Using Verbal Protocols to Identify the Reading Strategies of Students Who Are Deaf

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the reading strategies used by students who are deaf by investigating their self-reported thinking during reading. The participants were 10 elementary students attending a residential state school for the deaf. After each page of reading a short story, the participants were asked to think aloud (or think visibly, in the case of sign language). Analysis of these verbal reports indicated that the participants constructed meaning, monitored comprehension and activated strategies to improve comprehension, and evaluated, but did not demonstrate, each reading strategy within these three classifications. They engaged in a considerably greater variety of reading strategies for constructing meaning than for the other two classifications.

The imagination effect increases with an increased intrinsic cognitive load

“…Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser, 1989;Renkl, 1997) may include components of imagination in that in order to self-explain a procedure, one may need to imagine it. Its use for special education students (Schirmer, 2003) has been found to be beneficial. Imagination or mental practice in sports psychology has been used for the enhancing of game or motor performance (e.g.…”

The design of a software to enhance the reading comprehension skills of deaf students: An integration of multiple theoretical perspectives

“…of strategic thinking and problem solving in relation to reading (Erwoldt et al 1992;Schirmer 2003;Strassman 1997).…”

The Challenge of Learning to Read Written English for the Profoundly Pre-lingually Deaf Adult

“…A non-standardized questionnaire originally published by Lichtenstein (1998) was adopted to investigate the extent to which participants used speech and sign coding during reading and writing. The validity of self-report measures for readers who are deaf has been established (Schirmer 2003, Schirmer, Bailey, Schirmer-Lockman 2004. The questionnaire was used in an interview format with points for their reported use of sign representations or speech-based coding for each task as determined by Lichtenstein.…”