What about Cued Speech in the US ?

Hi,

I'm a french deaf student and would like to know how is Cued Speech's situation in the US.

I heard that it was really rare, nearly unknown and that most of Cued speech's users were on the East Coast. Is that true ?
Cued Speech had been created by Professor Orin Cornett, at Gallaudet University. It had a little success at the beginning but now I have been told that no one used it in the University today.

Here, in France, even if it's still a minority, Cued speech (called LPC aka Langue Française Parlée Complétée) is more and more famous, thanks to its simplicity and the phonetic visualization. It arrived in France about 25 years ago and became widespread among french deaf communities. I grew up with it, in integration, and never learnt Sign Language.
We also have a national association for LPC's users.

I saw that some of you thought Cued Speech was very hard and a 'strange thing', so I'll sum you up what it is : Cued Speech is based on lipreading and phonetic visualization : the hand's position around the face shows the vowel and the hand's form shows the consonant, in order to 'create' a syllable. Contrary to the Sign Language, communication isn't instantaneous : we have to learn little by little the keys, just like if we were learning to read and write. After that, Cued Speech is a Complement to oral language. It isn't a language, but a complement, I'd like to underline this. :wink:

so, what can you say about Cued Speech's situation in the US ? :?:

not just east coast.. all over US.. see the events listing..
http://www.cuedspeech.com/events.asp

see plenty of links: http://www.listen-up.org/edu/cue.htm

you're right, it's used very little, tho it is used in some pockets. I think one main reason is that because no one uses it, it's not really functional to learn. There's no one else to communicate with cos no one knows how to use it. One person said she thought it was because the oralists were so against using any manual cues and the manualists are so against using anything but sign language. I don't know, but it really never did catch on here.

Honestly, I am for Cued-Speech. It takes about a week to learn. It's not that much of anyone's time. I think it should be tried. I am not so sure why it is not fairly use in the USA, and I'd like to find out. I wish it was introduced for Children, especially those who may be struggling with "hearing" speech.

PrincessTabu may be right in her reasonings. I think it's pathetic if the oralists don't accept it because it's manual. It's dumb. It is true that many do not seem to care to listen to this approach. It makes them uncomfortable but not me.

I wish I had someone to learn this with. It's highly interesting. I hope it strives in France . Thanks for sharing your opinion. We have one cuer so far!

Yes, but i guess a Cued Speech's association exists in your country, doesn't it?

In France, our association calls ALPC aka Association pour la promotion et le développement du LPC (= association for the promotion and the Cued Speech's developping)

Look it: http://www.alpc.asso.fr/
Sorry, this isn't in english... :?

I think it's pathetic if the oralists don't accept it because it's manual. It's dumb.

Click to expand...

Some oralists accept it, but the audist "auditory-verbaled" experts don't accept it b/c hearing people don't use Cued Speech, so it's not "normal" and is seen as a crutch! :roll: Whatever.....

my ex uses cued speech to communicate with his parents... i have begged him to teach me but he never did.. always have been interested in cued speech even though im much older now and may have no use for it.. only know a couple words for it and i still do not understand it yet.. however.. i do not think it should be used for communication.. but more for verbal training my ex speaks well and a couple others speaks well even though all of them are profoundly deaf and all of them have good english which i think cued speech helped a little with

SpiceHD said:

only know a couple words for it and i still do not understand it yet..

Click to expand...

A little confusion here :
You seems to think cued speech is like sign Language : a sign for a word.
No, you learnt how to 'visualize' the phonetic of these two words, but you could take a syllable of the first word and another syllable of the second word in order to create another word...

example :
Let's say you learnt how to say 'Honey' and 'Manly'.
you could take the first syllable of 'honey' : 'hon'
and the second syllable of 'manly' : 'ly'
in order to say 'only'... (hon + ly)

understood ?

It's gestual, but we still need to lipread at the same time in order to understand the word. If you only move the hand, we won't be able to understand, cause it's a complement.

And it's easy to learn, but the hardest part is to use it regularly : if you don't use it very much, how could you be a good cuer and least say a good cued-speech reader ?
it's just the same than the writing system : if you don't write very often, you won't trace the letters very well and read them. :wink:

thats interesting.. i only know how to say "i love you" and "good nite" and "box" thats it... lol... i might think it is a method of sign language i dotn know.. but i do want to learn how to use it so i would be able to communicate with my ex's parents... (imagine their surprise if i come to their house for a visit and was able to use cued speech )

SpiceHD said:

thats interesting.. i only know how to say "i love you" and "good nite" and "box" thats it... lol... i might think it is a method of sign language i dotn know.. but i do want to learn how to use it so i would be able to communicate with my ex's parents... (imagine their surprise if i come to their house for a visit and was able to use cued speech )

Click to expand...

Cued speech method is not a sign language. It does not uses signs to represent words. "Cue" means like a "clue" to understanding something. It is used to make speech reading ("lip reading") more clear.

A website about cued speech is:

http://cuedspeech.mit.edu/

Their definition of cued speech is:
"Cued Speech is a sound-based visual communication system which, in English, uses eight handshapes in four different locations ('cues') in combination with the natural mouth movements of speech, to make all the sounds of spoken language look different."

I don't know too much about cued speech, except as an interpreter I have attended a workshop on it. It doesn't seem too difficult to learn, but does require regular practice to keep up. Its use in my state is not very widespread (not common).

http://listen-up.org/edu/cue.htm

This website has a lot of resources on Cued Speech. It even has a story of a deaf child and parents that explain how they used it, and how it helps the child. It looks like Texas and Arizona area use Cued Speech more than other states. I have known on someone from Texas and another from Connecticut.

This link shows the legal situation of Cued Speech in the public schools.

http://deafbase.com/article412.html

"The NCSA is involved in an important endeavor to change some of the language of the IDEA before it is reauthorized. We work in cooperation with the Deaf Alliance, a group of organization of representing various deaf and hard of hearing constituencies, and have proposed some changes. The largest change is to include the words Cued Speech and cued language in the bill as modes of communication. In the future, this will help our parents in their quest to obtain services from their local school districts.

Rep. Tim Ryan has agreed to offer our recommended amendment (attached) to
H.R.1350, the House version of IDEA reform relating to services defined under
'related services.' "

i was taught with cued speech all of my life and I believe it is a great tool to use for education activies such as reading and other stuff like that, which does improve your writing and your speech and stuff like that.

sign language is fine too and I think it's still a perfect tool to use for communication but for education such as reading and writing? no offense, but alot of deafies who are into ASL often left out such words like the "s" words , etc...like for example, one deaf student said, "Tim like dog." though the deaf student should say it in proper english... "Tim likes dogs." because that's one person you are talking about and if it's more than one dog, then you should put the "s" there put it more than one dog. get it?

with cued speech, you can read lips more easily as the hand goes around the face (lips, chin, and thoart) and you would automatically know how many dogs Tim likes and then you would write in a sentence, "Tim likes dogs." there you go!

Steel,

Yes, I had a problem with my interpreter who would tell me things to write down. I couldn't tell if I needed 's' or not on certain phrases that are tough for me because I have never heard 's' with my hearing aids. It was frustrating, and I had to tell her sometimes. That's why I think they should learn cued speech for those situations. It's so easy to learn that I think it should be a requirement. This is rare, but there are interpreters who are Cued Speech interpreters. I talked to one who had an interpreter using Cued Speech for her classes.

Cued speech is a teaching tool. Works for some and doesn't work for others.

shel90 said:

Cued speech is a teaching tool. Works for some and doesn't work for others.

Click to expand...

Yep. It can facilitate oral training but it's not a language, and is limited mostly to educational settings.

Reba said:

Yep. It can facilitate oral training but it's not a language, and is limited mostly to educational settings.

Click to expand...

Exactly......Just as it should be......