Teaching Poetry to the Deaf for Language and Identity Development in Malaysia: A Case Study

Abstract

Research conducted revealed that Malaysian Deaf students continue to struggle with their education, especially their written language and Malaysian Sign Language (BIM) acquisition. Studies done globally have shown that poetry education can improve the quality of education of the Deaf. A collaborative study led by a hearing poet educator was conducted via an online workshop between two hearing Malaysian poet educators and one Malaysian Deaf educator, who had minimal experience with poetry, as part of a project titled ‘Deaf Poetry’. The research set out to: discover if poetry education could help improve Malaysian Deaf students’ development of BIM proficiency and self-expression, as well as to explore whether written poetry could be a bridge to BIM poetry learning, and finally to experiment with intersemiotic translation approaches (Pollitt) as a way of revealing the multi-modal nature of BIM which could make the BIM poetry ‘readable’ to non-Deaf audiences. Exposed to poetry education, the study found that the Deaf educator was able to develop creative BIM techniques. This in turn allowed them to explore new ways of self-expression bringing them into a closer relationship with BIM and a Malaysian Deaf identity. The non-deaf participants were able to appreciate BIM and BIM poetry and all participants reported developing a deeper understanding of poetry, self-expression and language translation