Teacher: Can You See What I’m Saying? A Research Experience with Deaf Learners

Abstract

This paper reports a study carried out with eleven deaf volunteers who belonged to different academic programs at a Colombian public university but did not receive English instruction as part of their professional training. The main goal of the research study was to identify the effect of using Internet resources as support for the design and development of a blended English course for deaf university students. The data were collected by means of surveys, artifacts, logs and a recorded interview to understand what worked well for deaf students and what barriers could interfere with their English learning. The study revealed some insights into the learning process of deaf students and their preference for collaborative learning and tasks linked to visual media.

Keywords

• Blended learning
• deaf learners
• English as a foreign language
• English learning
• Internet resources