An Analysis of Deaf Students’ Spelling Skills During a Year-Long Instructional Writing Approach

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that spelling presents unique challenges for children who are deaf or hard of hearing (d/hh), and most do not develop age appropriate spelling skills. Spelling errors from 29 middle school d/hh students were analyzed from writing samples that were gathered at the beginning, middle, and end of a year-long writing instructional approach. A linguistic analysis of spelling errors was used to assess each child’s understanding of the phonological, morphological, orthographic, semantic, and visual imagery rules that apply to written words. Our results provide a descriptive analysis of the types of spelling errors made by middle school d/hh students. Results indicate that spelling should be directly targeted during writing lessons. The results provide important information on the acquisition of spelling skills with this unique population and the use of narrative samples to assess spelling.