Emergent Literacy Skills in KannadaSpeaking Preschool Children With Hearing Loss: Effects of Natural, Structured, and Combined Instructional Approaches on Early Reading and Writing

Emergent literacy is the basis for later reading and writing. Children with hearing loss often experience delays in these skills because of reduced auditory access and in turn early language learning. The present study examined whether three instructional approaches—Natural (language exposure through everyday communication and interaction without explicit grammatical instruction), Structured (systematic teaching of grammatical structures using visual sentence models and guided practice), and Combined Natural–Structured (integration of natural communication with structured grammar instruction)—differentially influenced emergent literacy outcomes in Kannada-speaking preschool children with hearing loss.