Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Students with Special Needs through Intersemiotic Translation: An Experience with Deaf Learners

Abstract

This study aims at examining the effectiveness of using intersemiotic translation in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to deaf students. The participants included six (one female and five male) EFL deaf students studying in an elementary public school in Iran. Taking an action research design, we tried to teach EFL to these students for four months and track their development during this period. Having adopted the principles of intersemiotic translation, we used pictures, animations and body language to teach EFL to the participants. For evaluating the students’ understanding of the presented materials, they were asked to draw pictures and answer to matching questions. The findings indicated that the use of intersemiotic translation and visual aids is very useful for teaching English to deaf learners especially in contexts where few teachers know American Sign Language (ASL).