Effects of electronic interactive book use on narrative skills in deaf and hearing impaired students

Hearing loss affects the way humans function in different areas in life. One of them is surely language. This master’s thesis focuses on the storytelling ability. If a child is proficient in a language, this ability develops through the auditory pathway which is impaired in children with hearing loss. The storytelling ability can predict future literacy levels and can thus indicate the future academic and social success of an individual. This showcases an everyday problem for the deaf and hard of hearing. In the theoretical part of this master’s thesis, the characteristics of the deaf and hard of hearing community, their language development, and their education are presented. Furthermore, the storytelling ability and its development are shown. This is followed by a brief presentation of the concept of electronic interactive support. The empirical part comprises of the storytelling ability analysis of students who are deaf and hard of hearing and are aged between seven and nine. The analysis focuses on two different situations: story retelling after the storybook reading was traditionally mediated and story retelling after the storybook reading was electronically mediated. The storytelling ability analysis was performed in different areas, more specifically: story comprehension, language structure, story structure and psychological structure. The analysis shows an improvement in the following areas: story comprehension, language structure and story structure. There was no improvement in psychological structure. The determined differences are not statistically significant. The interactive book The Princess and the Pea is a novelty in the Slovenian surdopedagogical field. This thesis examines to what extent the book reaches its main purpose – story comprehension and storytelling improvement in students who are deaf and hard of hearing. At the same time, this thesis encourages professionals who work with children who are deaf and hard of hearing to advance their research and innovations in this area. By developing the storytelling ability of children who are deaf and hard of hearing, literacy, academic and social success can be improved