The effectiveness of linguistic plays on the grammatical skills of hearing-impaired children with hearing aids

Abstract

Background and Aim: Grammatical skills development of hearing-impaired children depends on using appropriate educational rehabilitation programs. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of linguistic plays on the grammatical skills in hearing-impaired children with hearing aids. Methods: Ten hearing-impaired children with hearing aids, aged between 5 and 7, were randomly assigned to two groups (5 children in each group). Each treatment group received 12 sessions on linguistic plays. The grammatical skills of these children were evaluated via the TOLD-P: 3 (Persian version); in addition, their level of intelligence was assessed by the Raven test. Results: The difference between the scores of both control and treatment groups revealed a statistically significant difference in grammatical skills (t=7.61, p=0.001) and three subskills of the children who participated in the linguistic plays. These subskills include syntactic understanding (t=3.16, p=0.013), sentence imitation (t=1.71, p=0.006), and morphological completion (t=6.55, p=0.001). In other words, the findings suggest that linguistic plays have a significant impact on the improvement of the aforementioned skills in hearing-impaired children. Conclusion: Results suggest that it would be beneficial to include linguistic plays as part of routine rehabilitation programs as a means of improving the grammatical difficulties of children. After partaking in linguistic plays, children significantly improved their ability to comprehend the meaning of sentences and also to recognize, understand, and use common Persian morphological forms.

Keywords

• Linguistic plays
• grammatical skills
• hearing-impaired children with hearing aids
• test of language development (TOLD P
• 3)