Effect of Communication Literacy Intervention (CLI) on Sign Language Knowledge (SLK) among Special Needs Deaf and Dumb College Students in Nigeria

Abstract

Communication is indispensible in human population. This study investigated the effect of
communication literacy intervention (CLI) on sign language knowledge (SLK) among special needs
deaf and dumb college students (SNDDCS) in Nigeria. The study adopted experimental research design
involving a purposive sampling of 48 SNDDCS in Nigeria between March and June, 2021. The eligible
participants were randomly assigned either in treatment (n=24) or control (n=24) group respectively.
Only the participants in the treatment group were exposed to CLI manual while both groups
participated in pre-posttest measures of sign language knowledge questionnaire -SLKQ with reliability
index (r=0.87). The IBM SPSS version 22 was applied for all statistical computations. The results were
deemed significant at p≥0.05. The findings showed that the participants in the treatment group recorded
very high SLK scores in the posttest (80.6%) and follow-up (81.7%) measures when compared to the
pretest low SLK score (46.2%), implying a significant increase in SLK. Statistically, significant
differences were reported within demographic variables and intervals. Thus, no significant difference
existed on gender (p=0.090>0.05) and location (p=0.680>0.05) while differences were observed on age
by birth (p=0.002<0.05) and school type (p=0.011<0.05). Also, significant difference was observed on
pretest (p=0.001<0.05) and follow-up (p=0.010<0.05) intervals while none was recorded on posttest
measure (p=0.061>0.05). Therefore, the CLI has significant effect on SLK of SNDDCS in Nigeria. The
adoption of language intervention such as CLI in special needs colleges is crucial in improving
knowledge and use of sign languages by deaf and dumb students.