Barriers for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students and Language

Learning the English language while also learning to read.
        Learning the English language, while also learning to read, is a barrier that most deaf students face when starting kindergarten. This barrier is caused by students coming to school without the mastery of a language. Often times if they do have mastery of a language, it is ASL and not English because they have had language input by their deaf parents. Because deaf children with deaf parents have a common language and exposure to that language from birth, incidental learning occurs. Incidental learning of language generally does not occur with deaf children who have hearing parents because there is no common language. Also, the child’s language development suffers because parents are learning a form of sign language at the same time as their child. If deaf children come to school without that mastery of language and have not mastered English, the students need to learn English while also learning to read. It is very hard to learn how to read English print when you do not have mastery of the English language because both processes require a significant amount of cognitive energy.
        This barrier can cause many implications for teachers. The teacher must attempt to teach the English language and reading at the same time, a very difficult task. This is too heavy of a load for students to learn both at the same time. If teachers do not begin reading instruction, the students will be behind in reading if the teachers wait until the English language is mastered.
        Three strategies that teachers can use in instructing to help students overcome this barrier include: using predictable books, the Language Experience Approach, and previewing.

1. Predictable books are books that have repetitive language patterns (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? By Bill Martin, Jr.), a predictable pattern of events (Three Billy Goats Gruff by Paul Galdrone), or a predictable sequence of cumulative events (The Napping House by Audrey Wood). The predictability allows children to participate in reading along. When using predictable books in the classroom the teacher reads the book to the children, and then reads it again, encouraging the students to join in. The next day the teacher will read the story again, focusing on sight words by leaving a blank for the word while reading or signing. At these blanks the teacher stops, points to the word, and asks the students to read it. The teacher will then write the story on a chart and have the children practice reading the story with pictures as an aid. During this time the students are given individual word cards containing the sight words they are working. It is important that you give the students the cards in the appropriate order. The students then pace their cards under the matching words on the chart as they read. On the third day, the students read or sign the story individually or together. The students are again given the sight-word cards, this time sorted randomly, to match as they read the story (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

2.  “The Language Experience Approach provides students with the opportunity to use their own experiences, vocabulary, and language structures as the basis for learning to read.” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley, 1999). This approach has six steps: the experience, discussion, writing the story or account of the event, reading the story or account of the event, reinforcement and practice activity, and opportunities for later reinforcement. This approach starts out with an experience the child has had individually or possibly a group experience. The teacher and student(s) then discuss the chosen experience. This discussion time can help clarify ideas and establish a sequence of events.
   The student(s) then dictate the story to the teacher; the method of communication the student uses can impact how the teacher will record the message. If the students are deaf, they will sign the story. The teacher emphasizes that the message will remain the same, but it will be written in English. If there are hard of hearing students, the teacher should read the sentence aloud for their benefit. The teacher then reads the story silently and signs it back to the student(s) to make sure they have maintained the meaning. If the student uses spoken English, the teacher needs to record the message exactly as it is dictated to them. The teacher should not start editing this point because the ownership needs to stay with the child.
   When the story has been dictated and read silently, the teacher reads the story back to the child (hard of hearing) again to verify what is written. When the child verifies, the teacher reads the story again to familiarize the child with the printed words. The child then reads the story to the teacher. If the child uses ASL, the teacher silently reads the story and then uses ASL to retell the story. While the teacher is silently reading he/she is modeling that the message of the printed English word is different than ASL. The child will then silently read the story and retell it.
   The teacher should then provide immediate reinforcement and practice for the students. Some activities for reinforcement: read (and retell) the story or account to a friend, illustrate the story, think of a good title, and/or practice reading (and retelling) the story to read it to the class.
   The student will then review the story with a teacher, aide, or older student. The printed text should be emphasized with each reading (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

3. When previewing, the students take time before they read to examine the selection. The students may: read the title; look at pictures, graphs, and charts; read the introduction or the opening paragraph; read the headings and subheadings; look for bold/italicized words; and read the last paragraph or the summary. The students and teacher discuss what they have learned while previewing the selection. During previewing the students may also predict and question. Previewing allows students to become familiar with the text prior to reading (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

Prior knowledge/experiences not linked to language.
            With a deaf child there is often a lack of communication between the child and the rest of the family. “Without the link to language, deaf children have difficulty connecting their experiences to the printed words.” As a result, students may not be able to link their prior experiences during the reading process, which may help in their comprehension. Teachers need to assist in providing the link to language through many experiences inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers need to help students make connections to their prior experiences and language. As students are gaining new experiences teachers need to make sure that they are linking these new experiences to language.
            Three strategies that my help students overcome this barrier include: Semantic Maps, KWL+ Charts, and the Language Experience Approach.

1. Semantic Webs activate and build on a student’s prior knowledge. The teacher begins with a brainstorming session that encourages students to retrieve stored information and to see graphically the concepts they are retrieving. Students can learn the meanings and use of new words, see old words in a different perspective, and see connections among words. Students can also confirm and expand on their own understanding of the concepts.
   The teacher will start by writing the topic of a reading selection in the middle of the board. The students then think of as many things as they can that relate to the topic, using their own experiences. As the students give their experiences, the teacher writes them on the board. The experiences are then categorized. Depending on the levels of the students, the teacher or students may to the categorizing. After reading the selection, the map is reviewed, discussed, and new information is added to the appropriate categories. Example: See Appendix 1.

2. To use a KWL+ chart in the classroom, the teacher would draw three columns on the board labeled “What I Know”, “What I Want to Know”, and “What I Learned”. The teacher will introduce the topic of the reading and the students list what they know about the topic in the first column. The students then list what they want to know in the second column. After completing the first two columns the students read, discuss, and study the reading. When they have finished reading, the students list what they have learned in the third column. The teacher may then add a fourth column, labeled “What I Still Want to Learn”, where students can list anything they wanted to learn about but do not know at the end of their reading. An example of a KWL chart can be seen in Appendix 2.

3. For a description of the Language Experience Approach, refer back to number 2 under strategies of the previous barrier.

Viewing reading as a decoding task rather than a task of constructing meaning.
            There is often the misconception that if a student reads all of the words on a page he/she is reading. Many deaf students encounter the barrier of viewing reading as a decoding task as opposed to a task of constructing meaning. Students are working so hard to decode the words in the text that they lose focus on the meaning of the text. Without mastery of the language, students need to use more cognitive energies during the information processing stage to decode the text, which may cause them to forget what they had read at the beginning of the sentence or the sentence before. Comprehension becomes difficult because their cognitive energies are used on decoding, leaving little to no energies for constructing meaning. As a result, teachers need to develop a way for students to construct meaning from the text and take away some of the focus on decoding. Three strategies that teachers may use to help students construct meaning are: story retelling, QAR (Question-Answer Relationships), and modeling comprehension.

1. Story retelling is an effective strategy to use in the classroom because the students can retell the story in ASL (American Sign Language) if they wish. When using story retelling it is important to let the students know beforehand what is expected of them. After completing prereading activities, the teacher tells the students that they will need to retell the story when they are done reading. The teacher should inform the students if they are expected to include specific information. The teacher will inform them that they need to talk about the characters, setting, problem, main points, and resolution. When the students finish reading, they retell the story as if they are telling it to a friend who does not know the story. The student should tell the story, noting: story setting, characters, theme, plot, sequence, and resolution. If the students are hesitant, the teacher can use prompts. When the retelling is finished, the teacher can ask questions about the important parts the student omitted or ask the student to reread the important information. This strategy can also be adapted for partners or small groups (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

2. QAR (Question-Answer Relationships): “uses levels of questioning to encourage students to use different kinds of information in their reading to help them comprehend narrative text” (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). There are four different types of questions used in QAR: right there, think and search, on my own, and the author and me. These four levels or questions should be used in guided reading and discussion. Once the students have learned where the answers come from, they can use this strategy on their own when they are having difficulty answering questions.
   Right there questions are text-explicit, the information is stated directly in the text. Think and search questions are text-implicit, the information comes from different parts of the text that fit together to answer the question. On my own questions are script-implicit, the student much activate prior knowledge in order to answer the question. The author and me questions involve what the students know, what they have learned from the author, and how that information fits together. A suggested procedure to help students learn the QAR categories is as follows (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999):
   -The teacher finds or prepares several passages and one question from each of the QAR categories for each passage.
   -Using one of the passages, the teacher explains each question category and how to use the text and/or prior knowledge to find the answer.
   -The students are then given another passage with the questions, answers, and QAR labels. They need to explain the QAR labels for the questions.
   -The students are then given a passage with the questions and answers, and they need to give the QAR labels and explain them.
   -Finally, the students are given texts and questions and asked to answer the question and provide QAR labels and justifications.

3. Modeling Comprehension entails the teacher telling students the thought process he/she is going through while reading. The teacher is “thinking out loud” so that the students can see how the teacher is comprehending the reading.

Insufficient vocabulary and insufficient knowledge of English syntax results in too much time spent on decoding.
            Deaf and hard of hearing students do not have the skills to use context clues to determine the meanings of new words. Since word recognition is not always automatic, a greater amount of cognitive energies are spent on decoding, leaving less energies for “integration of semantic information, which aids in syntactic processing.”
            Some implications for teaching are that teachers need to be careful not to assume that the child already knows specific vocabulary words. Teachers need to spend a significant amount of time on attaching meaning to vocabulary words, providing experiences that build schemata. Teachers should also provide experiences in which students are exposed to vocabulary words in a variety of printed materials to demonstrate contextual clues within sentences.  

Three possible strategies that can help students overcome this barrier include: using predictable books, cloze procedure, and semantic maps.

1. Predictable Books. For information on predictable books, refer back to the first barrier and strategy number 1.

2. Cloze Procedure entails deleting targeted words from a text and having the students determine what word would belong in that blank. It is important that the students have read the material prior to using the Cloze Procedure. For this procedure, the teacher chooses a text of 100-400 words, depending on student abilities. The teacher then deletes target words and inserts blanks. The more words you leave, the easier it is. Some teachers delete every tenth word, which is easier. To make it more difficult you may delete every fifth word. Deleting every seventh word is typical. The first and last sentence stays in tact. The student must then read the entire passage before filling in any of the blanks. Once the student has read the passage, he/she goes back to the beginning and writes in the words that fit in the blanks. When finished, the answers are corrected to see if the student used the exact word, a word with a similar meaning, or a word that did not make sense in the blank. The student will then review the choices that they made to fill in the blanks and discuss what strategies he/she used to decide on a word. If the student chose a word that did not make sense, the teacher helps instruct the student on strategies that would have led the student to the correct word (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

3. Semantic Webs activate and build on a student’s prior knowledge. Begin with a brainstorming session that encourages students to retrieve stored information and to see graphically the concepts they are retrieving. Students can learn the meanings and use of new words, see old words in a different perspective, and see connections among words. Students can also confirm and expand on their own understanding of the concepts. An example of this can be seen in Appendix 1. Procedure (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999):

1. Write the targeted vocabulary word in a circle n the middle of the board or chart paper.

2. Have a brainstorming session and encourage the students to think of as man words as they can that relate to the target word.

3. As the students give their words, the teacher writes them down.

4. The words are categorized and labeled by the students, by the teacher, or the teacher can list the words in categories and the students determine a label.

5. The teacher concludes with a brief explanation of how the words relates to the story or selection, or the students can predict how they think the word will connect to the story or selection.

Do not reach automaticity.
            Students often times spend too much time in the information processing stage because of lack of automaticity. If students have reached automaticity, their information processing is quicker and less cognitive energies need to be spent during the information processing stage. Children should engage in meaningful practice to develop automaticity in some of the lower level skills (decoding, handwriting, spelling) so they can give more attention to performing the higher level skills (comprehension/planning). Students should have large amount of automatic sight words. Students must reach automaticity in decoding. This allows students to be a fluent reader and comprehend better. Students can chunk more information together, which then get processed faster, which results in fluency, which results in better comprehension (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999).

Three possible strategies that teachers could use to help student over come this barrier include readers’ theaters, repeated readings, and sustained silent reading.

1. Readers’ theater involves students assuming a role in reading or signing text. The student is reading a script and does not need to memorize the reading. To start a readers’ theater, you must first choose a script. This can be done by the teacher and/or students. The script can be a prepared script, the students can write a new script, the students may adapt a text selection, or the teacher may adapt text into a script. The teacher than assigns roles to the students. The students read the script several times to themselves, allowing them to become familiar with the text and determine how they interpret meaning. The students then take time to practice together until they are comfortable and finally they perform. Readers’ theaters can also be tied into writing by having students eventually write their own scripts.

2. Repeated reading is a great strategy to help students reach automaticity. The teacher chooses a short passage that is appropriate for the student and the student reads and rereads the passage until it can be read in a minute. The student will then move on to the next passage until all of the parts have been completed and the student can read the story fluently (McAnally, Rose, and Quigley 1999). The students or teacher can then chart their progress on speed and/or accuracy to see how they are improving with continued reading. Young children may chose to practice reading to themselves, then selecting other people to read to. If the child cannot read orally, they may silently read first, and then sign the passage to someone else.

3. Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) is students reading on their own with no direct instruction.

 Copyright © 2005, Danielle Thor. All Rights Reserved.
For problems or questions regarding this web contact [danielle.thor@marshall.k12.mn.us].
Last updated: 04/04/08.