Merrilee Gietz

Merrilee (Mizzy) Gietz currently teaches at Lamar University in the undergraduate ASL teaching program as a full-time American Sign Language (ASL) instructor. She is also a doctoral student in Deaf Studies and Deaf Education at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Mizzy has taught classes with ASL content for more than 12 years. Her current work focuses on ASL in L1 and L2 approaches for deaf and hearing students in prospective careers, as well as ASL poetry.

Haiku Poems in Utilizing same American Sign Language Handshapes for Pedagogical Purposes.

This proposal introduces Haiku poems in utilizing same American Sign Language handshapes for pedagogical purposes. Haikus can be used to help first language (L1) learners develop critical thinking skills using ASL same handshape poems. This style of poetry was chosen because of its references to nature and ease in accessing students’ communication modality and visualization skills (Hauser & Marschark, 2008). While abundant curriculum materials developed for second language learners, limited resources are available for deaf L1 learners (Allen, 2008). A study described by Paul (2009) indicates that deaf students can demonstrate their ASL proficiency through English print literacy tasks.

Klima & Bellugi (1979) implied that poetic American Sign Language works could be utilized in the form of Haiku poetry because learners could visualize concepts in nature that would help them produce better poetic works in ASL. The phonological similarities of nature signs help L1 learners to visualize printed text. Dorothy Miles utilized this strategy to describe animals in ASL poetry (Sutton-Spence & Napoli, 2010). It is arguable that her poetry included references to nature. In another example, Valli used the poem, “Hands” (Lindgren, DeLuca, & Napoli, 2008) to describe his perception of nature. Additionally, he illustrates the beauty of nature though visualization. “The ASL poet Clayton…points out that a great part of the world does not hear; he lists rocks, water, trees, mountains, clouds--natural entities that surround us.” (Sutton-Spence & Napoli, 2010, p. 447-448). These four words-- rock, water, tree and mountain-- were produced by manipulation of the open 5 handshape to form natural images in ASL poetry. L1 ASL learners use their visual modality to observe nature around them.  Poetry in the form of ASL Haiku can be an effective teaching tool to Increase vocabulary, promote language acquisition, and provide motivation to bridge English literatures.