ASL and CI together again!
I was very pleased to see this video for the first time. It was very worrisome to many people when Cochlear Implants first became widely used. There is always a fear that ASL will be rejected by parents and that Spoken English will be forced upon deaf children. This video shows that once Deaf, always Deaf. It also demonstrates that many parents will still teach ASL to their implanted child. I am so pleased to see all these children with CIs using ASL and loving it! Signed Languages are the ONLY natural languages for the deaf. CIs can be used as aids in the hearing world, but it will never replace ASL.
Tags: ASL, CI, Cochlear Implants, Deafness
March 16, 2009 at 8:01 pm |
On the other hand, my friend’s wife works at a school with a lot of kids with CIs. The faculty and staff are not allowed to sign and they have to hold their hand over their mouth when they talk so the kids will not learn to read lips. I’ll have to repost with the name of the school if he doesn’t mind telling me.
April 13, 2009 at 4:54 pm |
Ugh, yeah, I just found out about that new approach, the Auditory-Verbal approach.
“The foundation of the Auditory-Verbal approach is that, with the use of hearing aids or a cochlear implant, hearing impaired children can learn to listen and understand spoken language in order to communicate through speech.”
“Techniques
As an early implant user is often a strong visual learner, a hand cue will help in highlighting listening rather than lipreading. When a child is watching an adult’s face, it is necessary for the speaker to cover his/her own mouth to alert the child to listen. By then moving the speaker’s hand towards the child’s mouth, this serves as a cue for the child to imitate what he/she heard. Imitation should only be encouraged if a child begins to use meaningful sounds spontaneously. This imitation can also be used with parents as models to encourage their participation. Once a child relies on hearing, use of a hand cue will seldom be necessary to encourage listening or speech production.”
Okay fine, it sounds reasonable to use cues to remind children to practice listening and to train their ears to interpret the speech input, but if in practice teachers are running around covering their mouths, how is that helpful in the long run? Deaf children with CIs also need to learn lipreading, don’t they?
God, it just seems so cruel. Like making them sit on their hands. Whatever happened to Total Communication?