Reading Behaviors of Deaf Bilingual College Students

Of the 2 million deaf Americans in the US, many go on to higher education and learn to read English without hearing conversational speech. Despite the fact that numerous studies have documented low reading levels of deaf students on standardized tests of English language achievement (Traxler, 2000), many deaf adults read of ten and read very well for everyday purposes. Few studies have examined the strategies of successful skilled deaf bilingual readers. Bilingual deaf adults use American Sign Language (ASL) and English daily in a variety of contexts. While a small minority of deaf adults are monolingual using only spoken English, most use ASL or a contact variety of sign. Most deaf adults also watch captioned television, use the TTY, the Internet, email, wireless pagers, real-time captioning, and video conferencing. We studied eight deaf bilingual college students and interviewed them in sign language about their English reading behaviors at home and at school. We also examined what metacognitive strategies they used across four types of texts using interview and think-aloud protocols. A composite picture of the reading behaviors of deaf adults was thus described. Implications were presented on how to use this information in programs for young least skilled deaf bilingual readers