The challenge of learning to read written English for the profoundly pre-lingually deaf adult
Many adults with profound prelingual deafness have difficulties reading and comprehending written English and this problem may originate from English phonological deficits and/or difficulties connecting sign language with written English. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate th...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2016
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10724/1/12885-44191-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | Many adults with profound prelingual deafness have difficulties reading and comprehending written English
and this problem may originate from English phonological deficits and/or difficulties connecting sign language
with written English. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to investigate the word coding strategies of
profoundly deaf adults with a view to identify to what extent they used speech-based and sign-based strategies
to process English text. For the gathering of the data participants completed three tasks: (1) a measure
examining the use of speech and sign-based word coding during reading (2) a phoneme awareness task (3) and
a task assessing skill in applying grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Data was analysed using tests of
difference (t-tests and ANOVA) with the findings showing that while the less proficient readers had significantly
greater English phonological deficits they reported only a minimal use of supplementary sign language coding
strategies. Surprisingly, some of the proficient readers, with good English phonological skills chose to
supplement them with some sign-based strategies. The possible reasons and instructional implications for these
findings are discussed. |
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