SIGN-EFL explores how English is currently taught to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in different European countries and connects teachers and researchers across Europe to share good ideas and teaching methods for the EFL classroom with DHH students.

The project will run from December 2025 to December 2028. During this time, we will gradually publish our findings on this website.

SIGN-EFL is funded by:

About us

SIGN-EFL – Supporting Inclusive Guidance for Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students is a partnership for cooperation that brings together five universities and five schools from five countries: Czech Republic, France, Germany (coordination), Spain, and Sweden.

Aims

Our aims are:

Enhancing English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) students.
Fostering a European exchange among EFL teachers to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students by facilitating supra-regional and transnational cooperation.
Transnationally sharing and scaling innovative and inclusive EFL teaching practices to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students.

Working Packages

The project is divided into 4 working packages:

Mapping policies on teaching EFL to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in the participating countries by analyzing official documents as well as via survey of national experts.
Collecting and documenting teaching practices and challenges through teaching observations and focus group discussions.
Documenting good teaching practices and developing guidelines on EFL teaching for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students in mainstream settings and schools for the Deaf.
Transnational knowledge transfer through the establishment of a cooperative network of teachers for English language teaching for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing researchers and students, and through the dissemination of results in schools, school administration and education policy, including the creation of a website containing the results.