Predictors of Word and Text Reading Fluency of Deaf Children in Bilingual Deaf Education Programmes
Date
2022Author
Ormel, Ellen
Giezen, Marcel R.
Knoors, Harry
Verhoeven, Ludo
Gutierrez-Sigut, Eva
Metadata
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Languages 7(1) : (2022) // Article ID 51
Languages 7(1) : (2022) // Article ID 51
Languages 7(1) : (2022) // Article ID 51
Abstract
Reading continues to be a challenging task for most deaf children. Bimodal bilingual
education creates a supportive environment that stimulates deaf children’s learning through the use
of sign language. However, it is still unclear how exposure to sign language might contribute to
improving reading ability. Here, we investigate the relative contribution of several cognitive and
linguistic variables to the development of word and text reading fluency in deaf children in bimodal
bilingual education programmes. The participants of this study were 62 school-aged (8 to 10 years old
at the start of the 3-year study) deaf children who took part in bilingual education (using Dutch and
Sign Language of The Netherlands) and 40 age-matched hearing children. We assessed vocabulary
knowledge in speech and sign, phonological awareness in speech and sign, receptive fingerspelling
ability, and short-term memory at time 1 (T1). At times 2 (T2) and 3 (T3), we assessed word and text
reading fluency. We found that (1) speech-based vocabulary strongly predicted word and text reading
at T2 and T3, (2) fingerspelling ability was a strong predictor of word and text reading fluency at
T2 and T3, (3) speech-based phonological awareness predicted word reading accuracy at T2 and T3
but did not predict text reading fluency, and (4) fingerspelling and STM predicted word reading
latency at T2 while sign-based phonological awareness predicted this outcome measure at T3. These
results suggest that fingerspelling may have an important function in facilitating the construction of
orthographical/phonological representations of printed words for deaf children and strengthening
word decoding and recognition abilities