The structure of conversations with 6- to 10-year-old deaf children.
In stage 1 classroom conversations between sixteen teachers and their pre-lingually deaf children were videotaped and analysed to examine both the styles used by teachers in controlling conversation and the functions pursued in dialogue. In stage 2 a sub-sample of four teachers with twenty children of known hearing losses and non-verbal intelligence was analysed in greater detail to examine relationships between these factors, teaching styles and the child's performance in dialogue. The analyses show that deaf children respond in a similar fashion to young hearing children in the way they react to different styles of teacher talk; that teachers differ in the functions they pursue in conversation; and that functions change as a consequence of the child's hearing loss but not mental age. The implications of the findings for linguistic development in pre-lingually deaf children are explored.
D002648:Child; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008085:Lipreading; D014705:Verbal Behavior