The development of spelling in deaf and hard of hearing children

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of spelling in deaf and hard of hearing children. 16 deaf and hard of hearing children between the ages of 5 and 11 with a moderate-severe to profound hearing loss, who primarily communicated orally, formed the experimental group. 16 normal hearing children between the ages of 4 and 9 formed the control group. Both groups of children were asked to provide a spontaneous spelling sample as well as to label 20 pictures on a structured word list. In addition, they were asked to participate in 3 metalinguistic awareness tests (2 of which were phonological awareness tests). The metalinguistic measures were included in the study to examine the often reported relationship between spelling and metalinguistic awareness, in deaf and hard of hearing children. The major findings from the present study were that deaf and hard of hearing children make the same types of errors as are seen in the spelling of hearing children, but that their spelling follows a somewhat different developmental pattern. Most of the deaf and hard of hearing children were scored in a later spelling stage of the model, which is dominated by visual-orthographic errors, suggesting that the spelling development of the deaf and hard of hearing children may not fit a model of spelling development designed to describe the spelling development of hearing children (Roper, 1991). In regards to the metalinguistic abilities tested, hearing children outperformed deaf and hard of hearing children in the metalinguistic measures. In both groups there was evidence of a correlation between the 2 abilities.Medicine, Faculty ofAudiology and Speech Sciences, School ofGraduat