Wanda Garner

Impossible. Oralism and cochlear implants do not make any Deaf Person "Hearing" . Cochlear Implants cannot help Deaf People "hear" without reading lips. Cochlear Implants helps Deaf People hear sounds of airplanes, crickets, music, people talking. Cochlear Implants do not help Deaf People talk on phones like any Hearing and Hard of Hearing People can do. This is not a total communications for any Deaf Individual. Deaf Individuals are always excluded from total communications in the Hearing World. Loneliness, less informed and subjected to series of undignified audism is a fact of life for every Deaf Individual living in the Hearing World.The only way to make it "Total Communications" is to take up ASL and recognize Audism Practices as immoral, illegal and unconstitutional. ASL completes the Total Communications for Deaf People in the Hearing World.

Deafness

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Buffalo

Exactly. That is why ASL must prevail against the wave of CIs. The tough fact is that 90% of deaf babies are born to hearing parents. It is easy for the hearing parents to be in denial of their child's deafness via CI. I really wish all deaf babies are born to deaf parents and this way would be better for all the Deaf people.

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It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
- Gilbert Chesterton

shel90

I wish the same too!

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~Shel~

jackiesolorzano

You are wrong. My children do not read lips and they have cochlear implants. I am not saying that all implant people have the skills my children have but I have meet many children and adults that do nor read lips with the use of their CI> My children are able to talk on the phone both with cell phones and land lines. Again not all implant users can do this but I have met many that are able to do this.

jackiesolorzano

I can understand and I am sure I would feel the same way if I was deaf. But that is never going to happen, deaf babies are going to continue to be born to hearing families.

jillio

Awww....come on guys! Pull the knife outta my back, will ya?

shel90

I know...LOL!

Seriously, there are some parents that have said they wished their child was born hearing so they wouldnt have to go through all the trauma while many deaf parents wouldnt bat an eye. No offense.

My mom is one of those parents who wishes my brother and I were born hearing.

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~Shel~

Buffalo

Boy, you sure do come across as snotty. You sound like if you are proud of your controlling your two deaf kids' education and mode of communication. No wonder some of us had some trouble with you because of your oralism attitude. I would love to hear what your kids really think of the oralism once they became adults. Their answer might surprise you.

__________________

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
- Gilbert Chesterton

shel90

You never know in the future...

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~Shel~

jillio

Yeah...I was just kidding around.

jillio

Yeppers.....never say never!

Doug5

I am the same way but I sometimes miss a lot. With most people I can communicate on the phone and dont need to lip read but not always.

My hearing loss is not severe enough where a CI would help. Even with my hearing aids I miss a significant amount of speech.

In ideal situations my comprehension is good among people I know. You remember words and phrases they like to use. My comprehension is significantly less with people I dont know. This is a serious problem during job interviews, meeting new clients, customers etc.

I dont have CI's but my audiologist told me they have a way to go before they match normal hearing. I applaud you for trying to help youre kids as much as possible. Just dont assume the ci's give your children normal hearing.

jackiesolorzano

Hi Doug,
I now that CI do not give me children normal hearing. I know that the sounds coming from CI are not normal sounds. Even with the CIs my children still function has a person with a mild hearing loss. My children have just learned how to use what they have. I think I helped them out a little bit in that department.

jackiesolorzano

Buffalo, Can you try to think how I feel. In the beginning of our journey maybe about 15 years ago a Deaf person from the Deaf culture told me that I had no right raising my 2 deaf children, this was before we began our implant journey that I should give my children up for adopation to a Deaf family that would know how to raise my deaf babies. So I carry that with me as many of you carry your awful experiences in life. And so when you said that you wished all deaf babies were born to deaf parents it trigged my memory.

I love my children it doesn't matter to me that they are deaf. How dare someone tell me that I did not have the right to raise my children.

Doug5

thats pretty nasty telling you to give up your children for adoption.

dont judge all deaf people by one deaf fool.

shel90

I cant imagine what that person must have been smoking when he/she told Jackie that. Yea, that person must be a fool.

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~Shel~

deafdyke

YES! Even with CI kids miss a significent amount of speech. And I mean a lot of times, speech perception can be just so completely different depending on the person who is saying the stuff. There are people out there who are wicked good speakers. People who are dhh can easily "hear" them. Yet another person who is a bad speaker (like they aren't used to talking or interacting with dhh folks) someone who is dhh, would prolly get a very low speech perception score. I've known people, with whom I can "hear" even without looking at them (and I can have a "spoken" conversation without any sound just by speechreading) Then again, I've known a lot more people who could cause even someone with mild loss to qualify for a CI, since understanding their speech is so hard!

jillio

But just because one person said it many years ago does not mean that an entire group of people believe that. All cannot be guilty for the actions of one. I had a woman report me to children's services because I allowed my son to ride a bicycle at the age of 5. He was riding it on a cul-de-sac where there were only 4 other houses, all the neighbors were aware that he was deaf, and I was always outside with him, and she lived down the street. She believed that I was putting him in danger because he could not, according to her, "hear cars". Of course, nothing came of her accusation, because it was absolutely ridiculas. Quite frankly, the woman was an idiot. Does that mean that all of the people who lived in that neighborhood were idiots? She was hearing. Does that mean that all hearing people are that ignorant? Of course not.

Kalista

I wish too. They can raise them for a better Deaf school and interact with other Deaf children instead of prevent from the reality into the deaf world.

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Enjoy the summer as much as we can. The times will fly !

jackiesolorzano

I know you are right and i have met amazing Deaf and deaf people since then but this is why I am careful as to what kind of Deaf and deaf people my children hang out with. It also goes the same way Doug not all oralist are the same way. There are many us that believe chldren can be successful in almost any educate mode as long as parents are doing everything they should.

jillio

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VOLUME 29 , NUMBER 4 -April 1998
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Sign language may help deaf children learn English
Research reveals some unexpected benefits of American Sign Language.
By Beth Azar
Monitor staff
Language learning in the deaf community is in critical condition.
Despite efforts to mainstream deaf children into public schools and to develop new techniques for teaching English to deaf children, the average deaf high school graduate reads and writes at the fourth-grade level, say deaf education experts.
Until recently ideas about how best to teach language to deaf children were based more on strong feelings than science. Some psychologists hope to change that. They?re stepping in to provide a scientific base to the long simmering debate: Should deaf children be taught American Sign Language (ASL) first and then be taught English?an option known as bilingual education? Or should they be taught English only?
English-only education provides either oral training, which concentrates on lip reading and written English, or 'total communication' training, which uses oral English as well as signed English. Signed English is simply English translated into signs, and linguists don?t consider it a language per se. In contrast, ASL is as different from English as any foreign language, with its own vocabulary and grammatical structure.
Oral-only and total communication training have dominated American education of deaf and hard of hearing children over the past 20 years. More than 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many of whom want their children in English-only programs. They assume that learning ASL will impede learning English and that English-only programs will best facilitate it.
But recent research is beginning to gather evidence for the opposite: Learning ASL doesn?t appear to hurt subsequent English learning but appears to enhance it.
Apples and oranges
Signed English provides an inadequate base for learning any language, says educational psychologist Jenny Singleton, PhD, of the University of Illinois. As early as the 1970s Ursula Bellugi, PhD, and her colleagues found that signed English is visually cumbersome and that it takes speakers nearly twice the time to produce a sentence in signed English than in oral English or ASL. Signed English takes so long, in fact, that it?s feasible for a child to forget the beginning of a proposition before seeing the end.
Also, because signed English isn?t truly a language, it doesn?t mimic English grammar well, says University of Rochester psychologist Elissa Newport, PhD. For example, with grammatical constructions like 'he is walking,' English-based signers may leave off the 'ing' portion of the verb, producing 'he is walk.'
'It?s hard for children to deduce the grammar of English from seeing something that?s not grammatically like English,' says Singleton.
ASL is also nothing like English. But researchers believe it provides a solid language base on which to build a second language. And several studies support their claims.
For example, Michael Strong, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco, and Philip Prinz, PhD, of San Francisco State University found a strong relationship between ASL proficiency and English literacy in 140 students attending a residential school for the deaf. The students whose ASL proficiency improved over the three years of the study also showed significant improvements in English literacy.
In a recent study of 80 deaf children, Singleton and Sam Supalla, PhD, of the University of Arizona found similar results.
They evaluated the written English skills of children attending three types of schools:
? A bilingual school where educators use ASL as the primary instruction language and teach English as a second language.
? A traditional residential school for the deaf where teachers use oral and signed English. These children learn some ASL from peers who learned it at home.
? A public school where teachers and interpreters use English-based sign. These children have no exposure to ASL.
Children in the bilingual school were the most proficient in ASL, with some children in the residential school showing proficiency and none of the children in the public school, says Singleton. When the researchers examined writing samples from the children, they found a strong relationship between higher proficiency in ASL and better writing for children between ages 9 and 12. They didn?t find such a correlation for children under age 9, which isn?t surprising, says Singleton, since children at that age don?t tend to write much.
'Across several studies we?re seeing indications that exposure to ASL certainly isn?t hurting English proficiency and may be enhancing it,' says Singleton.
The finding is pretty robust, agrees sociolinguist Claire Ramsey, PhD, of the University of Nebraska. She and Carol Padden, PhD, of the University of California?San Diego have begun to examine the connection between ASL proficiency and English proficiency.
In a recent pilot study of 30 deaf students, Padden and Ramsey examined how specific aspects of ASL proficiency tracked to English. They found that finger spelling and knowledge of initialized signs?knowing that in ASL you can sometimes use the first letter of a word as a shorthand for that word?correlate with reading and writing ability in English. Padden is expanding on these findings to discover the mechanism responsible for this relationship.
A resource for learning
Of course, beyond a mechanism that helps children move from ASL to English, sign language is a useful resource for teaching children English, says anthropologist and educator Carol Erting, PhD, of Gallaudet University. She and her research team study language interactions between children and adults. In particular, they look at the interaction between deaf children and their deaf parents. They?re finding that deaf parents who are bilingual?speaking American Sign Language (ASL) and reading and writing English?spend a lot of time interacting with their children in both languages. They build bridges between ASL and English during everyday interactions by signing in ASL and pointing to English words in books or articulating words with their lips. In fact, she finds that these parents begin finger spelling and showing their children books when they are only a few months old. ASL gives children a language in which to think and process complex thought. Adults can then use their ASL proficiency to teach them English, says Erting.
Without such a base, children are at risk of never fully developing proficiency in any language, says Singleton. 'We now have this new generation of students [trained in signed English] who are not developing proficient English or ASL,' says Singleton. 'Do they even have a native language? They seem to have lots of nouns and verbs but they string them together without the grammar links necessary for understanding what they mean.'
Researchers are not finished with their studies, but some communities aren?t waiting for the results, says Singleton. A handful of ASL-based bilingual schools have cropped up around the country use ASL to teach the children about English.
'Some people think it?s tantamount to child abuse not to provide these children with ASL training,' says Singleton. 'Especially since the latest research suggests that an ASL-first approach can lead to better English learning outcomes.'
A special August issue of Topics in Language Disorders (Vol. 18, No. 4) will address ASL and English literacy development.
Cover Page for This Issue




© PsycNET 2008 American Psychological Association

jasin

if those who use oral have implants then maybe.

jasin

Only if all deafies start using oral. My first post was a typo, sorry.

Buffalo

You still don't get it. It is the hearing who repressed the D/deaf, not the other way around. No wonder the Deaf person from the Deaf culture said what he/she said to you. Your oral-only attitude probably triggered his/her memory from the old school days. If it was possible to turn time back and make you deaf. You wouldn't be pro-oralist at all now.

__________________

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
- Gilbert Chesterton