Auditory-Oral Education
While oral education is important in providing the child who is deaf or hard-of- hearing with strategies to listen to and identify as much auditory information as possible and use that for developing speech skills, it is important to realize that not all auditory information is accessible or clear. Learning or acquiring a language is a struggle when some information is missing as a result of insufficient auditory potential and ambiguous visual stimuli.
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a language with its own grammar, syntax and community; however, one must be exposed to native and/or fluent users of ASL to acquire it. Since the majority of children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing have hearing parents (90%), these children usually have limited access to appropriate ASL language models. It typically takes several years to become fluent in any new language. A family that chooses to learn how to sign and does not have ASL models consistently available may place their deaf child at risk for an additional several years of first-language delay from the time of diagnosis. Deaf children of Deaf parents or other fluent signers are not at risk for language delay and have access to a solid foundation for learning English as a second language
Signed English and Other Sign Systems
Signed English, Seeing Essential English (SEE 1), Signing Exact English (SEE 2), Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE), and Linguistics of Visual English (LOVE) are all types of Manually Coded English (MCE) systems. None of them are languages. They are all systems that were developed to try to show English through signs. However, they show English at the word-meaning level, not at the phonemic level. For example, the signs for cat do not show the phonemic properties of the word as /k, a, t/. The signs for the word book do not show the phonemes /b, oo, k/. Cued American English conveys the complete English language phonemically.
How Cueing Helps Solve Weaknesses in Deaf Education
Children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and use either the oral or manual approach to communication and language typically struggle with decoding the phonemic information needed to process written English. Signing does not provide phonemic awareness for spoken languages. Students who use a sign system or ASL struggle with connecting the signs to printed words. Oral/aural communication does not provide complete information about the spoken language, with many of the phonemes looking identical on the mouth (such as /t, d, n, l/ or /i, e/). Cueing a language provides information at the phonemic level, so the process for cuers to connect spoken words to print is similar to the process used by hearing children. One interesting study showed that deaf cuers and hearing children make similar spelling mistakes. For example, they might write blue as “bloo” or done as “dun.” However, deaf signers’ spelling mistakes tend to be related to sequencing, such as “bule” instead of blue.2 Also, deaf or hard-of-hearing signers typically struggle with the idea of rhyming and don’t understand how words such as bird and word are rhymes, but here and where are not. A deaf signer’s interaction and understanding of English is largely based on the printed word. However, deaf cuers typically have the same understanding of rhyming as their hearing peers and can identify rhyme pairs as well as produce spontaneous rhymes.3 Rhyming is often used as a predictor of future reading success in hearing children. Without the ability to rhyme and manipulate the phonemes of the language, reading will plateau at the third- or fourth-grade level.4
Conclusion
Having access to a complete language from the earliest time possible allows a child who is deaf or hard-of-hearing to develop that language naturally and use it in school to develop reading and writing skills. Cueing enables children to establish this strong foundation needed for developing literacy skills.
1 Jeffers, J., & Barley, M. (1971). Speechreading (lipreading). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
2 LaSasso, C., Crain, K. L., & Leybaert, J. (2003). Rhyme generation in deaf students: The effect of exposure to Cued
Speech. Journal of Deaf Studies & Deaf Education, 8(3), 250-270.
3 LaSasso, C., & Crain, K. L. (2003). Research and theory support Cued Speech. Odyssey. Fall, 30-36.
4 Lyon, G. Reid. 2003. What principals need to know about reading. Principal. 83(2), 14-18.
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