The Important Issue of Deaf Students in the Reading Classrooms.
Not only is the process of word recognition important in order to learn how to read, but the procedure of reading comprehension is crucial in developing an understanding of the meaning of text. Many beginning readers make use of context when they are reading. By using prior knowledge, they compensate for inefficient word recognition. Word recognition can be summarized as the process of linking the written form of a word with a representation in the internal, mental lexicon dictionary of the brain. Deafness is a condition with so serious a hearing loss that perception of spoken language by primary auditory means is impossible, even with the strongest amplification equipment, such as powerful individual hearing aids. Deaf children can experience enormous problems in the process of learning to read because they lack the ability to hear spoken language. As a result, deaf children start the reading process with less world knowledge, less cognitive and linguistic knowledge, and obviously less knowledge of the spoken language. It is unfortunate that they lack the sounds and grammatical structures of words. Deaf readers are caught in a vicious circle in that: their poor vocabulary limits their reading comprehension, and their poor reading strategies and skills seem to limit their ability to acquire adequate vocabulary knowledge from context. .
Most people are aware that there are at least two main opinions on how to approach a child with reading. According to the text, The Psychology of Reading by Crowder, one method is the phonics method, which emphasizes "learning the sounds made by letters first, then learning to blend these sounds so that the written symbols make contact with their meanings through the spoken language. The other method, sometimes called the whole word method, emphasizes "learning a direct connection between the written word, as a pattern, and the meaning for which it stands" (Crowder, 1992).
