Text Comprehension for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

¶ … Comprehension and Deafness

Language and vocabulary development and therefore reading comprehension, among deaf and hard of hearing children is challenged due to several factors. These factors relate to inherent differences between children with normal hearing and those with hearing difficulties. However, efforts and innovation have been put into practice to facilitate language and reading development among deaf and hard of hearing students in order to achieve successful comprehension despite their inabilities to learn through conventional methods. It is important that reading development is maintained at a high level to ensure hard of hearing students are able to maintain comprehension and age appropriate and grade appropriate levels. The following discussion outlines some issues and challenges faced by children with hearing difficulties and how these problems can be overcome in order to achieve effective levels of language, vocabulary, and text comprehension.

Vocabulary comprehension is encouraged and promoted through the activity of reading to children. Reading aloud to normal children provides them with incidental exposure to language, thus improving acquisition of vocabulary (Cannon et al., 2010). Deaf and hard of hearing students are not able to this effective strategy for vocabulary development, so alternative methods and strategies must be utilized by parents and teachers. This is important considering that reduced reading to children generally results in a lack of world knowledge (Cannon et al., 2010). Cannon et al. (2010) investigated an alternative procedure that utilized video recorded books read in American Sign Language available on DVD in order to promote vocabulary acquisition in children with hearing difficulties, whether they are deaf or hard of hearing. Effectiveness of Vocabulary acquisition was assessed by measuring whether the intervention increased these students' abilities to produce written words in American Sign Language.

Results of this study indicated that in order for the DVD books the to be effective in promoting the development of vocabulary as demonstrated through increased signing of learned words, the target words needed to be taught prior to exposure to the DVD books (Cannon et al., 2010). The DVD books then further confirmed the learned words, and vocabulary recognition among these deaf students was observed to increase even after first exposure to the pre-teaching component (Cannon et al., 2010). These findings present an important direction for future research and development, focused on the creation of DVD books with accompanying lesson components for deaf and hard of hearing students in order to promote language development.

Efforts toward development of educational material aimed at language and vocabulary for deaf students is of high importance in order to increase reading comprehension among this population, which is persistently low (Kelly, 2003). These difficulties may stem in great part from deficits in automaticity in word recognition and parsing sentence patterns among deaf students, which may be improved through effective practice (Kelly, 2003). Initiatives in the development of practice strategies to improve automaticity and thus reading comprehension among deaf student were examined by Kelly (2003). This author noted the necessity of well-designed practice based in valid and appropriately articulated developmental theory in order to achieve effective instruction. Results of the study determined some key considerations for the design and development of reading practice strategies for deaf and hard of hearing students. These considerations included: having word recognition as the focus of practice; making practice stimulating for the students; repetition of target vocabulary in order to develop automaticity; keep students engaged through short exercises as well as extended texts to challenge students; ensure increased volume of practice; and determine appropriateness of practice through the use of developmental perspective (Kelly, 2003).

Teaching deaf and hard of hearing students to read is a process with inherent challenges influenced by several factors, including morphemic awareness. This concept was investigated by Nielsen et al. (2011), through a review of pertinent literature regarding morphology's role in reading comprehension among students with normal hearing and students with deafness or hearing loss. Results demonstrated that knowledge of morphology among deaf students had a significant and positive effect on their ability to understand new words as well as comprehend text, and the authors concluded that morphology instruction should therefore commence in early grades in order to achieve the most effective results (Nielsen et al., 2010). Furthermore, other similar studies have determined that deaf students have significantly better reading comprehension when they can demonstrate the ability to provide synonyms, antonyms, and analogies to read words and manipulate phonemes (Luetke-Stahlman & Nielsen, 2003).