Deaf Students' Recall of Spanish Vocabulary Under Three Testing Conditions

• Published in: American annals of the deaf (Washington, D.C. 1886) Vol. 141; no. 5; pp. 340 - 345
• Main Authors: Ammons, Donalda K., Miller, Margery S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf 01-12-1996; Gallaudet University Press; American Annals of the Deaf
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; College Students; Deafness; Drills (Practice); English as a second language learning; Finger Spelling; Fingerspelling; Higher Education; Hispanic Americans; Humans; Instructional Effectiveness; Language; Language tests; Long Term Memory; Medical sciences; Memorization; Memory; Mental Recall; Posttests; Pretests; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Recall; Second Language Learning; Second languages; Semantics; Short Term Memory; Sign Language; Silent reading; Spanish; Spanish as a second language learning; Spanish language; Special education. Orthophony; Students; Tests; Training Methods; Treatments; Undergraduate Students; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development; Word meaning; Words; United States; North America; America; Short term; Human; Vocabulary; Memory; Auditory disorder; Method; Student; Long term; Foreign language; Teaching; Hearing loss; Learning; Pedagogy; ENT disease; Spanish; Comparative study
• ISSN: 0002-726X; 1543-0375; 1543-0375
• DOI: 10.1353/aad.2012.0236

This investigation examined the effects of three training conditions on deaf students' recall of Spanish word meaning as measured by performance on a Spanish vocabulary test. The conditions were; a) repeated written productions, b) repeated fingerspelling, and c) repeated silent reading of selected Spanish words and their English equivalents. Subjects were 30 deaf undergraduate students enrolled in introductory Spanish courses at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. Researchers assigned 10 subjects to each of the 3 training groups. A 30 item pretest was administered to verify that the vocabulary was not known to the subjects. A posttest containing 25 items from the pretest was administered twice to the subjects. For short-term memory there were no statistically significant differences across the 3 conditions. For long-term memory scores under the repeated written condition were significantly higher than scores under fingerspelling and silent reading conditions. The use of a study strategy incorporating writing may enhance the learning of Spanish vocabulary by deaf college students. The strategy could also be applied to other foreign languages and a range of academic subjects for deaf students.