User:Athorn17/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Language Exposure for Deaf Children

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it was rated as a start-class article under the Deaf Wikiproject. While it is rated as low-importance on the project page, I think that language exposure is a really critical topic which sits behind many common controversies in Deaf Culture and Deaf Education. I was happy to discover this article and the perspectives it shed light on which are often missing from public discussions about deaf children. It filled a gap on Wikipedia and raised some great points. I do think the article would benefit though from some rewording and the inclusion of a few new sections.

Evaluate the article
I was happy to discover this article and the perspectives it shed light on which are often missing from public discussions about deaf children. It filled a gap on Wikipedia and raised some great points. I do think the article would benefit though from some rewording and the inclusion of a few new sections. My specific comments are below.


 * The lead section was well thought out and nicely contextualized the issue for the reader.
 * The Language and Development subsection is a bit confusing to read due to some of the wording.
 * Phrases like "proved that signed languages are in fact technical languages, with structure and grammar to match that of spoken language" could be misleading to the reader, giving the impression that signed languages are manual representations of the exact same grammar found in spoken languages, which is not the case. A quick rewording would clear this up nicely.
 * Another brief note about this sentence: it might be worth seeing if you can find a more directly related article as evidence for sign languages being real languages. The present article mentions this, but is not written about it.
 * The phrase "full language" could also use some clarification. The article does not fully define what this means.
 * The following sentence could use some rewording as well: "For years it was known that the left hemisphere dealt with speech, but now it is specifically the details of language organization that seem to be processed here." While this sentence could be expanded into a paragraph, I don't think that is necessary. Just a quick rewording would improve the readability of the sentence by making it sound more crisp, clear, and professional. There are several sentences that could benefit from quick touch ups such as this.
 * In the last paragraph of the section, the connection between language and cognitive development is discussed and disregarded. However, there has been evidence in recent years suggesting a link between language development and certain aspects of cognitive development. Looking further into that research and possibly even creating a new subsection about it might be beneficial to readers who are unaware that their decisions regarding language exposure might impact their child's cognitive development as well.
 * The Providing Language Exposure section is great, but I think it could be fleshed out even better by the inclusions of a few more subsections. I really appreciated how both sign language and cochlear implants were discussed in this section. It is nice to see both sides of that debate included. However, I think the article might benefit from including an entire subsection on sign language and an entire subsection on spoken language as they relate to exposing deaf children to language. Much research has been done with regard to the successes of these two types of languages both in relation to cochlear implants and separately from cochlear implants. Therefore, I think each deserves it's own subsection.
 * As a note, I would be careful with the wording of the following sentence as it might be perceived as original research. Perhaps you could find a researcher or a group to attribute the perspective to. ("This could lead to ignoring the possibility that the child just may need someone to help them thrive in the Deaf community.")
 * In the subsection about grade school, I am confused what is being said about the interpreters. I think this needs to be rewritten or expanded on to make your point more clear.
 * One current player in this discussion is LEAD-K, an organization advocating for language exposure and kindergarten readiness for deaf children. They might be worth mentioning somewhere in this section.
 * In the final section, you bring up some good points. I like how you discuss the future implications of language exposure by discussing deaf adults here. Again, though, be ware of original research and making seemingly subjective points. For example, there might be sources you could draw on to attribute the connection that it appears you made yourself in the following sentence: "This furthers the idea that exposing a child to sign language is comparable to exposing a child to spoken language."


 * My final note about this article is that I would be careful how the "critical period" is represented throughout this article. While there are many supporters of this theory and there is certainly evidence to support it, another body of research suggests that the "critical period" may not exist as it has been theorized. Presenting both sides of this issue would further round out the article and better represent the current state of the literature on this issue.