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.
耳聋的人可以通过北美手语交流，这样就没有英文单词交流上的麻烦了。但在研究北美手语使用者后，一些结果表明，受过教育的耳聋成人几乎和9岁儿童的阅读平均水平相当。
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.
很久以来都是这样解释这种现象的：但是最近的一项研究表明，这些耳聋的人读书就像正常的人用外语读书一样。因为这些耳聋的人从来都不用声音进行交流。这项研究由语言学家吉尔莫福德领军。
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."
吉尔莫福德说道：“一直我们都假设这些人阅读的障碍是教育的问题，而这些问题又都集中在当你教阅读的时候，无法将字母和声音联系起来，从而纠结于正确的方法是什么。但是我们发现，我们一直忽略了其实他们正在学习一门新的语言。”
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.
莫福德先生是新墨西哥大学的一位教授，同时也是华盛顿加劳德特大学研究中心的兼职教授。加特劳德大学大部分都是耳聋学生；莫福德所在的中心致力于研究耳聋人群如何进行学习和使用语言。作者: 槿妍 时间: 2011-4-21 14:21
