The main aim of this study is to investigate writing development in deaf children and typically-developing hearing children. Previous studies have focused on the development of reading rather than writing skills, but there is evidence that deaf children are likely to show delays in writing skills as well as reading ability.
We are examining the written narratives of deaf and hearing children for evidence of a range of grammatical structures and for writing quality. For example, lexical diversity is a measure of how many unique words are used in a text, which, in addition to syntactical complexity and grammatical knowledge, is an indication of writing quality. We are also exploring relationships between different components of reading and writing.
This study is being conducted with Margaret Harris (Oxford Brookes) and Emmanouela Terlektsi (University of Birmingham).
Watch this space for the results…
The Ladder Lab 