对聋人阅读障碍的最新解释

    This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
    这里是美国之音慢速英语健康报道。

    Deaf people may have no trouble communicating English words through American Sign Language, or ASL. But studies of ASL users show that, on average, educated deaf adults are likely to read at the level of a nine-year-old.
    通过美国手语(American Sign Language, or ASL),聋人可以无障碍地表达英语单词。但对美国手语使用者的研究表明,受过教育的成年聋人的平均阅读水平仅相当于9岁儿童。

    The explanation has always been that this is because they never learned to connect letters with sounds. But a recent study shows that deaf readers are just like other people learning to read in a second language. Linguist Jill Morford led the study.
    过去人们一直认为,造成这一现象的原因是由于聋人无法将声音和字母联系起来。但最近的一项研究表明,聋人阅读者就像是使用第二语言阅读的人。语言学家吉尔·莫福德(Jill Morford)领导了这项研究。

    JILL MORFORD: "The assumption has always been that the problems with reading were educational issues with what's the right way to teach reading when you can't associate sounds with letters. But what we're finding is that all this time we've been ignoring the fact that they're actually learning a new language."
    莫福德:“我们一直想当然地认为,阅读障碍是由于教育上的问题--当人们无法将声音与字母联系起来,什么才是教授阅读的正确方式?但我们发现,一直以来我们都忽略了这样一个事实:聋人实际上是在学习一种新语言。”

    Ms. Morford is a professor at the University of New Mexico and part of a research center at Gallaudet University in Washington. Most students at Gallaudet are deaf; the center studies how deaf people learn and use language.
    莫福德女士是新墨西哥大学的一名教授,同时是华盛顿加劳德特大学一个研究中心的成员。加劳德特大学的大多数学生是聋人。该中心研究聋人如何学习和使用的语言。

    Professor Morford says signers are like English learners whose first language uses a different alphabet.
    莫福德说,手语使用者就像是那些第一语言字母表和英语不同的英语学习者。

    JILL MORFORD: "Anyone who has a first language that has a written system that's very different than English, like Arabic or Chinese or Russian, knows that learning to recognize and understand words in English is much more challenging than if you already speak a language that uses the same orthography."
    莫福德:“任何人,如果其第一语言的书写体系和英语有很大不同,像阿拉伯语、汉语或俄语这些语言。他们就会知道,学习英语比学习使用相同正字法(orthography)的语言更具挑战性。”

    The orthography is the written system and spelling of a language. Of course, with signers, their first language has no written system at all, just hand gestures. Gallaudet professor Tom Allen explains what effect this has on reading.
    正字法是一种语言的书写体系和拼写规则。当然,就手语使用者来说,他们的第一语言根本就没有书写体系,只有手势。加劳德特大学的汤姆·艾伦教授(Tom Allen)解释了这对阅读的影响。

    TOM ALLEN: "We're not dealing with representations in the brain which are primarily auditory. You know, people when they read, they kind of hear -- there's a silent hearing going on, when a hearing person reads a word. When a deaf person reads a word, there's not. They see the word and there's some kind of an orthographic representation. And some of the research in our center has shown that when deaf readers read an English word, it activates their sign representations of those words."
    艾伦:“手语使用者不是在处理听觉在大脑中的呈现。当普通人在阅读时,他们一定程度上也在听---当听力正常的人在阅读单词时,有一个无声的听觉过程在进行。但当一名聋人在阅读时,没有这个过程。当他们看到单词时,某种正字法在脑中呈现。我们中心的一些研究证实,当聋人阅读一个英语单词时,会激活代表这个单词的手势。”

    Signers can face the same problems as other bilingual people. Their brains have to choose between two languages all the time. Take the words "paper" and "movie." Their spelling and meaning are not at all similar. But, as Professor Allen points out, the signs for them are.
    手语使用者会遇到和其他双语人士一样的问题。他们的大脑一直需要在两种语言中选择。以“文件”和“电影”这2个单词为例,它们的拼写和含义并不相同。但正如艾伦教授指出,这两个单词的手势有点类似。

    TOM ALLEN: "The sign for paper, you hold one hand flat and you just lightly tap it with a flat palm on the other hand, and you do that a couple times and that means paper. Now, movie is, like, very similar. One of the hands keeps a flat hand shape and it just kind of lightly moves back and forth as if it were a flickering image on a screen."
    艾伦:“文件的手势,一手放平,另一手放平轻轻点击这只手,这样做几次就代表文件。而电影的手势和这很相近。一手保持放平状态并缓慢地前后移动,就像是屏幕上切换的画面。”

    The study is in the journal Cognition.
    该研究发表在《认知》期刊上。