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Let me introduce you to Manuel Doñas
who is going to speak about Hearing Disability in the English Classroom
he's carried out this research together with Carmen Bretones
Good afternoon everybody
Hearing disability and the ability to learn a spoken language
have been recurrent topics from the second half of the 20th century
according to Martin (2010), and I quote
"after centuries of misunderstanding and lowered expectations"
With the new technological advances and the improvement of teaching methods
People with hearing loss have been able to learn a spoken language
not without problems as Blamey (2003) stated because, and I quote,
"it is clear that hearing loss can significantly affect a child's spoken language
and that spoken language performance increases with age"
The linguistic development of a person with hearing disability depends on several factors
according to authors such as Marchesi (1990) and Sarduni i Brugué (2008)
These factors are:
The level of intensity;
The person's age when the disability is acquired;
The parents' attitude towards the disability;
And the origin of the disability, if it is acquired or congenital
There are also some considerations regarding education
when we speak about these people
More specifically there are some critical components according to Martin (2010) again
which can create an inclusive enviroment at school
These critical components are such as:
A critical mass of deaf learners;
An enviroment in which the medium of communication is visual -specially for deaf students
A teacher specially trained as an educator for deaf people;
or activities specially designed to enable full participation.
Taking this background as a starting point and studying subjects who have learnt a first spoken language
the purpose of this investigation is
to analyse how hearing disability influences the subjects' cognitive processes when they are learning a spoken language
a foreign spoken language - in this case English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
Special attention was paid to
the use of certain grammatical structures and the comprehension of abstract concepts which are related to those grammatical structures
In order to achieve this purpose
the investigation was designed in two main parts:
one part focused on the methodology followed in the classroom
and another part focused on the use and comprehension of the English language
But before explaining in detail the investigation and the results
let me give you a brief description of the subjects tested
The data collected comes from a class of 30 secondary students
from 12 to 13 years old
7 out of 30 of these students have hearing loss
and use cochlear implants
It is important to remark that
these 7 students were not required to participate in English in the classroom
Now we move to the methodology of this research
as I told you before it was divided in two main parts
The methodology of the first part
is the following
The qualitative data of this part has been collected through two personal interviews to the teachers in charge of the English lessons
The quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire which was fulfilled by the students
The interviews were conducted separately to both teachers
and they were done in Spanish
There were two teachers because of the presence of students with hearing disability
one of the teachers, the main teacher, was in charge of teaching the English lessons
and the other teacher, the supporting teacher, was in charge of translating into sign language
The interviews included a number of questions related to their professional background
and also related to their experience with hearing impaired students
The questionnaire of this part was designed for the subjects
in order to evaluate their comfort using the English language
and their oral interaction.
There were specific questions in this questionnaire, such as
"When I have any doubts, I use English to ask my teacher"
In order to answer these questions, the students had the following options:
always - often - sometimes - barely - never
as in "when I have doubts, I often use English to ask my teacher" or "...I never use English to ask my teacher"
The second part of this research, the one focused on the use and comprehension of the English language
had the following methodology
The quantitative data collected in this part has been obtained through two tests which measured the competence using the English language
and another questionnaire which tested the subjects' comprehension of the abstract concepts mentioned before
Now we move to the tests
It is important to remark that the grammatical structures used in the tests
were not chosen randomly
both of them were included in the syllabus for the course
and both of them contain significant concepts which can underlay certain cognitive problems when trying to be fully understood
The first test contained the present simple and continuous tenses
and it had two main activities
In the first activity the students had to choose between one tense or the other
in order to fill the gaps of the sentences
they had time expressions which determined the right option between present simple or present continuous
These time expressions gave the students conceptual clues for choosing between one or the other
expressions such as "now", "at the moment" or "right now" for the present continuous
or "every Friday", "at night" or "in the mornings" for the present simple
The second activity is quite similar but in this one they had to create their own sentences
it was a little bit more complicated than the first one but they had the same time expressions to construct the sentences
The second test had grammatical structures containing countable and uncountable nouns
again they had two activities, it is very similar than the previuos test,
Two activities: in the first activity they had to fill the gaps choosing the correct quantifier or the correct form of the indefinite article
depending on if the noun was countable or uncountable
And in the second one they had to create sentences using "There is" or "There are"
againg depending on if the nouns given through pictures were countable or uncountable
The questionnaire designed for this second part tried to test
how the subjects filtered the information related to those grammatical structures in the previous tests.
This questionnaire had questions such as:
"I clearly know what a routine is and how I can express it in English"
or for example "I can distinguish between countable and uncountable nouns"
Again the students had the same options to answer these questions:
always - often - sometimes - barely - never
As in "I sometimes know what a routine is" or "I never know what a routine is"