Questions in English or American sign language to access reading skills of deaf high school students

A reading skills assessment from the Hearing-Impaired version of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-HI) was administered to twelve deaf students in a residential high school. Half of the test questions were administered in written English and the other half in videotaped American Sign Language (ASL). The mean ASL scores were not significantly different than the mean English scores.

As a descriptive measure, correlation coefficients were calculated to investigate the relationship between some of the variables. English questions and ASL questions both showed a moderate correlation with the grade level scores on the SAT-HI administered by the classroom teachers.

Some subjects scored higher on the ASL questions than on the English questions. This occurred more often for subjects with low reading scores. For these subjects questioning in ASL provides another reference point and possibly a more meaningful measure of reading skills.

This study was unique because it used ASL questions to measure reading skills. This technique had not been reported in the literature.

A more extensive study with more subjects is needed within specific reading levels.