Tadoma and Cued Speech
We are a firm belielver in the method you talked about, placing her hand on my throat and so on. Before you said the name of this type of learning, I had neer heard it. To teach Lilly how to make a specific sound,I do as you described. I place Lillys hand on my throat, mouth, cheek or whatever works to (what we call) "feel the sound". We also use a small hand held mirror so she can see the sound as she makes it. We keep the mirror handy so we can use it during play.
The Tadoma method was invented by American teacher Sophie Alcorn and developed at the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts. It is named after the first two children to whom it was taught: Winthrop "Tad" Chapman and Oma Simpson.
I came to the conclusion that this would become a problem down the road. Afterall, the sign I had been teaching her was english based. I had been teaching her SEE or contact english and not even realized it. Since her communication is speech, english based, I decided SEE based would be best. So that is what we are doing. I see no problem with TC.
SEE (Signing Exact English) or MCE (Manually Coded English) is nice, because it shows a person the communicated mesage, just like Englih writing, and it allows a person to begin learning ASL very quickly, since the signs are borrowed from ASL. For example, the signed sentance, in ASL "How help" is signed, "How may I help you?" The differances are, only the first half of the sign for "how" is signed, and the other half flows into the word help. In Signed English, the sign for how is comple. The sign for "may" is the ASL sign for "can" initilized with the letter "M". The sign for "I" is the ASL sign for "me" initilized with the letter "I". The sign for help is complete. The sign for you (informal) is either a 1-handshape pointed away from the signer, towards the viewer, or (formal) a B-hanshape, palm up, pointed towards the viewer, starting pointing the fingers at the top of the viewer's head, and then the hand moves down, until the fingers point below the viewer's waist. The sign for "?" is a 1-handshape, drawing a question mark in the air, with the eyebrows tilted, to express a question. If Lilly is exposed to Deaf people who sign ASL, and she signs SEE, she can learn ASL rather quickly.
However, Signed English doesn't show a person how to speak the words. You may want to consider Cued Speech, as Cued speech uses 8 handshapes (a 1-handshape, a U-handshape, a handshape made like a U-handshape with three fingers instead of two, a B-handshape, an open palm handshape, an L-handshape, an L-handshape, a handshape with the index and middle finger forming a U-handshape and the index and thumb forming an L-handshape, and a V-handshape), placed in 4 locations (lip, chin, throat, to the side of the face ). Cued Speech teaches speach so much easier than Tadoma. You can always cue, but you can't always use Tadoma. For example, I was speaking/signing with with one of my Hard-of-Hearing friends on the videophone, the other day. He signed "drag", but he said "drage." I tried to explain, it sounds like "bag". He said "bage". I explained, "No, like tag." He said, "take". I got a witeboard and drew which part of the word to stress, but I gave up after ten minutes. I signed, "Ok, when I come to your home, I'll show you." When we used Tadoma, he got it quickly, and I signed, "Pah!" (Pah! is an ASL expression meaning "finally" or "it's over" or "finished". To sign "Pah!" point both hands, in a 1-handshape, palm facing the signer, at the corners of the mouth, and then both hands rise and rotate, until the hands are over the head, and the palms face the viewer.) I signed, "If you know Cued Speech, you could learn how to speak any word– fast!" (The ASL sign for Cued Speech is a B-handshape, over the mouth, palm facing the signer, and then with the palm still facing the signer, the hand makes a circle by moving down by chin, down towards the throat, up towards the side of the face and back to the mouth.) He groaned, "Yeah..."
