Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the difference in syntactic characteristics shown in speaking and writing tasks between college students with and without hearing impairment. Methods: The participants were 14 college students with hea...
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the difference in syntactic characteristics shown in speaking and writing tasks between college students with and without hearing impairment. Methods: The participants were 14 college students with hearing impairment (HI) and 14 without hearing impairment (NH), who were matched on their chronological age. This study examined syntactic level and syntactic errors by asking participants to describe the contents of the wordless picture books in sentences by speaking and writing. The syntactic level was analyzed by the average number of subordinate clauses per T-unit and the number of each type of subordinate clauses. The syntactic errors were analyzed by he error rates of grammatical morphemes and the number of errors in each type of grammatical morpheme. Results: The frequency of subordinate clause per T-unit was higher in NH than in HI in writing task. Also, there were differences in the frequency of each type of subordinate clause between groups in both speakig and writing tasks. The frequency error rates of grammatical morpheme was higher in HI than in NH. Conclusion: College students with hearing impairment are more prone to have difficulties in using syntax than normal heraing students in both speaking and writing. Both college students with and without hearing impairment make less errors in writing than in speaking.