Dynamic Assessment of Narrative Abilities of Children With Hearing Loss: Case Study of a Child With Moderate to Severe Hearing Loss

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of the use of detailed syntactic analysis in a dynamic assessment (DA) of narrative in a child with moderate-severe hearing loss (aged 7;4). DA assesses the child's capability to learn a language skill, as opposed to the skills that the child has at a given moment in time. The purpose of the case study was to examine the way DA can demonstrate learning of the linguistic skills used in narrative. The study examined differences pre- and post-learning mediation (the teaching method of DA) in the quantity of language (number of words, number of utterances), syntactical complexity at clause and phrase level, and verb phrases used in the narratives the child produced at these two times. Positive differences in all these measures were found, indicating that this child had good language learning capacity in narrative. The findings showed that a learning experience focused on the principles of fictional narrative production affected not only the macrostructure, but also the microstructure of the child's narrative skills. This paper discusses how linguistic analysis has the potential for increasing the usefulness of DA to better assess language learning capacities, as opposed to language limitations, in children with hearing loss.