Predicting Literacy Development of Orally Trained Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Taiwan: A Two-Year Longitudinal Study

Twenty-eight deaf and hard of hearing Chinese-speaking public school children in Taiwan were tested on literacy achievement tasks at the end of kindergarten (T1), first grade (T2), and second grade (T3) over 2 years. After nonverbal IQ and hearing threshold were controlled for, the results revealed that early oral vocabulary and print awareness tested in kindergarten were related to word recognition in first grade. Moreover, receptive oral vocabulary (T1) was related to reading achievement in first and second grade. Phoneme (onset-rime) blending (T1) was associated with reading achievement in first grade, but not second grade. While onset-rime blending made more unique contributions to picture-book reading comprehension (T2), oral receptive vocabulary contributed uniquely to reading comprehension in T3 more than onset-rime blending. The time (in minutes) per week parents spent in shared book reading with their child was moderately related to reading comprehension at T3.