Grammatical Deviations in the Spoken and Written Language of Hebrew-Speaking Children With Hearing Impairments

chani{at}post.tau.ac.il

Purpose: The present study reports a detailed analysis of written and spoken language samples of Hebrew-speaking children aged 11–13 years who are deaf. It focuses on the description of various grammatical deviations in the two modalities.

Method: Participants were 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classrooms integrated into two elementary schools in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 students with normal hearing (NH) in regular classes in these same schools. Spoken and written language samples were collected from all participants using the same five preplanned elicitation probes.

Results: Students with HI were found to display significantly more grammatical deviations than their NH peers in both their spoken and written language samples. Most importantly, between-modality differences were noted. The participants with HI exhibited significantly more grammatical deviations in their written language samples than in their spoken samples. However, the distribution of grammatical deviations across categories was similar in the two modalities. The most common grammatical deviations in order of their frequency were failure to supply obligatory morphological markers, failure to mark grammatical agreement, and the omission of a major syntactic constituent in a sentence. Word order violations were rarely recorded in the Hebrew samples.

Clinical Implications: Performance differences in the two modalities encourage clinicians and teachers to facilitate target linguistic forms in diverse communication contexts. Furthermore, the identification of linguistic targets for intervention must be based on the unique grammatical structure of the target language.

KEY WORDS: grammatical deviations, children with hearing impairments, spoken and written language, language assessment

Submitted on February 24, 2000
Accepted on September 27, 2000

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				S.-F. Cheng and S. Rose Investigating the Technical Adequacy of Curriculum-Based Measurement in Written Expression for Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., October 1, 2009; 14(4): 503 - 515. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				E. A. Schorr, F. P. Roth, and N. A. Fox A Comparison of the Speech and Language Skills of Children With Cochlear Implants and Children With Normal Hearing Communication Disorders Quarterly, August 1, 2008; 29(4): 195 - 210. [Abstract] [PDF]

				D. Hermans, H. Knoors, E. Ormel, and L. Verhoeven Modeling Reading Vocabulary Learning in Deaf Children in Bilingual Education Programs J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., April 1, 2008; 13(2): 155 - 174. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				N. Friedmann and R. Szterman Syntactic Movement in Orally Trained Children With Hearing Impairment J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., January 1, 2006; 11(1): 56 - 75. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]