Implications and Action Steps

Summary

1. English wh-questions are difficult structures for many deaf students.

2. Deaf students are most successful on wh-questions in which the wh-word is the subject of the main clause (e.g., Who wrote the report?).

3. Deaf students are less successful on wh-questions in which the wh-word is the object of the verb (e.g., Who did they hire?) or object of a preposition (e.g., Who did they prepare the report for?).

4. Deaf students are still less successful on wh-questions in which the wh-word represents a position in a lower clause within the sentence (e.g., Who did the manager say we should hire?).

5. Deaf students are least successful on wh-questions in which the wh-word represents the subject position within an embedded clause (e.g., Who did the manager say accepted the position?).

6. Deaf students are generally more successful on wh-questions containing who than those containing whose.

7. Deaf students generally know the right kind of wh-question for a given situation.

8. But deaf students often omit helping verbs (e.g., do, did, is, will) or make errors in verb formation (e.g., do for does).