Teaching of English to Hearing Impaired Individuals Whose Mother Language Is the Sign Language

The teaching of the English language as a second language to deaf and hearing impaired individuals, whose mother language is the sign language, through the prism of the project ‘Dedalos’, is the main topic of this article. More particularly, a special e-learning platform was developed, which incorporated special pedagogic methods of distant linguistic training as well as innovative and high-quality educational e-content, suitably adapted to the needs of hearing impaired people through the use of contemporary animation and digital video technologies. In addition, audits and evaluation tests were incorporated within the platform, in order to assess and evaluate the linguistic skills of the hearing impaired students and the educational e-content was divided into various levels according to the educational level of each e-student. Both the evaluation process and the setting of the e-content to the appropriate level are achieved through the use of an intelligent taxonomy system.