Overview

One of the foremost authorities on the use of sign language with hearing children provides a guide for teachers and parents who want to introduce signing in hearing children's language development. Marilyn Daniels provides a complete explanation for its use, a short history of sign language and its primary role within the Deaf community, an identification of the steps to reading success delineated with suggestions for incorporating sign language, and finally the results of studies and reactions of children, teachers, and parents. She shows how sign language can be used to improve hearing children's English vocabulary, reading ability, spelling proficiency, self-esteem, and comfort with expressing emotions. Signing also facilitates communication, aids teachers with classroom management, and has been shown to promote a more comfortable learning environment while initiating an interest and enthusiasm for learning on the part of students. Sign language is shown to be an effective agent to accelerate literacy in hearing children from babyhood through sixth grade. A comprehensive exploration of the physiological rationale for the educational advantage sign carries is presented. Overlapping integrated brain activities are incited by movement, vision, meaning, memory, play and the hand itself when sign language is used. Recent findings clearly indicate this bilingual approach with hearing children activates brain growth and development.

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Dancing With Words not only constitutes an important addition to this existing literature, but also opens the door for very different kinds of discussions about sign language....Highly recommended for researchers, faculty, practitioners, and professionals. - Choice Daniels, in current descriptiveness, is a user-friendly writer, down-to-earth. Her ideas are accessible with ease, but also stirring in thought and conceptualization for teachers and parents. - Child & Adolescent Services

From an entirely original perspective, based on ten years of solid research, Daniels presents an exciting adventure into the dynamics of language acquisition. Teaching sign language to hearing students brings into focus the visual and spatial components of communication and conceptual thinking, creating at the same time a spontaneity of fun in learning. Teachers who have introduced even minimal skills in ASL into their classrooms are reluctant to return to former methods of teaching. There is an enchantment, too, in Daniels' descriptions of classroom situations where various forms of comprehension are brought into play. One wants to observe the richness added to these classes where young mental activity is fermenting, acuity sharpened, self-confidence abloom, unself-conscious emotional expression evident--an inherent element of the language of ASL. -Hannah Merker author of Listening: Ways of Hearing in a Silent World

<p>Dancing With Words not only constitutes an important addition to this existing literature, but also opens the door for very different kinds of discussions about sign language....Highly recommended for researchers, faculty, practitioners, and professionals. - <p>Choice

Dancing With Words not only constitutes an important addition to this existing literature, but also opens the door for very different kinds of discussions about sign language....Highly recommended for researchers, faculty, practitioners, and professionals. - Choice

Author Information

MARILYN DANIELS is Associate Professor of Speech Communication at The Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of Benedictine Roots in the Development of Deaf Education: Listening with the Heart (Bergin & Garvey, 1997) and numerous articles in communication education journals.

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