Narrative Skills in Written Texts by Deaf and Hearing Bilingual Adolescents

Most studies on narrative competence have focused on monolingual subjects, and there are very few studies which address this issue in bilingual subjects dealing with two language systems. In the present case study we analyzed and compared the textual and narrative written skills of three deaf and three hearing adolescents attending eighth grade at a bilingual school (Italian and Italian Sign Language), characterized by a pragmatic approach to writing (based on production and the interpretation of texts in genuine and meaningful situations). Their competences were assessed through a well-known narrative task, the Frog Story (Mayer, 1969), and the following parameters were examined: complex syntax, narrative structure and evaluation devices. Results show that there were not significant differences in the texts written by the deaf students compared to the hearing students and that being immersed in a bilingual context did not interfere with the development of textual and narrative competence in either hearing or deaf students.