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Now we move to the results. The results from the first part of the research.
In the results from the interviews there seem to be two variations in the way these teachers approached
the students with hearing disability when teaching the English lessons.
The first variation has to do with those subjects with hearing disability who needed a special syllabus
because they had different problems apart from their hearing disability.
As these problems had not been diagnosed by the time this research was being developed, they were in class with the rest of the students.
Although they did not participate in the second part of the research.
The second variation has to do with the oral participation of these students in the English classroom.
As I mentioned before they were not required to participate orally in the English classroom.
However there were to subjects who sometimes performed some activities
but these activities had a written base.
These results might be confirmed, the little use of spoken English done by these students,
might be confirmed with the results of the questionnaire.
If we pay attention to what the students answered to the question
"When I have any doubts I use my English to ask my teacher"
We can see that 1/3 of the students with hearing disability in blue (in the chart)
chose the option "never".
So that they never used English to ask their teacher.
Another 1/3 chose the option "barely" so that they barely used English to ask their teacher.
So here we can check that most of the students with hearing disability "never" or "barely" produced anything spontaneous in oral English.
Now the results from the second part.
Before commenting the results of this part I will introduce the code of errors for each test so that everyone can follow the charts.
Here are the results for test 1, the one related to present simple and present continuous
and here (in this test) we have four types of errors
Type A was, those mistakes done by the students when they had to fulfill sentences determined by time expressions related to the present simple
For example "I'm studying English every day" instead of "I study English every day".
Type B errors were the contrary
sentences which had to be performed using the present continuous but they were performed using the present simple.
Type C errors appeared when there were mistakes using the present simple.
For example the lack of auxiliares or the 3rd person singular, the "s" or the "es".
And type D errors were the same for the present continous: the lack of the verb To Be constructing the present continuous or the wrong spelling of the -ing forms.
The most interesting thing about these results is that
the use of English, specially in the distinction between the present simple and present continuous concentrated in type A and B errors (in the charts),
is quite similar between students with hearing disability in blue and students without hearing disability in red (in the charts).
In the second test, the one related to countable and uncountable nouns,
let me explain first the code of errors.
Type A errors appeared when the quantifiers chosen were not correct.
And type B errors were those for the correct distinction between countable and uncountable nouns.
Here again we can see that the results are quite similar between students with hearing loss and without hearing loss.
As I mentioned before, the questionnaire designed for this part contained some items
which measured the students' comprehension of the concepts implied in both present tenses and in countable and uncountable nouns.
The results of the questionnaire are the following:
To the question "I know what a routine is and how to express it in English"
we can see that 1/3 of the students with hearing disability chose the option "barely",
so that they barely knew what a routine is.
Again another 1/3 of the students chose the option "sometimes", that they sometimes knew what a routine is.
This tendency is maintained in the following question "I can recognize actions happening in the present".
Again 1/3 of the students chose the option "barely" and another 1/3 the option "sometimes"
This tendency, however, is not maintained in the question "I can distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns".
It is true that 1/3 of the students again chose the option "barely"
but we can see here in the chart that the rest 2/3 of the students with hearing disability
in blue chose the option "often" which is more successful than "barely".
The possible reason for this difference in the tendency is that
when this research was developed with the students, the grammatical structures related countable and uncountable nouns were being taught to them.
Now we move to the conclusions.
First I will start with the conclusions from the second part of the research, the one focused on use and comprehension of the English language.
In terms of competence using English, as we have seen in the results from the tests 1 and 2,
students with hearing disability and without hearing disability had a similar level using the language.
However in terms of comprehending the concepts related to the grammatical structures,
an important number of students with hearing loss seem to have more problems than their counterparts.
For example as you can see here in these charts
the chart on your left represents the number of mistakes both group of students made
when they had to distinguish between present simple and present continuous
in sentences with time expressions such as "every day" or "in the morning".
Here we can see that the level of mistakes is quite similar, they had a similar usage of the language.
However if we pay attention to the results taken from the questionnaire,
we can see that most of the students with hearing disability had more problems
trying to understand the concepts which are very attached to the present simple tense.
So there seem to be conceptual differences between the students' competence using the English language
and how they understand the most theoretical concepts related to these verb tenses.
A possible reason for these conceptual differences may lay in how the English language was taught to them (conclusions from the first part of the research)
The main input of the English language is taken by the subjects with hearing disability through sign language and written language.
It is important to remark that the main teacher barely used spoken English with these subjects, with the whole class.
So despite their cochlear implants, they received very little input of spoken English.
Subjects with hearing loss never had to produce anything in spoken English as I told you before.
It is true that there were two students who sometimes performed some activities but
again these activities had a written base so they read aloud in front of the class, they never produced anything spontaneous in front of the class.
In conclusion hearing impaired subjects who are studying a foreign language
may find some difficulties because of their disability
in terms of cognitive treatment of the information.
Despite their successfull usage of the written language,
the lack of performances in oral language makes them have problems in understanding abstract concepts.
These problems may evolve in greater difficulties in communication when their use of the language demands more intuitive and spontaneous performances.
Having studied the context of the results and of the students we can conclude that there are significant elements which might be improved.
So further investigation needs to be done in this regard.
And now if you have some comments or questions, I'll try to answer them.
Any questions or comments?
Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much.