A case study of extended discourse in an ASL/English bilingual preschool classroom

Tabors & Dickinson, 2001, p. 2). The kind of language use wherein adults and children are engaged in cognitively challenging discourse is called extended discourse by the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development team (Snow, et al., 2001). Currently, there is high interest within the Sign Language communities in the United States and Canada in the fields of Deaf education and ASL linguistics about extended discourse, that is discourse in ASL that replicates some of the demands of literacy, and in the application of this knowledge to enhance quality of teaching (Cummins, 2006; Gárate, 2007; Kuntze, 2004). Since there have been no studies of extended discourse in American Sign Language (ASL), we know little about the nature of extended discourse for ASL-speaking preschool deaf children and their teachers in classroom settings. This mixed methods case study of two Deaf preschool teachers and twelve deaf students  presents a detailed analysis of extended discourse and pedagogical practice within the context of an ASL/English bilingual preschool classroom. Preliminary data analysis revealed that the teachers recognized a variety of communicative acts as opportunities to extend the children‘s knowledge, involved them actively in extended