THE IMPACT OF AUDITORY TRAINING ON READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS OF STUDENTS WITH HEARING IMPAIRMENT IN CALABAR, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the impact of auditory training on reading comprehension skills of students with hearing impairment in Calabar, Nigeria. Three hypotheses were developed to determine the difference between mean scores of recognizing vocabulary performance, reading fluency performance and reading comprehension performance of students with moderate hearing impairment in experimental and control groups. Quasi-experimental research design was adopted. The design was adopted because of the nature of the variables that were occurred in the study to determine the experimental and control groups. The total population of the study consists of one hundred and ninety (190) students with moderate hearing impairment in the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Calabar and Special Education Centre, Ibom Layout, Calabar (120 and 70 each). 100 respondents were sampled, 70 from the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Calabar and 30 from Special Education Centre, Ibom Layout Calabar using purposive sampling technique. Reading comprehension skill Test (RCST) and Umolu Informal Reading Inventory (UIRI) were the instruments the researcher used for data collections. The RCST consisted of 10 objectives test and UIRI consisted of 10 oral presentation questions. The instruments were validated by three experts, one from the Department of Special Needs Education, University of Calabar and two from Measurement and Evaluation. Cronbach alpha was used to determine the reliability coefficient which ranged between 0.75 and 0.95. The data collected were coded into the computer using the statistical package for social science (SPSS 24.0). Inferential analysis of the student’s t-test at 0.05 level of significance was used in testing the hypotheses. The result proves that mean scores of recognizing vocabulary performance, reading fluency performance and reading comprehension performance of students with moderate hearing impairment differs significantly in experimental and control groups. The study recommends that environment for students with hearing impairment in the classroom should be away from noise and controlled for acoustics that affect hearing aids during reading comprehension among others