Patterns of Spelling in Young Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

The study examined the invented spelling abilities demonstrated by kindergarten and first-grade deaf and hard of hearing students. The study included two parts: In Part 1, the researcher compared three groups (deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing) using posttesting only on the Early Reading Screening Inventory, or ERSI (Morris, 1998), and in part 2 collected and analyzed samples of the spelling of deaf students in a Total Communication program. Analysis showed that the deaf group performed significantly differently in three areas: concept of word, word recognition, and phoneme awareness ("invented spelling"; Read, 1971). The deaf group outperformed the hearing and hard of hearing groups in concept of word and word recognition. But in phoneme awareness, the deaf group performed significantly less well than the hearing group. Therefore, the deaf group's spelling was followed for 1 year. Deaf students' spelling patterns were not the same as those of hearing and hard of hearing students. Deaf students' spelling miscues were directly related to the cueing systems of lipreading, signing, and fingerspelling.