Using Balanced and Interactive Writing Instruction to Improve the Higher Order and Lower Order Writing Skills of Deaf Students

Abstract

This article reports the findings of balanced and interactive writing instruction used with 16 deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Although the instruction has been used previously, this was the first time it had been modified to suit the specific needs of deaf children and the first time it had been implemented with this subpopulation of students. The intervention took place in two elementary classrooms (N = 8) and one middle school classroom (N = 8) for a total of 21 days. A comparison of pre- and posttest scores on both writing and reading measures evidenced that students made significant gains with use of genre-specific traits, use of contextual language, editing/revising skills, and word identification. Students showed neither gains nor losses with conventions and total word count. In addition, a one-way multiple analysis of variance was used to detect any school-level effects. Elementary students made significantly greater gains with respect to conventions and word identification, and middle school students made significantly greater gains with editing and revising tasks.

Writing Skills of Hearing-Impaired Students Who Benefit from Support Services at Public Schools in Turkey

“…Hearing-impaired children enrolled in public schools are included in literacy teaching practices, despite the fact that they lack the knowledge and linguistic experiences that their peers with normal hearing abilities possess. In studies, hearing-impaired students, who were enrolled in public schools and had intermediate or advanced levels of impairment, were observed to experience delays in their writing skills when compared with their peers with normal hearing abilities (Antia et al, 2005;Wolbers, 2007). Minimizing this delay depends on determining the linguistic and academic needs of the students enrolled in public schools and providing them with systematic support services.…”

“…Additionally, authentic writing activities ensure the use of the rereading and revising phases with the aim of publishing the text (Wolbers et al, 2016). Therefore, hearing-impaired students should be exposed to the writing process in public schools and in self-contained environments with the aim of improving their writing skills, which would help them in constructing the content of the text, as well as in organizing their thoughts (Wolbers, 2007).…”

“…In various studies, hearing-impaired students were found to perform poorly in writing skills (Geers, 2003;Schirmer & Mcgouhg, 2005) and their writing scores were found to be lower than their peers with normal hearing abilities (Antia et al, 2005;Spencer, Baker & Tomblin, 2003). Two reasons for this could be that hearing-impaired children are not able to acquire language experiences, as rich as that of their peers with normal hearing abilities, and that teaching practices on reading and writing are insufficient (Karasu, 2004;Most, Aram & Andorn, 2006;Wolbers, 2007).…”

“…However, the number of studies on hearing-impaired students enrolled in public schools was found to be limited. In the existing studies, evaluations were made of the writing skills of hearing-impaired students that spent a certain amount of time in formal education classes (Antia, Jones, Reed & Kreimeyer, 2009;Antia et al, 2005); the writing tasks of students enrolled in resource room programs and mainstream settings were analyzed (Musselman & Szanto, 1998;Spencer et al, 2003), various inclusion programs were examined (Most et al, 2006), and hearing-impaired students, who attended self-contained classrooms, were discussed in terms of their writing skills (Easterbrooks & Stoner, 2006;Wolbers, 2007). In the study by Antia et al (2005) on 110 hearing-impaired students, who were enrolled in public schools, students were found to perform within the low mean score levels in contextual conversions, contextual language, and story construction sub tests.…”

“…However, the researchers stated that there was a decrease in the students' use of grammar elements in the stories and that this was due to their increased focus on using adjectives. In another study (Wolbers, 2007), an examination was made of the development of writing skills in 16 hearing-impaired students, who were provided with support services for their literacy skills. In the study, a morning massage was used within the scope of balanced and interactive writing instruction.…”