This document discusses reading comprehension for children with hearing impairments. It explains that reading comprehension involves decoding text, making connections, and deep thinking. Students with hearing loss often struggle with literacy skills like comprehension due to missing auditory information. Vocabulary, phonology, syntax, and lack of language exposure can negatively impact their comprehension. The document provides strategies to develop comprehension for these students, such as using sign language, visual aids, building vocabulary, and testing understanding.

1. READING AND REFLECTING
ON TEXT
Submitted by
Uvashree S.V.
19USDH014
II B.Ed. Special Education (HI)
And Mathematics

2. BASIC UNDERSTANDING OF
READING COMPREHENSION
OF CHILDREN WITH
HEARING IMAPAIRMENT

3. READING COMPREHENSION
 Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation
of what is read. To be able to accurately understand
written material, children need to be able to:
1) Decode what they read
2) Make connections between what they read and what
they already know
3) Think deeply about what they have read.

4. READING COMPREHENSION
FOR HEARING IMPAIRED
 Students who are deaf or hard of hearing often struggle
to develop or improve crucial literacy skills. One of the
most difficult skills for them to master is reading
comprehension.
 The study found that 25% of the participants who had
reading difficulties showed mild to moderate hearing
loss.

5.  For a hearing impaired learner, the difficulty in
comprehending a text is because of missing out on significant
auditory information.
 Also, in formal education more than often comprehension of
text is compromised for time restrains and the impact of this
trend of hearing impaired learner effects far more gravely as
they are not only fail to learn the process but now have to
adjust with artificial inactive learning.

6.  According to Estabrooks and Estes (2007) identified four
components of text comprehension as
1. The ability to rapidly decode and attach meaning to
new words,
2. The syntactic and morphologic competence to gain
collective meaning from the decoded words,
3. The ability to hold the meaning in working memory
while processing new words and
4. The ability to apply text processing strategies for the
purpose of figuring out unfamiliar words and passages.

7. FACTORS AFFECTING
READING COMPREHENSION
 Vocabulary and Phonology have always been sources of
difficulty for students who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.
 In regards to their reading comprehension abilities,
vocabulary and phonology tend to be two areas that
contribute to the lack of comprehension when students
who are deaf or hard of hearing are reading.

8.  An additional challenge for deaf or hard of hearing
students is the way they learn vocabulary.
 Students who are deaf or hard of hearing tend to learn
their words visually (through perception), it makes the
task of acquiring vocabulary extremely difficult for them.
 Abstract, multi-meaning words, and figurative language
are especially difficult for students who are deaf or hard of
hearing to understand.

9.  The lack of vocabulary is considered by many educators
to be at least a portion of the problem when it comes to
the comprehension of sentences or passages read by
students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
 Students who are deaf and hard of hearing struggle is
the syntax of the English language. Syntactic knowledge
reflects an understanding of how the meaning of single
words is specified by their temporal structuring within a
sentence.

10. STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP
READING COMPREHENSION
Research encourages conversations with peers before,
during and after read time as well as routine conversations
with teachers, peers, and parents help children with hearing
impaired develop their background knowledge of the
language.

11.  The following strategies help the teachers and parents of
hearing impaired to develop reading comprehension.
 Learn to Sign: Parents/Teachers need to be able to teach
their children how to communicate. Learning to sign is
very important because children need constant exposure
to the language they are learning.

12.  Focus on visuals:
Picture books are great for helping a deaf child learn
to read. Sign-spell the word and the accompanying picture,
and then use the sign for the word. If we teach the child to
read lips, have the child point the picture, point to the word
and then watch the mouth slowly and deliberately speak
the word.

13.  Use letter cards:
Another way to help children develop language and
reading skills is to use letter cards. Letter cards can be used
to demonstrate how individual letters forms words. We
could aim to teach the child a new combination everyday.

14.  Build vocabulary:
Introduce new word everyday to the hearing
impaired child who develop their language.

15.  Adjust environment:
Deaf learners need a visual environment to thrive.
A helpful activity that might be to help child to label items
around the room that has the written word on it.
If we are doing activities with the child, incorporate a
lot of visual aids.

16.  Comprehension testing:
Make sure that children understand what they are
reading by pointing to a picture or a printed word and
having them give the sign back to us.