Abstract:

Deficits in vocabulary have a negative impact on literacy and speech development of children with hearing loss. A hearing impaired child is not able to use oral language as a means of communication without being supported in the process of systematic and goal-oriented learning of single words and their use. Computer-assisted word learning may play an important role in providing better opportunities for more deeply and systematical approach for vocabulary development. This study aims to present a pedagogical model for vocabulary acquisition based on interactive multimedia learning. On the basis of empirical evidence of 8 case studies, the article offers implications for vocabulary instruction for deaf children. The participants were eight hearing impaired Bulgarian students, four girls and four boys, in the age of 12 and 13. The model combines the traditional speech therapy activities with computer-assisted activities. Its construction is based on Mayer’s theory for multimedia learning. During the study, the students attended a specialized school for children with hearing impairment which used oral method. Four of the participants had profound hearing loss (above 90 Db), the other four were with sever hearing loss. The data were collected in the course of four months in the speech therapy laboratory of a specialized school for deaf children. The students selected for the study participated individually in 14, 30-minutes learning sessions, referred here as treatment. In each session, the multimedia instructional materials developed by Microsoft PowerPoint were used as the main learning tool.
Four levels of word-learning abilities were measured: identification, visual perception, lip-reading, pronunciation of studied vocabulary.
The results showed that the participants have a significant improvement not only of their skills for connecting the written words with the corresponding images representing them, but they also developed better lip-reading skills. The results also show that pronunciation was the most difficult for the participants.
In essence, this model asserts that the multimedia technology with combined use of text, image, animations and video has the potential to provide deeper understanding of word meaning, to support to a great extent the receptive skills and lip-reading skills. In addition, it may support the individualization of the treatment providing the possibility each child to learn the words based on his/her needs and interests. Therefore, the educators should use the advantages of the multimedia learning. The model offers an opportunity to create richly interactive learning environments.

Keywords:

Hearing impaired children, pedagogical model, vocabulary instruction, multimedia.