Allá el dios de uno es el galil y la familia de uno el uniforme, el chaleco y las balas Crecer en las filas de la guerrilla

There is a link between language fluency and the acquisition of learning skills such as literacy. Those deaf students who begin schooling with stronger language abilities have a relatively easier time making the move to text-based literacy than those students without, or with poorer, linguistic experience (Mayer, 2007). Literacy can be ‘described to include reading, writing, computer, and mathematics, although there is a tendency to emphasise reading and writing, or text-based literacy skills’ (Paul, 1998: 5). There is a correlation between the abilities of reading and writing, ‘for most people learning to read and write seems to be a relatively straightforward process, although writing might seem to be more difficult than reading. Fluent writing seems to follow fluent reading’ (Moores, 2001). Many deaf people who are poor at reading are also poor at writing (Paul, 1998). In addition, reading and writing have generally been considered ‘common denominators’ in the education of deaf children (King and Quigley, 1985). Whilst reading and writing skills for deaf children are not just important during school

purposes. Marschark (1997: 149) noted that ‘reading and writing form an essential link to the world of social and intellectual interaction’. Unfortunately, many deaf children reach school-age with notable language delays which usually guide to poor academic achievement and difficulties in school communication (Marschark and Wauters, 2008).

One of the main problems faced by many deaf children is acquiring and using spoken language. In fact, speech is the major means of communication for most people, and those deaf children without speech have difficulty in communicating with the hearing world. There are other ways of communication such as sign language, lip-reading and gesture but it may not be understood by hearing people. Therefore, it is important and essential to teach deaf children the skills of writing. As Powers et al., (1998) suggest writing skills are especially important for deaf children in enabling them to communicate with the non-deaf world. Literature showed that until the 1960s there has been no empirical examination of the nature of writing for deaf (Marschark and Hauser, 2008). Several studies (Musselman and Szanto, 1998; Tur-Kaspa and Dromi, 2001; Moores and Miller, 2009) mention that deaf children suffer problems in the development of writing. A study conducted by Volterra and Bates (1989) to compare writing skills of deaf students with hearing peers noticed some difference between the two groups in terms of writing. They say that deaf students usually: 1) produce shorter sentences; 2) avoid complex syntactic structures; 3) use a more restricted vocabulary; 4) often delete function words (e.g. articles and prepositions) as well as using more of these than necessary on some occasions; 5) can also delete major constituents of the sentence (e.g. the verb ‘to be’ or auxiliary verbs), and 6) use inappropriate word order.

It could be argued that some deaf children compose ideas in a visual way, rather than an oral way, which may be very difficult when they come to translate those ideas to written language. Therefore it is not surprising that studies of deaf children’s writing show that most of them are unable to write well, and their written language contains many errors and it is difficult to understand (Paul and Quigley, 1994; Marschark, 1997). In relation to developing reading skills for deaf children, most school programmes for both deaf and hearing children, give reading more attention than writing as it is seen to be a tool for acquiring knowledge and participating in society, especially when those individuals are deaf (Moores, 2001). Moores (ibid) also argued that during the first years of school we learn how to read and after that we learn to write. Reading is a fundamental skill: it

may affect success in other academic areas. Students who experience difficulty in reading will also have difficulty in other academic subjects (Moores, 2001). Literature has shown that deaf students have been found to be weaker in reading skills compared with hearing students (Paul, 2003). They also have difficulty with memory span and deaf children tend to have a short attention span, and it has been suggested that they may not be able to organise knowledge because of issues with their long and short term memory processes (Marschark and Spencer, 2010), syntax knowledge (Paul, 2003), grammar (Kelly, 1998), figurative language (Paul, 2003) and vocabulary size (Paul, 2003; Marschark and Spencer, 2010).

Summarising the above section, there is a great need for deaf children to receive support from an early age to gain access to communication and interaction with those people who they have regular social contact with and to be able to understand the world around them. On the contrary, the delayed access to acquiring language and poor interaction can negatively affect the development of a deaf child’s abilities and social skills, which leads to difficulties in access to information at school-age. These specific difficulties need to be taken into account when planning inclusive education for deaf children, otherwise they can become isolated and it is very easy for their learning to be compromised. This highlights the challenges faced by those trying to create inclusive schooling for deaf children.

3.8 Concluding Remarks

This chapter has reviewed the theoretical models of understanding special educational needs. It then explored definitions of the concept and categories of special educational needs and it focused on understanding deafness and its degree. It has also bought out the importance of knowledge about deafness in order to provide the appropriate service for those students. Finally, this chapter discussed the communication and language development for deaf students. This chapter presented the first part of the theoretical framework, the rules or principles that have been used to plan this research. It brings out issues that need to be addressed in the educational and social environment in inclusive schools and directs attention to what needs to be explored through interviews and observations. The next chapter moves the focus to issues regarding inclusive education

and explores some previous studies regarding factors that influence inclusive education for deaf students.