A Comparison of the Performance of Hong Kong Hearing Impaired Students and Typically Developing Students on Oral Vocabulary Knowledge and Literacy Achievement

Vocabulary learning is an important part of the literacy development in children. Vocabulary knowledge is an important parameter to assess children's cognitive, language and reading abilities. In the past, some research studies suggested that pupils' vocabulary knowledge was related to reading comprehension and academic attainment. In most of the research studies, vocabulary knowledge was assessed as one variable and receptive and expressive vocabulary skills were rarely investigated separately. In Hong Kong pre-school children learn and use the Cantonese dialect to communicate. When children start formal schooling, they start to read and write with Modern Standard Chinese (MSC) which is based on Putonghua. Due to the differences between the Cantonese dialect and Modern Standard Chinese in terms and syntax, some students may have language confusion and experience difficulties in learning to read. For the unique situation faced by the Hong Kong students, there is a lack of systematic research in this aspect. Moreover, students with hearing impairment have more difficulties than their hearing counterparts. Research suggested that hearing impairment has a negative impact on their vocabulary and literacy development.;This research consisted of two parts. The purpose of Study One was to provide reference points of the three vocabulary tests (Cantonese Expressive Vocabulary Test, Modern Standard Chinese Vocabulary Receptive Test and Modern Standard Chinese Expressive Test) of the typically developing Students studying in Primary One for Study Two. The purposes of Study Two were to compare the vocabulary knowledge (including Cantonese Expressive Vocabulary, Cantonese Receptive Vocabulary, Modern Standard Chinese Expressive Vocabulary, Modern Standard Chinese Receptive Vocabulary and transformation of Cantonese with Modern Standard Chinese Vocabulary) and literacy abilities (include character naming, reading fluency and attainment) between hearing impaired students studying in Primary One and Two with typically developing students. There were two groups of subjects in Study Two. Group one comprised of forty-seven Primary One and seventeen Primary Two typically developing students without any special education needs. Group Two comprised of thirty hearing impaired students studying in Primary One and Two with mild to moderate severe hearing impairment, eighteen in Primary One and twelve in Primary Two.;The research findings are summarized as below: (1) The Primary One ordinary students demonstrated greater knowledge in expressive oral Cantonese vocabulary than Standard Chinese vocabulary. (2) The receptive and expressive oral vocabulary knowledge in both Cantonese and Modern Standard Chinese of hearing impaired pupils were significantly less than that of their ordinary peers. (3) Hearing impaired pupils' literacy ability including character reading, reading fluency and attainment was significantly lower than that of their hearing peers. (4) The receptive and expressive oral vocabulary knowledge in Cantonese and Modern Standard Chinese were correlated with literacy achievement include character reading, reading fluency and attainment. (5) Modern Standard Chinese Vocabulary knowledge was the best predictor of literacy abilities including character naming, reading fluency and academic attainment of average students while Cantonese receptive vocabulary was the best predictor of hearing impaired students' literacy achievement. (6) It was found that Modern Standard Chinese played a mediation role between Cantonese Receptive Vocabulary to influence literacy achievement.;The current research results have indicated that hearing impaired students' oral vocabulary knowledge have had a critical impact on the development of their literacy. The development the receptive and expressive abilities of the spoken language of the hearing impaired students are prerequisites for literacy development of these students. It is recommended that providing a rich language learning environment to the hearing impaired students would help developing their spoken language ability. It is suggested that auditory training, speech training and speech therapy services should be offered to hearing impaired students. Teachers should consider enriching hearing impaired students' oral language skills to facilitate their literacy development.