An evaluation of the reading comprehension of students in Victoria who are profoundly, prelingually deaf and of an intervention programme to improve their inferential reading comprehension skills

© 1995 Dr. Lynette M. WalkerThis thesis is concerned with the reading comprehension of students in Victoria who are profoundly prelingually deaf. The study firstly addresses reading abilities of these students and the factors that affect these abilities. Secondly, this study implements a programme for a sub-group of underachieving readers. The research was conducted in two stages. Stage one evaluated the reading comprehension outcomes for 195 prelingually, profoundly deaf students in government and non-government schools. The subjects were tested on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Comprehension Test. It was found that there was a wide range of reading comprehension ability amongst the subjects. However, 58.0% of these students were reading in the below the average range compared with 23.0% of their hearing peers. The average rate of advancement for the Australian subjects was found to be 0.5 of a grade per year. The deaf students over 15 years of age achieved an average reading level of grade 6.0 which was commensurate with recent findings from America and higher than that found in Britain. Some significant differences between sub-groups were found. Female deaf readers were reading better than males. There was also a significant difference between the reading competency of the subjects according- to their aetiology. The Rubella subjects tended to be the poorest readers and the Meningitic subjects the most competent readers. Overall the subjects' literal reading scores were significantly higher than their inferential scores. An analysis of the scores for the textual, functional and recreational reading genres showed a significant difference between the scores from the three educational settings with mainstreamed students reading better than integrated who read better than segregated students in all areas. The subjects were also tested for their ability to infer meaning from pictures. Further, a multiple regression showed that being female, having above average academic potential and being in an mainstreamed oral setting and having the ability to use inferential strategies with pictures were all significant predictive factors for reading comprehension competence. Stage two of the research involved 60 subjects who were identified as underachieving from stage one. An intervention programme which aimed at using pictorial material to encourage the use of inferential strategies in reading was developed. The research design involved four groups of 15 subjects (two experimental, two control). The experimental groups received 30 lessons of an intervention programme to teach inferential reading strategies using pictorial and written text. One of the control groups underwent a reference skill programme and the other did not receive any specific intervention. Using the Stanford Diagnostic Test of Reading Comprehension, post-intervention reading comprehension competence was measured. A significant improvement in the reading comprehension competence of the experimental subjects was found. The amount of improvement was more than two reading grade levels over a twelve month span. It was further shown that the subjects over 15 years of age also improved. The programme was particularly effective with the weakest and the youngest deaf readers. The findings of this research have implications for educational programmes designed to improve the literacy of profoundly, prelingually deaf readers. By placing an emphasis on the processes involved in inferential comprehension, the deaf readers learned to interact with the text