Narrative skills and learning strategies in L1 and L2 in hearing-impaired learners

Vujasić, Nives. (2017). Narrative skills and learning strategies in L1 and L2 in hearing-impaired learners. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature
Department of Phonetics. [mentor Tomić, Diana and Geld, Renata].

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Abstract

Learning the first language is often a great challenge for children with hearing impairment. Moreover, learning another language is often seen as a difficulty, even not recommended at an early age in order to not interfere with the first language acquisition. However, multilingualism seems to be growing today, and the last available data suggests that in 2013 there were over 1,200 children with hearing impairment in Croatia, making 3.6% of children with disabilities. In the population of people with hearing impairment, 11% are the children up to the age of 19, although it is present in all age groups. Education of children with hearing impairment is organized in special health institutions, such as The SUVAG Polyclinic, and regular schools. If a child with hearing impairment attends a regular school, it is usually supervised by a team of expert associates. This not only brings advantages like socializing, but also problems such as lack of preparedness of the environment to react adequately to the needs of the student. For these reasons, this research focuses on the narrative and comprehension skills in the first and the second language of hearing impaired and typically developing native speakers of Croatian (L1), with English as their foreign language (L2). Their proficiency in both languages is determined by using a predefined Multilingual assessment instrument for narratives (MAIN, 2012) – an instrument which had never been used in a published research on hearing impaired learners in Croatia before. Next, the learning strategies are observed, and additionally, the main differences on different linguistic levels are described. The results of the research have shown the expected advantage of the typically developing group in both languages, but in some cases not as much as it was expected. The main conclusion is the need to approach each child individually, as the individual differences inside one group are occasionally higher than in comparison to the other group. Also, the qualitative analysis shows characteristics of the language and speech of the children with hearing impairment. which can not only help the further research, but also give a good feedback to the (English) language teachers about this specific learning situation.

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