UNDERSTANDING MALAY HAND SIGN LANGUAGE (KTBM) AMONG HEARING IMPAIRED STUDENTS

The purpose of this study is to see the level of understanding of the Malay Hand Sign Language (Kod Tangan Bahasa Malayu or KTBM) among hearing impaired students in Penang, Malaysia. This study involved 40 hearing impaired students as respondents. All respondents had been chosen through a cluster sampling technique from Form Four (Year 10) students. Two sets of achievement test were used to examine the respondents level of understanding towards KTBM. The data collected in this study were analyzed using percentage. The results of this study showed that in test 1, 52.67 percent of the respondents were able to sign KTBM correctly according to the words given. In test 2, 74 percent of the respondents were able to understand the KTBM signed to them and correctly chosen the correct words represented by the KTBM signed. Overall findings of this study showed that the respondents performed poorly in understanding words with prefixes, suffixes as well as abstract words.