Spelling in Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Hearing Children With Sign Language Knowledge

Abstract

What do spelling errors look like in children with sign language knowledge but with variation in hearing background, and what strategies do these children rely on when they learn how to spell in written language? Earlier research suggests that the spelling of children with hearing loss is different, because of their lack of hearing, which requires them to rely on other strategies. In this study, we examine whether, and how, different variables such as hearing degree, sign language knowledge and bilingualism may affect the spelling strategies of children with Swedish sign language, Svenskt teckenspråk, (STS) knowledge, and whether these variables can be mirrored in these children’s spelling. The spelling process of nineteen children with STS knowledge (mean age: 10.9) with different hearing degrees, born into deaf families, is described and compared with a group of fourteen hearing children without STS knowledge (mean age: 10.9). Keystroke logging was used to investigate the participants’ writing process. The spelling behavior of the children was further analyzed and categorized into different spelling error categories. The results indicate that many children showed exceptionally few spelling errors compared to earlier studies, that may derive from their early exposure of STS, enabling them to use the fingerspelling strategy. All of the children also demonstrated similar typing skills. The deaf children showed a tendency to rely on a visual strategy during spelling, which may result in incorrect, but visually similar, words, i.e., a type of spelling errors not found in texts by hearing children with STS knowledge. The deaf children also showed direct transfer from STS in their spelling. It was found that hard-of-hearing children together with hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs), both with STS knowledge, used a sounding strategy, rather than a visual strategy. Overall, this study suggests that the ability to hear and to use sign language, together and respectively, play a significant role for the spelling patterns and spelling strategies used by the children with and without hearing loss.

The Writing Process and the Written Product in Bimodal Bilingual Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

“…The same study also suggested that there is a transfer from sign language and fingerspelling to writing: the sign-print bilingual DHH children were found to use some letters incorrectly in a word, because they were misled by the corresponding sign that happened to have this letter as handshape. This phenomenon was, however, not found among the bimodal bilingual DHH and CODA group using spoken and sign language (Gärdenfors et al 2019).…”

“…The DHH group has repeatedly been reported to write fewer words, in the form of shorter texts compared to their monolingual and bilingual hearing peers. This is thought to be caused by a smaller vocabulary and a limited auditory input (e.g., Arfé et al 2016;Gärdenfors et al 2019;Oliveira et al 2020).…”

“…Finally, spelling is an aspect that often has been studied in written texts in studies including DHH and hearing children. Generally, spelling has been shown to be one of the DHH groups' strengths (Asker-Árnason et al 2010) and this has been explained by the fact that they are more visually aware as they have more tools to use, such as fingerspelling in sign languages (Gärdenfors et al 2019).…”

“…This was argued to reflect the fact that this group was more aware of their writing difficulties, resulting in a slower writing behavior (Asker-Árnason et al 2010). Gärdenfors et al (2019) investigated spelling in both the written product and the writing processes between groups of sign-print or bimodal bilingual deaf, hard of hearing, CI-users, CODAs and hearing monolinguals as well as unimodal bilinguals. The study showed that there were no differences in the spelling awareness (i.e., how likely writers are to detect and correct a spelling mistake).…”

“…Another issue related to this knowledge gap is that several DHH studies have not taken their participants' bimodal bilingual backgrounds into consideration, but instead this group has often been compared to monolingual hearing controls, thus, not taking into account potential differences regarding their different linguistic backgrounds (e.g., Hall and Dills 2020). Furthermore, although there is a handful of studies about the bimodal bilingual effect on the literacy outcomes (notably Hassanzadeh 2012; Davidson et al 2014;Amraei et al 2017;Gärdenfors et al 2019;Gärdenfors n.d.), there are almost no studies on how bimodal bilingualism affects the real time process of writing (such as writing speed, pause behavior and revisions; however, see Gärdenfors et al 2019).…”