THE COMPARISON OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE ABILITIES BETWEEN CYPRIOT ORAL DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN

A number of studies have reported the beneficial effects of inclusion on deaf children’s academicachievements; however, little data are available on their writing ability in comparison to generaleducationstudents of their age or grade level. The purpose of the current study was to compare for thefirst time in Cyprus deaf children’s written ability with that of their hearing peers. One group consisted ofchildren all 17 years of age and with congenital hearing losses (mean 75 dB HL in the better hearing earat 0.5, 1, 2, 4 kHz), and without additional disabilities, who were attending the last grade of variousgeneral high schools in Cyprus (n=9). They were trained orally and in general schools, which theyattended exclusively. The control group consisted of nine hearing children all of whom were 17 years ofage and attending the last grade of high schools in Cyprus. All participants were asked to produce writtentexts on standard topics required of Cypriot children of that age. The analysis of the written texts wasboth quantitative and qualitative. Regarding the quantitative analysis, the written language was analysedby focusing on a) text content and structure, b) syntax, and c) vocabulary. Qualitative analysis wasemployed for further description of the characteristics observed in the texts of the sample. The studyrevealed that Cypriot deaf participants could achieve almost the same levels of competence in writtenGreek as the hearing children, at least for the aspects examined. The findings of the study may be ofimportance for educators and policy makers in Cyprus and elsewhere