EFFECT OF VISUAL PHONICS ON READING COMPREHENSION OF STUDENTS WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENTS IN IBADAN METROPOLIS

Abstract

Students with hearing impairment are unique learners with exceptional language challenges due to lack of language input from home. These learners unlike hearing students that perceive sounds through the ear that benefits from traditional reading comprehension lessons. Students with hearing impairment rely solely on body gestures and visual language to comprehend learning. Thus, there is dire need for a suitable strategy to teach reading comprehension to these categories of learners. This study investigated the effects of visual phonics strategy on the reading comprehension of students with hearing impairment in Ibadan metropolis. The target population consisted of 17 students with hearing impairment in the two special schools in Ibadan metropolis. Purposive sampling technique was used to select 11 participants who exhibited reading comprehension problem from the two selected special schools. The participants were divided into an experimental group (visual phonics) and a control group. The researcher made use self – developed instruments which consisted of Reading Comprehension Performance Test (RCPT) for pre-test and post-test and instructional packages to teach reading comprehension to the two groups. The reading comprehension performance test consisted of 16 multiple-choice items drawn from the content area of the study. The face and content validity of the instruments were ascertained and subjected to reliability test using test re-rest method of reliability given reliability coefficient of 0.72.Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) for demographic information and inferential statistics (analysis of covariance) at 0.05 level of significance to analyses the research hypotheses. The findings revealed that visual phonics strategy at (F (1,5)=4.235; P<0.05)significantly improved reading comprehension skills of students with hearing impairment. However, gender did not play a significant role in this improvement, as there was no significant interaction between visual phonics, and gender (F (1,5) = 0.254; P>0.05). The study recommended the use of visual phonics technique in teaching reading comprehension to students with hearing impairment.