EVALUATION OF TURKISH HEARING IMPAIRED STUDENTS' READING COMPREHENSION WITH THE MISCUE ANALYSIS INVENTORY

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the reading comprehension of hearing impaired 8th graders who are being trained through an auditory-oral approach. The evaluation is conducted through miscue analysis using complex stories. To realize this aim, the following research questions are formulated. (1) To what extent do hearing impaired K-8 students use the language cue systems (i.e. syntax, semantics and graphophnonics) during reading. (2) What is their reading comprehension level? (3) Is there a consistency between the mistakes they make and their reading comprehension levels? Ten severe to profoundly hearing impaired secondary students who are at the Research and Education Center for Children with Hearing Impairment (i.e. ICEM) at Anadolu University participated in the current descriptive study. Since there is not any ready reading inventory in Turkey, stories with different levels along with retelling, question-answer and fill-in-the-blanks forms regarding those stories were prepared. Results suggest that when hearing impaired students read a story at their instructional level, they do use their knowledge of syntax, semantics and graphophnonics, they understand what they read and there is a consistency between the mistakes they make and their reading comprehension.