title: Toward a description of deaf college students' written English: overuse, avoidance, and mastery of function words.
abstract: The use of function words in 135 essays written by deaf college underclassmen in developmental and credit-bearing English composition classes is described and compared with Standard English (SE) versions of teh same essay. If student and SE version were the same, this was considered mastery; if the student omitted a word, this was considered avoidance; and if the student added a word, this was considered overuse. The deaf students varied from SE more for function than for content words. They demonstrated low mastery of independent clause markers, demonstratives, third-person singular neuter pronouns, and modals related to possibility, but had relatively high mastery of the first-person singular; and some punctuation. These students strongly avoided some dependent clause markers, some demonstratives, the indefinite article, punctuation except for periods and commas, and the modal verbs may, might and should , but greatly overused other dependent clause markers, the second person and third-person pronouns, quantifiers, the verb do, and the modals could and will. They were also more likely to produce run-ons than fragments.
authors.affiliation: University of Connecticut, USA.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Channon
authors.forename: Edna Edith
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Sayers
mesh_terms: D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology; D060345:Education of Persons with Hearing Disabilities; D006801:Humans; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014956:Writing