10 Things You Should Know about Reading
Vocabulary and Students with Hearing Loss
Dr. Susan Easterbrooks
Professor, GSU
Dr. Nanci Scheetz
Professor, VSU
First, some startling statistics…
• The median DHH student graduates high school reading
somewhere around a 4th grade level.
• After achieving a late 2nd/early 3rd grade level, DHH
students gain approximately 3/10 of a grade level per
year in reading ability.
• Estimates on the percent of 18 year old DHH students
who read on grade level upon graduation range between
3 and 10% .
I. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing typically come
to school with an impoverished vocabulary when compared
to children who can hear.
Hearing Children before kindergarten will
have heard:
45,000,000 words – College
Educated Families
Many children with
hearing loss do have
access to a rich
26,000,000 words – Working Class
Families
13,000,000 words – Lower SocioEconomic Families (Knoell, 2005).
vocabulary until a)
someone starts signing
with them, b) they get
their first hearing aids, or
c) they start school.
Exposure to Language:
Hearing Children
Exposure to Language
Deaf Children
II. You need to determine where on the pyramid your student is experiencing
problems.
Labels
This means that they
Ability to read
struggle with the bottom
the words and
two sections of the
make sense
pyramid. It is a
concept and
Words and
language problem
grammar that represent
for most, rather
the ideas
than a reading
problem,
World Knowledge
per se.
Ideas about the world
Do you remember this
pyramid from a
previous
presentation?
Here’s an example. Read the following, define
the words, explain what it means (OK, you math
wizards…give the rest of us a chance to figure it
out!)
“There are only 10 kinds of people in the
world: those who understand binary and
those who don’t.”
Hmmmmm…Let’s analyze this
Can you decode all these words?
Do you know what the following words mean? 10, People, Understand, Binary,
Those?
Can you phrase this correctly? Can you read it at an appropriate words per
minute?
*
So you have all the “pieces,” but you still don’t have text comprehension! This is
because you don’t have the two bottom pieces of the pyramid.
• Activating prior knowledge: What does 10
represent in the binary system?
– This will help you figure out the answer
• For children with hearing loss, you cannot
access a prior knowledge system if they do
not have that information in their system.
III. Students with hearing loss have problems at all
the layers of vocabulary knowledge.
– “Listening” (basic) vocabulary
– Grammar
• You cannot read English that you do not understand.
– Sight word recognition
– Retention
• Working memory is overtaxed when children read word for word.
– Multiple Meanings
– Idioms and other figures of speech
• Can understand these but are 3-4 years delayed. The amount of
figurative language in print material is overwhelming.
– The language of testing
IV. Teach students with hearing loss a
broader vocabulary.
5 year-old hearing children are able to speak about 1500-2000 and understand 25003000 words. Their sentences contain of 5-8 words. They also can almost tell a story
with accuracy.
5 year-old children…
…who are severely to profoundly deaf may come to school with a vocabulary as
limited as a few words. They may not use complete sentences.
…who are hard of hearing or have moderate losses may come to school with a
vocabulary nearer to the average, but many have significant deficits.
Vocabulary tends to fall across a limited range of conceptual categories. Words
having to do with objects, actions, and ideas outside a child’s realm of first-hand
experience are limited.
people
vehicles
places
They know generic labels (bird, car, shoes) but not
examples of the category (parakeet, SUV, sneakers)
Work with the SLP and TOD to help your student
develop a broader vocabulary.
– Why? Because children learn to decode known words more
readily than unknown words.
– Because vocabulary knowledge is the single best predictor of
ease of learning to read.
V. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing need a deeper
vocabulary: Multiple meanings
• Both depth and breadth are issues for students with
hearing loss.
– May know the primary definition, but often lack second and third
definitions.
Run
He ran down the street.
His allergy to cats made his
nose run.
The play had a long run.
He ran the meeting efficiently.
He ran on and on.
VI. Students with hearing loss need to know
figures of speech
Examples found in 1st grade books
•
Verb idioms
The jet will run out of gas.
I washed them off.
He worked to help the cars get by.
•
Idiomatic expressions
Time was running low.
•
Personification
Triceratops was a skateboard champ.
•
Hyperbole
“Nobody ever helps me”, said the mouse.
•
Litotes
I wanted to blow up my sea horse…
Grandma helped a little.
•
Alliteration
The Great Gray Goose gathered her goslings.
Examples found in 3rd grade books
Verb idioms
Mirette worked up the courage to speak.
…but it did not wake up!
Idiomatic expressions
That man had the nerves of an iceberg.
Personification
Please teach me. My feet are already
unhappy on the ground.
Hyperbole
They tried everything under the sun, but nothing
seemed to work.
Litotes
She jumped up on the wire, but in a
moment she was back on the ground.
• When teaching figurative expressions, especially idioms, teach the
accurate semantic meaning. Do not spend time on drawings or
pictures of the false meaning.
E.g., You’re pulling my leg.
Deaf children are visually oriented and will want to retain the amusing
figure rather than the actual meaning.
“You’re pulling my leg” means “you’re teasing me.”
Here’s a good book to use to talk about the concept of teasing.
VII. Deaf students benefit from semantic
approaches to vocabulary development.
• Semantic mapping
• Context-based approaches
• Concept-based approaches
• Fairview Program
• THE least effective approach for teaching vocabulary
to deaf children is to have them look up a book in the
dictionary, copy the definition, and write a sentence.
Semantic Mapping
• The teacher writes a word that represents the key concept.
• The student think of words that relate to the key word.
• These words are grouped around the key word in categories.
• The teacher presents new words and encourages a discussion about where these words might fit
into the map.
(Duffelmeyer & Banwart, 1993; Heimlich & Pittelman, 1986; Johnson, Pittelman, &Heimlich, 1986)
Here is an example of a semantic map for the solar system
Context-Based Approach
• Youngsters ultimately need to encounter a word in context to develop a full sense
of its meaning (Gipe, 1980; Gipe & Arnold, 1979).
• Guessing vocabulary from context is the most frequent
way to discover the meaning of new words.
• Go to these websites to search for specific vocabulary in
different children’s books. The more examples the
student reads, the more rich his contextual base.
Steps for exploring context (Blachowicz & Fisher,1996)
1st - Look before, at, and after the word.
2nd- Connect what they know to what the author has written.
3rd- Predict a possible meaning.
4th- Resolve or re-do.
Decide if they know enough, should try
consult an expert or reference.
again, or
Concept-Based Approach
• Concept-based approaches are grounded on the assumption that new
knowledge is gained from finding new relationships in old knowledge
and from relating new information to old knowledge. (Schirmer, 2000)
– Approaches
• Expansion maps
• Distancing
• Expanded Frayer Model
Expansion maps
Develop a semantic map, then have students brainstorm other connections.
The basic map designed by students (old relationships) is blue. Expansions by the
teacher (new relationships) are yellow.
Horse of a different color
IHOP
short stack
Horse around
cows
Pigs in blankets
pigs
farm
car
barn
expressions
ride
horse
carriage
saddle
expressions
Cinderella
Amish
Sounds like “hoarse”
sore throat
To be saddled (burdened) with…
Get back in the saddle (try again after a failure)
• Distancing
– Distancing is a conversational approach to expanding concepts
into the student’s real world.
• Ask questions about a concept in the book.
• Relate to the student’s person life.
• Relate to your life.
– Example conversation
Look on this page. It says, “Her fear was
like a cloud casting it’s shadow on all she
had done.” We talked about what that means
yesterday. Have you ever felt that way?
Yes. I try try very hard. Study.
Prepare for academic bowl.
Nervous.
That’s a great example. Once when I was
entering a contest with my dog, we practiced
and practices, but I was so nervous and afraid
that I just knew we were going to mess up. It
made me feel dark. Like a shadow was over me.
The doctor tell my Mom, you have bad xray.
Whew!
I’m
glad.
Come back. Mom was shadow over her. But
now Mom OK.
Expanded Frayer Model
Frayer, D., Frederick, W. C., and Klausmeier, H. J. (1969). A Schema for Testing the Level of Cognitive Mastery.
Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
• Begins with the Frayer Model but expand words out three levels:
– Multiple meanings
– Free association
– Figurative language
Sudden emotion
To jar with a quick, hard blow.
unexpected
A
small,
potent
portion
Sudden jerky motion
shocking
quick
jolt
The car
started with
a jolt.
Stop “The policeman jolt
the car.”
Shake “I jolt the
mixture.”
A sudden feeling of shock,
surprise, or disappointment.
The Fairview Learning Program: A semantically-based
program developed for students with hearing loss.
• Provides direct access to ASL and opens a window for hearing and
deaf people to begin to think and sign bilingually. (Fairview Learning
Network)
• Currently used in 42 states
Fairview Continued…
• The Bridge Lists & The Bridging Process
– The bridge lists are English phrases requiring ASL translation for
understanding.
– Example: “Down the street” requires multiple sign concepts, depending on
the context.
• “A ball was hit down the street”
• “A man walked down the street.”
Example: How would you teach the multiple meaning of the word “of”?
Through context!!!!
A measure of something
Talking about something
a story of (about) survival
Location
North of (where) the lake.
A book of (about) names
In the middle of (where)
the forest
A tale of (about) two cities.
From
The case of (about) the
missing pen.
The Duchess of York.
Cause
Before
Died of a heart attack
Quarter of three
a lb. of (what) ………
cheese, chocolate, nails
a bag of (what) …….
peanuts, clothespins
a box of (what) …….
dishes, cereal, rice
a book of (what) …..
matches, addresses
years of (what) ……
deprivation, growth
VIII. Deaf students benefit from morphographemic
vocabulary instruction.
• What is a morphograph?
• Based on morphemes (word parts):
– Root words- dog, car, at, on, just
– Bound morphemes (affixes)
• Prefixes (un, re, dis)
• Suffixes (ly, ment, s, ness)
• Students learn word meanings by first writing parts of
words (graphemes) and then by analyzing their meaning.
Morphographic analysis is effective with deaf students
because:
•
The patterns of letters are visually mediated and are thus available to the
deaf student. You see and sign them, not necessarily say them.
•
Morphographic correspondence in English is more stable and therefore
more reliable than graphophonemic correspondence.
•
Ability to apply syntactic knowledge to decoding text is highly correlated
with comprehension performance of good readers who are deaf (Kelly,
1995).
•
Skilled readers who are deaf pay attention to form features of English text
more so than poor readers.
•
Strong evidence exists for the role of a large vocabulary in reading
proficiency, and manipulation of morphological forms is critical to
development of more advanced vocabulary.
•
Spellings derived from morphographic analysis are more stable than
spelling from phonic analysis.
• http://www.strugglingreaders.com/html/GA122.ht
m
IX. One of the best ways to improve reading
vocabulary is to read to and read with a
student.
• Read to and read with children with hearing losses as
often as possible.
– This mimics the reading exposure that hearing children receive
from their parents.
– Use standard children’s literature.
-Use materials developed specifically for children who are deaf and
hard of hearing.
Allow the student to view text to ASL renderings of stories
•
Sundance/Newbridge accessible texts
•
Gallaudet’s Shared Reading stories
http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/srp/bookbags.html
X. Interpreters need to use conceptually
accurate signs.
Made
 I made my bed.
 I made money.
 My brother made me do that.
 The rain made the grass green.
 I made a present for you.
Each of these uses is represented by a different sign. If you sign the
generic sign for “make”, this will not support concept development.
I. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing typically come to school with an impoverished
vocabulary when compared to children who can hear.
II. You need to determine where on the reading pyramid your student is experiencing
problems.
III. Students with hearing loss have problems at all the layers of vocabulary knowledge.
IV. Teach students with hearing loss a broader vocabulary.
V. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing need a deeper vocabulary: Multiple
meanings
VI. Students with hearing loss need to know figures of speech
VII. Deaf students benefit from semantic approaches to vocabulary instruction.
VIII. Deaf students benefit from morphographemic vocabulary instruction.
IX. One of the best ways to improve reading vocabulary is to read to and read with a
student.
X. Interpreters need to use conceptually accurate signs.
Resources and Materials
www.buttepublications.com
www.linguisystems.com
http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu