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1. History of HKSL Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) is the name given to the natural sign language variety used by members of the Hong Kong deaf community. They are signers who acquire the language either from their deaf parents since birth or from their peers when they receive education in deaf schools. There are no known historical records for HKSL before the 1930s. A recent survey by Sze et al. (2013) suggests that the earliest form of HKSL emerged with the establishment of an oral deaf school, the Hong Kong School for the Deaf, and two signing deaf schools foun…

1. Introduction The deaf community is always heterogeneous, as deaf individuals have varying degrees of and different perceptions about deafness and deaf identities. Hence, some remain unimodal monolingual or bilingual in spoken languages, while others develop knowledge of both a sign language and a spoken language in a bimodal bilingual fashion, again with varying levels of ultimate attainment. Just as in any country, a majority of Hong Kong deaf children born to hearing parents may or may not be…

1. Introduction When approaching how deaf children acquire spoken language, one needs to take into account the degree and nature of hearing loss, types and effectiveness of hearing devices, as well as learning environment, because these factors may directly or indirectly impact their speech perception and production abilities, accessibility to spoken language input as well as ultimate attainment in language acquisition. Clinical reports on deaf children’s oral language performance consistently rev…