Developing expressive language skills of deaf students through specialized writing instruction

Writing is an essential element of literacy development, and language plays a central role in the composing process, including developing, organizing, and refining ideas. Language and writing are interconnected, making it paramount for educators to attend to the development of deaf students’ language skills. In this quasi-experimental study, we examined the impact of strategic and interactive pedagogical approaches, namely Strategic and Interactive Writing Instruction (SIWI), implemented with deaf students in grades 3-6 to develop genre-specific traits in their expressive language (spoken or signed) and writing. In this study, a total of 16 teachers and their 69 students participated in the treatment and comparison groups. Expressive language and writing samples were collected at the beginning and end of the year for three different genres. Students in the treatment group showed statistically significant gains in their expressive and written language for recount and information genres when compared to students in the comparison group. There was not a significant treatment effect on persuasive expressive language or writing. Additionally, there was a significant positive correlation between expressive language and writing at both time points across all three genres. This study provides evidence on the importance of attending to language skills during literacy instruction.