Preliminary assessment of the “Program to develop syllabic structure in chidren with auditory déficit”

Abstract

The effectiveness of the programs directed to support the development of phonological awareness in preventing reading learning difficulties lead scientists and professionals involved in the education of children with hearing impairment try to elucidate if this kind of training would also facilitate their development of phonological awareness and prevent the problems they usually meet when learning the written language. However, there is a scarcity of research addressing the efficacy of these prevention programs nowadays. The objective of this study is to analyze the effects of the “Program to develop the syllabic awareness” (García, 2014) on the syllabic awareness of two five-years-old children with hearing impairment and cochlear aid who assisted to a bilingual and bicultural school, and also to explore the kind of supports that they need to solve the items that they could not resolve without help. The differences between the pre-test and post-test total scores obtained in the Syllable Segmentation Test (Ruiz, 2000), in the subtests which require to identify, compare and omit syllables, and in the total amount and kind of supports required to resolve the items were statistically significant. The process by which people with severe and profound hearing loss acquired syllabic awareness and the influence of phonological features of languages in this development are discussed.