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Factors Distinguishing Skilled and Less Skilled Deaf Readers: Evidence From Four Orthographies Oxford Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Fall 2012
Came across a very interesting article with some practical solutions offered. A century of research demonstrates that, on average, prelingually deaf readers graduate from high school with reading skills comparable to hearing third and fourth graders, with similar findings as recently as 2010. This gap in reading ability (or more specifically, comprehension deficit) is well-documented, but what’s been missing in the literature is “why.”
Several researchers from various universities conducted a study funded by Gallaudet’s VL2 Project to better understand the primary causes underlying reading failure in deaf students. They tested 213 prelingually deaf 6th through 10th graders from environments using four different writing systems (Hebrew, Arabic, English, and German) and grouped into three reading levels to determine the factors distinguishing skilled from less skilled deaf readers.
The study findings strongly suggest that “poor comprehension skills of prelingually deaf readers are primarily related to variance in their ability to apply structural knowledge as they read for meaning.” These finding run contrary to the most widely held position that deficits in prelingually deaf readers’ reading comprehension skills are directly causally related to their poor phonological processing skills. The authors add that “comprehension failure in this population seems to arise from reliance on a reading strategy that skips the processing of sentence structure as a vital source of information, as well as reliance on insufficiently developed and/or deviant structural knowledge for the processing of text meaning.”
The VL2 group draws from these findings the following implications:
1. Deafness per se doesn’t create a condition that prevents individuals from becoming skilled readers.
2. Reading skills of prelingually deaf individuals develop independently of their phonological processing skills
3. Full access to language* facilitates the acquisition of structural and semantic knowledge essential for the adequate processing of written language and, consequently, reduces risk of failure when prelingually deaf individuals are asked to read for meaning.
(*not just spoken, this includes sign language -- just has to be in fluent and frequent use by role models in their everyday surroundings)
Came across a very interesting article with some practical solutions offered. A century of research demonstrates that, on average, prelingually deaf readers graduate from high school with reading skills comparable to hearing third and fourth graders, with similar findings as recently as 2010. This gap in reading ability (or more specifically, comprehension deficit) is well-documented, but what’s been missing in the literature is “why.”
Several researchers from various universities conducted a study funded by Gallaudet’s VL2 Project to better understand the primary causes underlying reading failure in deaf students. They tested 213 prelingually deaf 6th through 10th graders from environments using four different writing systems (Hebrew, Arabic, English, and German) and grouped into three reading levels to determine the factors distinguishing skilled from less skilled deaf readers.
The study findings strongly suggest that “poor comprehension skills of prelingually deaf readers are primarily related to variance in their ability to apply structural knowledge as they read for meaning.” These finding run contrary to the most widely held position that deficits in prelingually deaf readers’ reading comprehension skills are directly causally related to their poor phonological processing skills. The authors add that “comprehension failure in this population seems to arise from reliance on a reading strategy that skips the processing of sentence structure as a vital source of information, as well as reliance on insufficiently developed and/or deviant structural knowledge for the processing of text meaning.”
The VL2 group draws from these findings the following implications:
1. Deafness per se doesn’t create a condition that prevents individuals from becoming skilled readers.
2. Reading skills of prelingually deaf individuals develop independently of their phonological processing skills
3. Full access to language* facilitates the acquisition of structural and semantic knowledge essential for the adequate processing of written language and, consequently, reduces risk of failure when prelingually deaf individuals are asked to read for meaning.
(*not just spoken, this includes sign language -- just has to be in fluent and frequent use by role models in their everyday surroundings)
