Abstract
The study was designed to find out the effect of Total communication (T.C) on the academic achievement of pupils with hearing impairment. It is a non- equivalent pre-test-post-test quasi-experimental design with treatment and control group. The population of the study consists of 33 pupils from the two primary schools for the deaf in Enugu State. A researcher made test known as Achievement Test on English Language (ATEL) was used to generate data for the study. Three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data collected from the study while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that pupils with hearing impairment exposed to T.C performed better than the control group. Children exposed to total communication had a mean pre-test achievement score of 31.33 and mean post test score of 64 as against children in the control group that had mean pre-test achievement score of 25.83 and posttest achievement score of 48.33. As for gender, the males exposed to T.C had a pre-test mean achievement score of 20.0 and posttest mean achievement scores of 56.88 as against male in control group that had a pretest mean achievement scores of 30.90 but a posttest achievement score of 49.09. Similarly, the female in the treatment group had a mean pretest achievement scores of 45.0 and posttest mean achievement score of 72.14 as against female in control group that had a pre -test achievement score of 18.57 and posttest achievement score of 47.14. The, result of interaction effect of gender and T.C showed that male had a mean achievement sore of 7.79 while female had a mean achievement scores of 25,which implies that female interacts more than males using T.C. Test of hypotheses showed no significant difference between the mean achievement score of the treatment and control group. Similarly, gender has no significant influence on the academic achievement of pupils with hearing impairment. The study also found no significant interaction effect of gender on the use of total communication. These findings have implications drawn for the teachers of children with hearing impairment, curriculum planners, parent of children with hearing impairment and policy makers on the importance of using T.C in teaching children with hearing impairment. Based on these implications the following recommendations among others were made: training institution for teachers should try to incorporate T.C as a unit of study in their curriculum if teachers are to be equipped with the skills of using this T.C in teaching. There should also be an in-service training for teachers who are already in the field to enable them update their knowledge in the use of T.C, the children with hearing impairment should be exposed to the use of T.C whether male or female.
