Reading Skill of Deaf Students from Ludhiana Punjab

Context: Learning to read is a complex cognitive perspective, it’s a child ability to decode, analyze and construct linguistic meaning from a the written print; reading include identification of alphabets, bond of spellings and assessing them in memory i.e. word reading, phonic awareness and knowledge of alphabets are the base of learning to read[15];Total 60 students were enrolled in the study, 30 deaf and 30 age-matched hearing, all the students were from age group of 8.5 to 11.5 years (50% male and 50% female in each group); extensive eye examination was performed prior to the study, all the participants were free from Ocular and systemic pathology. Two different tests were performed for reading skill; Reading comprehension was evaluated with ADR I Net Dynamic reader, and English reading tool was used, the tool was developed and used by Pratham-ASER Centre to evaluate reading speed; both the test showed statistically significant difference; (P-Value of <0.001) were deaf students had scored less marks in reading comprehension test and they were slow in reading speed also; deaf were taking more time to read in comparison of hearing students (P-Value of <0.001).