Improvement of Writing Skills Among Students With Hearing Impairment Using the Cognitive Model: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Being a vital aspect of literacy, writing skills have great importance in the academics of students with hearing impairment. Improvement in writing skills is one of the prominent purposes of school education. Limitations in hearing impact the writing skills of students with hearing impairment (SWHI) in addition to reading skills. The present study was designed to highlight the writing problems of SWHI and to improve their creative writing skills using a cognitive model of teaching writing skills proposed by Flower and Hayes. The true experimental research design was used to see the impact of cognitive-based teaching strategies on the writing skills of SWHI. Pretest, treatment, posttest design were used to conduct this study. The targeted population for this research was SWHI studying in the grade 7th in the schools of Lahore city. A total number of 10 SWHI of Grade 7th was selected from one school in Lahore city. An equal number of students were assigned to control (N=5) and experimental group(N=5). Four different types of instruments were used to conduct the study. The experiment was conducted in one school in Lahore city for two months. The treatment comprised of instructional strategies developed in the light of Flower and Hayes's model of cognitive development. The study explored a statistically significantdifference between the writing skills of the students of the experimental group (EG) than the writing skills of the control group's students. The writing skills of students who belong to EG have upgraded after receiving treatment. The study recommended the use of cognitive-based strategies for the improvement of writing skills of students with hearing impairment.