The effect of reading instruction on mean length of utterance of hearing impaired children

Hearing impairment does have negative effects on language development, and leads to abnormal speech and cognitive skills formation. This study aimed at examining the effect of reading instruction on mean length of utterances an index of language development in hearing impaired children. In this quasi-experimental study with pre-post test design, 6 hearing impaired children were recruited from educational speech therapy clinics of Babol University of Medical Sciences by convenience sampling method. They entered a whole word reading program twice a week for 6 months. Each session lasted 45 minutes. Mean length of utterance was calculated as per-post test. The data was analyzed by Wilcoxon signed- rank test. The findings revealed an improvement of mean length of utterance which was significant (P=0.028). It seems that reading instruction as a visual language helps improve mean length of utterance in hearing impaired language and might resolve some of the language deficits due to their hearing impairment. In other words reading would be applied as a treatment strategy for improving expressive language of hearing impaired children.