Metacognitive reading strategies and their role in shaping and improving the skills of understanding literary texts by deaf and hard of hearing youth

Abstract

Hearing damage is a factor which limits or makes unable an access to the structure of both spoken and written language. This is the cause why people with severe or profound hearing damage have no possibilities to use a language as a mean of getting to know and interpreting phenomenons
of reality. The aim of this article is to present of research results concerned understanding literature texts by hearing impaired youth and paying attention to the possiblities of improving reading comprehension in this group of students. The results confirm that the level of understanding text by hearing impaired students compare with hearing students is signifiicantly lower. More optimistic is the fact that after applying appropriate reading strategies students achieve incomparably higher results in understanding text. This kind of cognitive activity, which is the contact with the written text, also opens up opportunities to enrich linguistic experiences which role in the development of the individual can not be overstimated.