Deaf Student Research Paper

For decades, Deaf student’s reading levels have been consistently lower than their hearing peers, despite multiple interventions being implemented to target this issue. Over the years Deaf education has adopted teaching methods hoping to increase the test results of the students in all areas including their reading and writing scores. So far, research has not been able to pinpoint a cause to why Deaf students’ results are lower than hearing students on average. It has seemed that researchers have concluded that Deaf people’s reading levels hit a glass ceiling around the fourth-grade level, and in most cases, will stay at there for life. This has been a belief in the Deaf education system for many years, yet no logical explanation has been given
There seems to be many factors to why this is, and researchers seem to be getting closer to an answer. However, there are some contributing factors to this problem that are quite apparent. According to research done by Mark Marschark, the Director of the center for Educational Research at NTID, a Deaf student must have a strong foundation in a first language if they are going to be able to read effectively (Citation?). This is where the popular theory that students who are Deaf of Deaf make the best readers, because the student typically have a stronger language foundation compared to other Deaf students. Though that does seem to be the case, the truth is the parents’ hearing status is not the factor that influences the children’s improved scores (handsandfeet). What makes these students good readers is they are in an environment that fosters a strong first language. This is particularly true if a child’s mother is a good signer, then he will be more likely to have a stronger first language. Marschark’s research does not state that a signed language is the only option for Deaf students. He finds that spoken language can be just as successful for a Deaf student, assuming the child can communicate well with his parents, again, particularly with his mother. If the student
Some researcher’s feel that at student’s reading level is influenced by his ability, or inability to obtain information from phonological information within a word. Studies have shown over the years that phonological information is key to being a good reader. The more information a student can extract from the words he reads, the more information he will take from the text. In a study done at the University of Haifa on prelingually Deaf individuals, it was found that Deaf students who were taught orally and Deaf students who were taught with their native sign language both approached reading written text differently, even though they were taught how to read in a similar fashion. The natively Deaf participants used a fingerspelling system to recode text. While the orally taught Deaf students, relied more on the phonological structure of the words (Miller, 2002). The findings suggest that there was no significant difference between the two groups ability to recognize written text. Though, the article does suggest that the sign language user might be at a disadvantage with words that fall in a higher vocabulary. The importance of phonemes seems less important to a profoundly Deaf native signer. “How Do Profoundly Deaf Children Learn to Read” claims even if a Deaf child learns to break down words phonetically, it may not