Are Deaf Students’ Reading Challenges Really About Reading?

• DOI: 10.1353/aad.0.0111
• Publication Date: 2009-12-20T14:00:14Z
• Authors: Marc Marschark; Patricia Sapere; Carol M. Convertino; Connie Mayer; Loes Wauters; Thomastine Sarchet
• Keywords: American Sign Language; Deaf education; Learning to read

Reading achievement among deaf students typically lags significantly behind hearing peers, a situation that has changed little despite decades of research. This lack progress and recent findings indicating face many the same challenges in comprehending sign language as they do text suggest difficulties frequently observed their learning from may involve more than just reading. Two experiments examined college students’ material science texts. Passages were presented to (signing) print or American Sign Language auditorially. Several measures indicated learned much did language, but less both cases. These other results reading comprehension be complex is generally assumed.