Deaf College Students' Reading Comprehension and Strategy Use

• Published in: American annals of the deaf (Washington, D.C. 1886) Vol. 146; no. 5; pp. 385 - 400
• Main Authors: Kelly, Ronald R., Albertini, John A., Shannon, Nora B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf 01.12.2001; Gallaudet University Press; American Annals of the Deaf
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; College Students; Control Groups; Deaf education; Deafness; Educational Strategies; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Grade levels; Handicap; Higher Education; Humans; Instructional Effectiveness; Learning Processes; Metacognition; Methane; Posttests; Psychology and medicine; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Reading Comprehension; Reading Improvement; Reading Strategies; Self Evaluation (Individuals); Snakes; Students; Study Skills; Universities; New York; United States > US; Human; Verbal ability; Verbal comprehension; Reading; Language; Metacognition; Auditory disorder; ENT disease; Cognition; Hearing loss
• ISSN: 0002-726X; 1543-0375; 1543-0375
• DOI: 10.1353/aad.2012.0206

Two comprehension studies were conducted with 46 deaf college students. In the first, 20 deaf college students representing higher and lower reading-ability levels were tested for correctly stating the main idea of a passage, answering content questions, indicating their understanding of the words and phrases, and recognizing a topically incongruent sentence embedded in the passage. The results suggest that deaf students profess a better understanding of what they read than they are able to demonstrate. The students' inability to identify a topically incongruent sentence in the passage further suggests a need for them to more carefully and accurately evaluate their understanding of what they are reading. A second study investigated the effect of strategy review instruction on deaf college students' comprehension of short reading passages. Students reading at a higher level showed improved comprehension on the posttraining passage, but students reading at a lower level did not. Similarly, the control group of deaf students comparable to the higher-level readers did not show improved comprehension.