Miss-Delectable
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Deaf Talkabout: The growing importance of learning English - Opinion - News - Belfast Telegraph
The Northern Ireland branch of The National Deaf Children's Society announces that, because of major renovation work at the Ulster Museum, the annual Young Authors and Artists Prize Day will be held next Wednesday at Belfast City Hall. The ceremony begins at 11am but refreshments will be available from 10.30am.
The old essay competition, as it used to be called, now involves most of the schools and hearing impaired units in the province and has been expanded to include prizes in art as well as writing for the 500 deaf and hearing impaired children in our schools.
Since the start, over 20 years ago, we have been granted free use of the lovely lecture room at the museum and it has been a red-letter day for all the teachers, parents and friends of the successful pupils. The essay competition was started with the simple aim of encouraging writing and reading among deaf children and it was interesting to read in a recent national newspaper editorial that the government is also becoming concerned about how English is being taught among the swelling tide of immigrants.
"English", it says, "is not only the language of the United Kingdom but increasingly the business language of the entire world. So parents who do not teach their children to speak it by the time they reach school age are doing them no favours. Yet in some of our cities nearly half of the pupils are not fluent in English."
The article goes on to say that elements within some ethnic minority communities exhibit something close to a blanket refusal to integrate. Instead they wish to replicate the societies they have come from in Britain.
Teaching English to deaf-born children is one of the most difficult jobs in the world and I have no truck with people who oversimplify the problem and say one method of teaching is better than the other. There are just as many levels of deafness as there are levels of intelligence and parents and teachers need to work together in finding the best way to overcome the particular communication problem with their child. It can be done - and I have seen it done - but it requires teaching and commitment of a very high order.
I am just worried that, in the struggle to present good examination results, schools and colleges may be tempted to downgrade exams such as A-level English in which it is traditionally difficult to gain good grades and concentrate on less academic subjects. In my opinion this is a shortsighted view and detrimental to full involvement and enjoyment of the written word in later life.
We discussed issues like this during our visit to the deaf school in Kyoto while on vacation in Japan last April, and I've just had a lovely letter from the headmaster saying how much he and his deputy enjoyed our visit. He only wished he had some English conversation ability and could have talked about the school's education policy and been able to confer on teaching matters without the hassle of an interpreter. Obviously the problem is worldwide.
I sent the headmaster a copy of the Deaf Talkabout column I had written after our visit and in his reply he said their English teacher knows the Belfast Telegraph very well and that they would be sending my article to the education committee of Kyoto city. Japanese people have this wonderful knack of making you feel important.
For more information about the NDCS prize-day please contact Arts Officer Stacey McStay at Wilton House, 5 College Square, Belfast, tel: 9031 3170, fax: 9027 8205, email:
Stacey.mcstay@ndcs.org.uk
The Northern Ireland branch of The National Deaf Children's Society announces that, because of major renovation work at the Ulster Museum, the annual Young Authors and Artists Prize Day will be held next Wednesday at Belfast City Hall. The ceremony begins at 11am but refreshments will be available from 10.30am.
The old essay competition, as it used to be called, now involves most of the schools and hearing impaired units in the province and has been expanded to include prizes in art as well as writing for the 500 deaf and hearing impaired children in our schools.
Since the start, over 20 years ago, we have been granted free use of the lovely lecture room at the museum and it has been a red-letter day for all the teachers, parents and friends of the successful pupils. The essay competition was started with the simple aim of encouraging writing and reading among deaf children and it was interesting to read in a recent national newspaper editorial that the government is also becoming concerned about how English is being taught among the swelling tide of immigrants.
"English", it says, "is not only the language of the United Kingdom but increasingly the business language of the entire world. So parents who do not teach their children to speak it by the time they reach school age are doing them no favours. Yet in some of our cities nearly half of the pupils are not fluent in English."
The article goes on to say that elements within some ethnic minority communities exhibit something close to a blanket refusal to integrate. Instead they wish to replicate the societies they have come from in Britain.
Teaching English to deaf-born children is one of the most difficult jobs in the world and I have no truck with people who oversimplify the problem and say one method of teaching is better than the other. There are just as many levels of deafness as there are levels of intelligence and parents and teachers need to work together in finding the best way to overcome the particular communication problem with their child. It can be done - and I have seen it done - but it requires teaching and commitment of a very high order.
I am just worried that, in the struggle to present good examination results, schools and colleges may be tempted to downgrade exams such as A-level English in which it is traditionally difficult to gain good grades and concentrate on less academic subjects. In my opinion this is a shortsighted view and detrimental to full involvement and enjoyment of the written word in later life.
We discussed issues like this during our visit to the deaf school in Kyoto while on vacation in Japan last April, and I've just had a lovely letter from the headmaster saying how much he and his deputy enjoyed our visit. He only wished he had some English conversation ability and could have talked about the school's education policy and been able to confer on teaching matters without the hassle of an interpreter. Obviously the problem is worldwide.
I sent the headmaster a copy of the Deaf Talkabout column I had written after our visit and in his reply he said their English teacher knows the Belfast Telegraph very well and that they would be sending my article to the education committee of Kyoto city. Japanese people have this wonderful knack of making you feel important.
For more information about the NDCS prize-day please contact Arts Officer Stacey McStay at Wilton House, 5 College Square, Belfast, tel: 9031 3170, fax: 9027 8205, email:
Stacey.mcstay@ndcs.org.uk