, 1995; Kuhl, 2000; Patrie and Johnson, 2011). One way to use the training program developed in Geer (2016) and Geer and Keane (2018) is to conduct a study in which participants are specifically asked to interact with the training. For example, all participants would complete the explicit training; half will be given the same instructions used in previous experiments and half will be asked to sign along with the training.

A production pre- and post-test, in addition to the comprehension test, will assess the extent to which active participation in the training is helpful for perception and production. Impressionistically, when this method was employed with the author’s learners in their third and fourth semester of ASL, both production and perception improved. These students completed a review of all of their video projects at the end of the term. Several noted improvements in the fluidity of their fingerspelling production as the semester progressed, though not explicitly prompted to comment on this feature of their ASL use in particular. A controlled experiment is needed to assess this further.

Another way to gather information about how to teach fingerspelling production is to first conduct a thorough analysis of differences between skilled fingerspellers and learners. This would include an analysis of temporal properties (Quinto-Pozos, Mellman, & DeVries, 2010; Keane, 2014), coarticulatory tendencies (Geer, 2016; Thumann, 2012; Keane, 2014, Geer, 2016), as well as orientation of the palm and location in the signing space. As an anonymous reviewer noted, the lack of empirical analysis of native signers’ use of fingerspelling inhibits attempts to develop research-driven targets for L2 learners.

Future pedagogical practices

As we work toward empirically based materials for fingerspelling instruction, we must also bear in mind the goal of improving fingerspelling comprehension (and production). The goal is to improve ASL proficiency generally, which requires that fingerspelling needs to be integrated with ASL instruction (a comment some of the participants in Thoryk’s 2010 study shared as well).

In a translation lesson with the author’s learners, several fingerspelling activities were performed. There are several tokens of the fingerspelled word plastic, and each was produced slightly differently. The first activity, shown in Figure 13.7, involved production of each of the letters realized as held postures, except for -s-, which was made in transition from the -a- to the -t -. Learners had no trouble discerning the first token. However, they have had difficulty in subsequent activities when fingerspelling was produced more quickly and involved more extensive coarticulation. By the fourth activity (Figure 13.8), only five fingerspelled letter postures are realized.

Figure 13.7First production of fs-plastic extracted from a narrative made for ASL 4 students

Figure 13.8Production of fs-plastic extracted from a narrative made for ASL 4 students

In a debriefing session after the activity, learners came to understand that words can and tend to be reduced with successive uses (Thumann, 2012). When this activity was repeated later in the semester with different videos, learners reported feeling better prepared to make sense of fingerspelling with repeated uses. This suggests that, like explicit phonetic instruction, learners benefit from explicit details regarding ways in which fingerspelled words as a whole might vary within a particular discourse or monologue. A next step, then, would be to design training materials where this type of integrated fingerspelling is addressed, refine the program based on learner feedback, then assess the training experimentally.

There are many unanswered questions about how best to approach the teaching of fingerspelling. There is a particular need to address these questions because learners struggle with this area of language acquisition more than others. The struggle persists even when a high degree of proficiency is attained in other areas of the language (Patrie & Johnson, 2011). These suggested future studies explore explicit training practices and how they may be useful in teaching fingerspelling. Teacher-scholars who design fingerspelling curricula must examine the efficacy of their programs in an experimental setting to better understand what works and what does not, and share with the second-language teaching literature going forward.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Richard Meier, David Quinto-Pozos, Jonathan Keane, Joshua Williams, and fingerspelling panel presenters and discussants at LSA 2017, to Cheyenne Matthews-Hoffman for recreating Figure 13.2 from Akamatsu (1985), and three anonymous reviewers for incredibly insightful comments and reference suggestions. Errors that remain are my own.

Note

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