Sign Languages as Languages of Interlocution: the Place of Communicative Activities in the School Context

ABSTRACT: The academic development of the deaf student depends on his/her mastery of a sign language. However, a sign language is not developed daily in the family environment; thus, this domain needs to be achieved in the school space, in which it is expected that the deaf student has peers in his/her language and can interact through it. All the same, the school environment has little tradition of working with the development of oral/sign language, focusing on activities with written language as a goal. Regarding the deaf student, little is discussed about the development of sign language in the school space. The bilingual teacher focuses his/her work on teaching the majority language as a second language in the written modality, working with sign language, without a clear proposal for the development of that language. Debates on practices to improve orality for the development of the hearing subject indicated the opportunity to reflect on these aspects in relation to deaf students. The focus of this paper is, therefore, on the debate on this theme, aiming at the training of teachers to improve the uses of sign language in the school space.