iHear: College-Level English Readiness Remediation Program for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students

The study aimed to design and develop a College-Level English Remediation program tagged as iHear which stands for Interactive Higher Education Achievement Readiness, and is a language remediation program that aims to enhance the College-Level English skills of the 21 deaf and hard of hearing (d/hh) research participants from Dalubhasaan ng Lungsod ng Lucena who were subjected to the remediation program during the 2nd semester of SY 2021-2022. Data were collected on the basis of an English Proficiency pre-test and post-test that identified the least mastered language skills and analyzed the program’s impact on these said skills. Paired t-Test were conducted to analyze the test results for significant differences in scores. Results showed it has addressed only Grammar and Cause and Effect under the Analysis skills, although there were very little significant differences in the scores between the Pre-test and Post-Test. An assessment and validation of the program was conducted through a face and content validation by experts in the fields of language instruction, program development and deaf pedagogy, appraising the program as to its adequacy, appropriateness, coherence and usefulness. The initial assessment by the expert validators have rated the program as acceptable in all the dimensions. Likewise, the program was evaluated by the research participants through an evaluation checklist that examined the program’s content and construct validity. The results implicated the validity of the items contained in the remediation program and was considered acceptable by its users. Following an iterative framework, the program underwent revision based on the comments and recommendations of the expert validators in the initial validation and was subsequently re-evaluated by the same expert validators using the same evaluation tool. Results of the re-evaluation reflected that the improved version was rated “very much acceptable”, indicating the acceptability and validity of the remediation program.