Classroom Interpreting

EIPA Written Test and Knowledge Standards

Language Development

Because interaction is essential for language development, the interpreter plays a vital role to a student who is deaf or hard of hearing. Students learn language by interacting with people around them.  By exposing the student to fluent use of the language, the interpreter facilitates the student’s ability to learn the language.

An experienced interpreter is aware of his or her influence on the development of a deaf or hard of hearing student’s language. He or she reviews the student’s IEP with a professional in order to become familiar with the student’s current level of functioning. The interpreter takes this knowledge into consideration and makes modifications to his or her interpreting approach and the classroom environment if necessary.

Core Standards

In order to provide the best possible service to a student who is deaf or hard of hearing, an interpreter must also be aware of the following core standards. These standards were used by EIPA Diagnostic Center experts to develop the EIPA Written test questions regarding language development.

Language Skills

  • The interpreter needs to know the student’s language skills both expressively and receptively, the student’s cognitive potential, and the educational goals as outlined in the student’s IEP.
  • Language evaluation should be conducted by a professional who has training specific to language and students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
  • Language stimulates cognitive development. Language sophistication influences cognitive abilities. The ability to interact with those around you, using language, helps students develop cognitive skills.
  • Language development in ASL parallels the development of spoken languages.
  • A student’s language level, his world knowledge, and vocabulary skills can impact his ability to learn new concepts.
  • Students who are deaf or hard of hearing may have language skills that are delayed compared with their hearing peers.  However, this is not because they have problems learning language.  Rather it is because they have problems accessing language in their environment. It is an environmental problem and not a learning problem.
  • The ability to have a conversation about daily events doesn’t mean that a student can understand academic language used in the classroom. Conversations generally have more turn taking about topics that reflect a shared experience. They also provide more opportunities for repair of misunderstandings.  Academic language is generally more complex in terms of vocabulary and syntax. It provides students with fewer contexts to understand the topic. It has less turn taking with longer monologues.
  • Deaf and hard of hearing students are often in the process of learning language in school while they are learning new concepts. Hearing students are using their language to learn new concepts. This means that an interpreter may need to include an explanation of a concept in the interpretation in order to facilitate learning.
  • It is different using language to communicate concepts that are easy, or used often, compared with using language to communicate concepts that are new, abstract, or difficult.
  • When young students make language errors, it is often difficult for them to fix their errors and they simply repeat the error. Adults often model the correct language without expecting an immediate change from the student.
  • All students and adults gesture. Gesture can be very communicative and useful. However, gesturing is not linguistic.

Development

  • Students begin to produce their first words at about 1 year of age.
  • Students begin to combine two words or signs into a sentence at about age 2 years.
  • Students begin to produce complex language at about 3 years of age.
  • By 3 to 4 years of age, hearing students are able to use English morphology correctly most of the time. By 3 to 4 years of age, deaf students learning ASL from their deaf families are able to use verb agreement correctly much of the time.
  • During the early elementary years, students are still learning to use language.
  • During the early stages of language development, students talk about what is here and now. Decontextualized language refers to people and events that are not in the here and now. The ability to talk about past events is one of the earliest forms of decontextualized language. 
  • Students acquire language early, but metalinguistic development is a later development.
  • Young students use prosody in languages to help determine how to segment language at the word and sentence level. Prosody also communicates a great deal of information about the speaker’s intention, which may particularly benefit students in the process of learning language.
  • The language demands in textbooks increase significantly around third grade. The language becomes more complex in terms of syntax and vocabulary. There is more text and fewer pictures to help interpret the text.  Students who were able to read first and second grade textbooks may experience more difficulty at this level.
  • The development of classifiers occurs over a long period of time and students still make numerous errors until around 8 or 9 years of age.
  • As students develop, they can participate in longer and longer conversations. Their vocabulary also is much larger.

Learning

  • Students make mistakes in pronouncing words and producing signs when they are beginning to learn. All students will continue to make mistakes during language learning.  This is a natural part of learning.
  • Students learn best when a teacher understands what they know and what they don’t know.
  • Deaf and hard of hearing students who have ASL as their first language typically learn English from reading.
  • Hearing students do not need to be taught language except in special circumstances.  However, deaf and hard of hearing students may need specific and explicit instruction in learning English.
  • Students learn what words mean over time through multiple exposures.  Typically, hearing students may use words incorrectly while they are in the process of learning.  Students do not learn words by learning a definition.
  • Learning sign language will not interfere with a student’s ability to learn speech.
  • Students do not learn language by learning the language rule and then learning how to use it. They become aware of the rule long after they have mastered the rule, often by explicit metalinguistic teaching. Schools teach students metalinguistic awareness of English. Deaf and hard of hearing students rarely have the opportunity to gain metalinguistic knowledge of sign language.

Interaction

  • Interaction is essential for language development. Interacting with other students is also critical for language development. Students do not correct each other like adults do when talking to students which means that students will be less inhibited in their use of language when adults are not around.
  • Interacting with other students is critical for language development. The pragmatics of interacting with your peers is different than the pragmatics of interacting with adults. Students do not correct each other like adults do when talking with students. Having an adult present during peer to peer interactions may alter the interaction.
  • Our cultural background affects our language, especially in terms of the rules of interaction, how much we may talk with other students and adults, and what we believe is the role of communication in our daily lives.

Environment/Circumstance

  • The early detection of hearing loss is critical because it allows deaf and hard of hearing students to develop language that is more age appropriate when compared with their hearing peers.
  • The majority of deaf and hard of hearing students are born to hearing families who may not provide them access to a fluent language early in development.
  • Cochlear implants are medical devices that are intended to improve a student’s hearing.  Interpreting for a student with a cochlear implant may mean that the student is receiving some of the teacher’s spoken message as well as the interpreted message.
  • Students who had a hearing loss before learning language are different from students who learned speech and language and then experienced a hearing loss.
  • When deaf and hard of hearing students are delayed in language development, it is typically because their environment has not provided them sufficient access to language. It is not because something is wrong with the student.
  • A student’s language use at home and the language use at school may differ. This may affect the student’s classroom performance and his ability to see connections between home and school.
  • When a student does not have age-appropriate pragmatic skills, his peers may view him as socially awkward.

Sign Systems

  • Sign systems designed to represent English were developed by educators and are not naturally developed languages. The adult Deaf community generally does not use them.
  • Educators who use sign systems believe that exposure to visual English will facilitate English development, although this has not been proven to be the result for all deaf or hard of hearing students. They also believe that English signing is easier for hearing people to learn.
  • Languages are shared symbol systems. When interpreters invent signs they makes the student’s linguistic system unique from that of other peers, interpreters, and deaf adults.  In addition, this may offend and alienate the deaf community.
  • Iconicity in sign language does not make learning signs easier.