UC San Diego

The purpose of this thesis is to give new light in the role of using American Sign Language (ASL) to express personal thoughts and in embedding 5WH questions in one’s discourse, and using rhetorical statements a way of verifying information about a topic when engaging with their peers on a daily basis. This bilingual curriculum focuses on staying on point and elaborating one’s thoughts and ideas on a topic after using WH and RH questions. There is no research that has been done in order to provide discourse skills by utilizing WH questions and RH statements within the Deaf and Hard of Hearing classroom. The curriculum consists of three units that provides three sets of skills per unit for D/HH students to foster and practice their discourse skills in tie to provide their presentation to convey the message in their own words. The findings show that this discourse training is crucial in the development of learning how to be on topic.