Teaching Strategies for Enhancing Reading Fluency and Comprehension Among Learners with Mild Hearing Impairment in Mainstream Classrooms

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative case study, which adopted the concept of communicative democracy to investigate the teaching strategies teachers use to enhance reading fluency and comprehension among learners with mild hearing impairment who were in mainstream classrooms. The purposively selected sample comprised two female teachers and 15 Grade 8 learners, aged between 14 and 15, from a public school in Gauteng province, South Africa. The data-collection methods included classroom observations and unstructured interviews with the teaching staff. Systematic sampling was used for the selection of suitable participants. Employing this technique meant acquiring a sample by selecting a random starting point close to the beginning of the target population list, and subsequently selecting every fourth name in a uniformly spaced unit thereafter. The findings revealed that the teachers’ use of strategies that emphasised active participation and learner-centred approaches considerably contributed to improving reading fluency and comprehension among learners with mild hearing impairment. These strategies included interactive reading activities, visual aids for vocabulary building, phonological awareness and rhyming techniques using visual aids, text immersion through peer collaboration, the adaptation of materials to suit individual learning needs, and word identification. The researcher concluded that learner-centred activities can be effective in enhancing reading fluency and comprehension amongst learners with mild hearing impairment. The recommendation is that future research should explore the long-term impact these teaching strategies have on the academic achievement and social inclusion of learners with mild hearing impairment in mainstream classrooms.