Understanding the building blocks of words, such as phonological awareness and phonics, is critical for all children, including deaf children, when learning to read. Research has consistently demonstrated that phonological awareness, which involves identifying and manipulating the sounds in language, is a strong predictor of reading achievement.
An understanding of how words can be broken down into smaller units of meaning is important when deaf and hard-of-hearing children learn to read, according to research. This understanding of roots, prefixes, and suffixes, known as morphological awareness, assists children in learning new words and expanding their vocabulary. This is the first meta-analysis study to demonstrate its significance for people with hearing loss.
Morphological awareness may be more important to them than phonology and phonics use. According to the meta-analysis, this suggests potential for deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils to actively form words using knowledge of morphemes and morphological structures. The meta-analysis begs the question of whether this should be required in the classroom.
Deaf and hard-of-hearing children frequently face literacy challenges, and researchers hope that their work will improve their access to teaching and learning.
Our research suggests that morphological awareness may be an even more important factor in DHH students’ word reading, especially given their limited access to phonology. This is not to say that phonological abilities are unimportant for DHH students.
Dr. Dongbo Zhang
The study, published in the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, was carried out by Dongbo Zhang and Hannah Anglin-Jaffe from the University of Exeter, Sihui Ke, from The Hong Kong Polytechnic and Junhui Yang, from the University of Central Lancashire.
“A focus on using phonics in schools may have obscured the way morphological awareness can be beneficial to deaf and hard of hearing students when they learn to read,” stated Dr. Anglin-Jaffe. We believe that this study will begin the process of challenging accepted methods of thinking and teaching, as well as contribute to the advancement of deaf culture and communities.”
Researchers looked at studies on morphological awareness that covered information on the reading abilities of 556 deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils. The findings revealed strong mean relationships between morphological awareness and word reading, vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension.
The study found those with severe or profound hearing loss may tend to rely more on morphographic analysis than on graphophonemic analysis for word reading.
“Our research suggests that morphological awareness may be an even more important factor in DHH students’ word reading, especially given their limited access to phonology,” Dr. Zhang said. This is not to say that phonological abilities are unimportant for DHH students.”
“This is strong evidence that morphological awareness is consistently important for vocabulary development, regardless of language, reading stage, or methods of assessing MA or vocabulary knowledge.” This clearly supports an educational focus on morphological problem-solving to promote DHH students’ lexical engagement and vocabulary acquisition.”
