Reading levels of Spanish deaf students

Abstract

The reading levels of a population of 93 Spanish deaf students were examined. All study participants had prelingual profound hearing loss; their ages ranged from 9 to 20 years. All were enrolled in compulsory education during 2002–2003 in the Canary Islands (Spain). They were evaluated with sentence and text comprehension subtests from the Evaluation of Reading Processes of Primary Education Students, whose Spanish acronym is PROLEC (Cuetos, Rodríguez, & Ruano, 1996). A questionnaire on reading attitude was also used (Espín, 1987). Study results were consistent with those of previous research: Deaf students, at the end of their primary school education (mean age 13 years), have reading levels similar to or lower than the reading levels of hearing students at the onset of primary school education (mean age 7 years). These deaf students also have an indifferent attitude toward reading.