The process of writing a summary in Portuguese by Higher Education deaf students

This paper analyzes two textual productions written in Portuguese as an additional language by deaf undergraduate students, signers of Brazilian Sign Language as mother tongue and participants of the online course called "Academic Writing for Deaf People". From this analysis, we wanted to associate the texts with specific aspects of Portuguese used by the deaf community and think about including them in the inclusive higher education, which has increased tremendously since the last decade. Moreover, the key questions that emerged from the development of the course refer to the construction of the academic literacy of deaf college students in the Portuguese language. The final exam of the textual production tasks was focused on writing a summary. The analysis showed that there is a variation in relation to the deaf participants' literacy. We believe this occurs especially because of the different school backgrounds and language experiences these students had previously. Lastly, it is important to appreciate other literacies when it comes to teaching deaf people, to train teachers regarding to teach language for deaf learners, and finally to value sign languages as a mediator in this process.