TOEFL and Hearing Impaired Students: A Feasibility Study.

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was administered to 26 hearing impaired college students, in order to test the assumption that the English-language deficiencies of hearing impaired students are similar to those of foreign students. The students were attending Gallaudet College's School of Preparatory Studies and were identified as needing one year of remedial academic skills in preparation for college. Most of the sample (18 of 26) were deaf at birth; 24 of 26 were deaf by the age of 15. Most (21 of 26) were equally fluent in manual communication and spoken English. TOEFL contains sections on listening comprehension, written grammar, and vocabulary and reading comprehension. The normal test administration time for the listening comprehension test presented additional difficulty for this sample of students. All instructions were spoken, and test items were played on a tape recorder. The interpreter signed the same words. Results indicated that the students generally scored in the second quartile, above chance level but considerably lower than foreign students' scores. It was concluded that TOEFL appeared to have potential for measuring the English language proficiency of deaf students. (Sample test items and a reproduction of a brochure about Gallaudet College are appended.) (Author/GDC)