ABSTRACT
Hearing impairment is one of the most important causes which results in delays in language development and can also influence different aspects of language production and comprehension. Expressive and receptive language skills development of hearing impaired children depends on using appropriate educational rehabilitation programs. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of linguistic plays on aforementioned skills in pre-school hearing impaired children. In this quasi-experimental study, 10 hearing impaired children with hearing aids, aged between 5 and 7 years were randomly assigned into two groups [5 children in each group]. The expressive and receptive language skills of these children were evaluated via the TOLD-P: 3 [Persian Version]. In addition, their level of intelligence was assessed by Raven test. The difference between the scores of control and treatment groups using U Mann - Whitney test revealed that there is a statistically significant difference in expressive language skills [p= 0.009] and receptive language skills [p= 0.009] of the children who participated in linguistic plays. In other words, the present findings suggest that linguistic plays have a significant impact on improvement of aforementioned skills in pre-school hearing impaired children. Hearing impaired children have a lot of difficulties in language production and comprehension. Therefore, new educational rehabilitation programs needs to be planned to improve language problems of these children. According to the results of the present study, linguistic plays should be involved in the routine rehabilitation program to improve the expressive and receptive language difficulties of hearing impaired children. After sessions of linguistic plays, these children could make significant improvements to comprehend the meaning of sentences and words; also they can recognize, understand, and use common Persian morphological forms, utter and recognize the differences in important Persian speech sounds