Deaf readers and phrasal verbs: Instructional efficacy of chunking as a visual tool

摘要

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a visual strategy that of chunking or visually bracketing phrasal verbs in sentences in short stories. A descriptive case study design was used for this study to compare the two instructional strategies. In this study, stories were presented to 14 severely and profound deaf students with Visual-Chunking and without Visual-Chunking. Six short stories of 8 to 10 sentences, containing 4 to 6 phrasal verbs, and written at the first grade level were presented to 14 Deaf students who were in the fourth and fifth grade academic classes but who were reading at the first to the fifth grade reading level. The six stories were counterbalanced to ensure equivalency of difficulty. The Payne test of Verb Particles (Payne, 1982) was used to assess reading comprehension of the phrasal verbs. The scores from Payne Test that was given before and after the story interventions were collected and analyzed to measure efficacy of the interventions. Frequencies and percentages were computed for test scores and scores were related to the background variables of participants. The result showed that there was no difference in performance between the two story interventions, Read-Only and Visual-Chunking on the Payne test. Teaching and research implications are described. Results are related to the Cognitive/Interactive/Social theory of reading development as well as English Language Learners' (ELL) Theory of reading development.