Duncan, M.K., & Lederberg, A.R. (2018). Relations between teacher talk characteristics and child language in spoken-language deaf and hard-of-hearing classrooms. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, 2977-2995. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-17-0475
Children with
hearing loss have difficulty learning spoken language. This impacts their
literacy (reading and writing) skills as well. These children frequently have
difficulty learning vocabulary simply by hearing words used, which is the way
hearing children often learn new words. Children with hearing loss also have
difficulty with syntax (putting words together to form sentences), likely due
to the difficulties hearing key word endings or morphemes. Hearing impaired
children perform significantly lower than their hearing peers on measures of
both vocabulary and morphosyntax.
Duncan and Lederberg explain that past research has shown that certain aspects of adult language use can impact language development in hearing children. Interventions have been developed for hearing children employing these features of adult language, in particular through the use of certain characteristics of teacher talk. These teacher talk characteristics include:
- Reformulation: repeating and expanding the child’s statement, modelling more adult-like language
- Language elicitations: invitations to the child to respond with a single word or a short list of possible responses (closed elicitations), or to respond with longer or more complex responses (open-ended elicitations)
- Explicit vocabulary instruction: the teacher provides a child-friendly definition and connects this new word to the child’s existing knowledge
- Explicit grammar instruction: the explicit provision of grammar instruction
- Wait time: allowing approximately 3 seconds after a language elicitation (e.g., a question) for the student to provide a response (allowing time to think about and form a higher-quality response)
While some research had been done on the impacts of parental language input and language development in hearing impaired children, little research has addressed the impacts of teacher language input for children with hearing loss. In this study, the authors addressed this gap, and did so with two goals. The first was to examine the characteristics of teacher talk being used in spoken language classrooms with hearing impaired children. The second was to determine the extent to which teacher talk relates to language gains for hearing impaired children in vocabulary and morphosyntax over a school year.
The authors examined the language (vocabulary and morphosyntax) scores of 68 hearing impaired children in kindergarten, grade one, and grade two. These students were from 25 classrooms in which spoken English was used exclusively. Language scores were collected in the fall and spring terms of the same school year. Teacher talk was observed, transcribed, and coded (for each of the 5 teacher talk characteristics) for a 20 minute period during the winter term.
When examining the characteristics of teacher talk used in the classrooms with hearing impaired students, they found that the most frequent of the teacher talk characteristics was the use of closed language elicitations. Open-ended language elicitations were frequently used as well, but to a lesser degree. While imitating the students’ statements verbatim was rare, reformulation of their statements was quite common. Use of explicit vocabulary instruction varied between teachers, with some using it once every two minutes, and others using it only a couple of times or not at all within the observation window. Wait time was not frequently observed, but this may have been due to students responding immediately. Explicit grammar instruction was rare.
When determining the impact of teacher talk characteristics on spoken language development of hearing impaired students across the school year, the authors found that greater use of reformulation and explicit vocabulary instruction were predictors of gains in vocabulary, and that use of explicit vocabulary instruction was a predictor of gains in morphosyntax.
The
implications of this study are that language input from classroom teachers has
the ability to promote language development in their students with hearing
impairment. The use of certain characteristics of teacher talk can benefit
hearing impaired students’ development of vocabulary and morphosyntax (in
particular, the use of reformulations to support vocabulary gains, and explicit
vocabulary instruction to support both vocabulary and morphosyntax gains).
Teacher training programs could be designed to support teachers in the
development of skills in these areas.
