1) What is deafness ?
Hearing impairment is a sensory handicap. It is the most common sensory disability affecting 1,000 new children each year. Hearing impairment is the consequence of a partial or total loss of hearing and understanding the sounds of the environment. However, we can distinguish different types of deafness according to three main criteria. The first criterion corresponds to the degree of impairment (hearing loss can vary between 20 dB and up to more than 90 dB). The second criterion is that of laterality : are both ears affected or only one of the two? And finally, the third criterion, relating to the onset of deafness: is the onset abrupt or progressive? Are we talking about innate or acquired deafness?
2) Learning to read
There are two types of learning strategies. On the one hand, the visual-graphic strategy which gives access to the meaning of words whose spelling has been memorized. This strategy does not require the phonemes-graphemes association, there is no sound representation. On the other hand, the phonographic strategy corresponding to the use of the sound / group of letters correspondence system or phonemes-graphemes association. This strategy allows you to decode new written words and access their meaning thanks to their memorized oral form. It is this second strategy that is difficult to develop in deaf children, because it is associated with sound language.
Regarding the strengths and weaknesses of deaf children in reading: the spelling lexicon represents a real strong point for deaf children because they often have good visual memorization capacities which allow them to correctly reproduce words. This generates an overdevelopment of the visual-graphic strategy. Conversely, morphosyntax and phonographic strategy are weak points since these children have difficulty in perceiving fine phonetic oppositions.
3) Learning to write
Regarding the strengths and weaknesses of deaf children in writing: as in learning to read, lexical spelling is an asset in learning to write. Deaf children have facilities concerning basic punctuation but also for heterographic homophones. On the contrary, the difficulties are located once again at the level of morphosyntax, of the production of texts, such as for example omissions or inversions of letters.
4) Morphosyntax
The production of texts represents a difficulty for deaf children. Basic punctuation is mastered even if it can be “too much” used (in particular the exclamation point). Morphological marks are very often absent or erroneous in the written productions of deaf children (for example confusions relating to verbal endings or incomplete sentences.)
5) Conclusion
We observe an overdevelopment of visual strategies and this in order to compensate the deficiencies created at the auditory level. As a result, it is observed that deaf children have different profiles than hearing children, since certain areas such as lexical spelling and punctuation are overdeveloped, while others, such as morphosyntax, are delayed.
Words I have learned:
- spelling = orthographe
- deafness = surdité
- lexicon = lexique
- strengths and weaknesses = les forces et les faiblesses
- delayed = en retard
Bibliography:
Niederberger, N. (2007). Learning to read and write in deaf children. Childhood, 59 (3), 254-262.