Alison Leach: Mainstream education isn’t always inclusive for Deaf parents

Totally agree with your comments about mainstream does not fit all!

Mainstream teachers have not had the benefit of Teacher of the Deaf training which covers areas such as how deaf children’s memory works, deaf children’s different learning styles and so on.

There are various visual phonics systems that can make phonics more accessible to deaf children but as this is not part of standard primary teacher training many teachers might not be aware of this. As always the NDCS has produced some excellent guidance on teaching phonics for deaf children. Booklets for both parents and professionals can be downloaded from their website 🙂

However, the challenge I see for deaf children in mainstream is whether parents, teachers and teaching assistants are not only made aware but able to become competent and proficient in adapting their teaching to meet the learning styles of their deaf student. Bilingual deaf schools on the other hand are able to specialise and target all of their teaching to their deaf learners. Very different to being one deaf child in a sea of 29 other hearing pupils.

Deaf children can learn English without any phonics. Fingerspelling is superior for learning and memorizing words. When pronouncing words need to be taught, it should be done in a separate speech class. Use of IPA symbols may prove less confusing for this purpose. That is how I as a German learn how to pronounce English words. I venture to assert, phonics are also less helpful for hearing children. This is supported by hearing children of Deaf parents like Alison Leach’s daughter and my son and countless other CODA kids I know, who already are good readers and spellers when six years old.

Just learn from Deaf people how they got their children to master written English. Forget about this phon(ey)ic bullshit. Waldorf Schools do not use phonics. They teach writing before reading. A bit similar to what Deaf parents do with their children via fingerspelling, which is kinda writing in the air.

Hartmut

I learned English after Geman and DGS (German Sign Language) as an adult. Since my speech is intelligible, and being able to pronounce English words, helped me to remember the vocabulary. So I learned the IPA codes for the English phonemes, including the colon for lengthening of vowels and symbols for sounds that do not exist in German, nearly self-taught. So that way, it was for me much easier to learn the sound representations of English.than phonics and Cued Speech. My speaking English is relatively more intelligible than speaking German, as I have observed more British and American people understood me than Germans my speaking German, taught by well-trained teachers of the deaf. Later I discovered the “phonic” regularities behind the English orthography. I cannot fathom, I would have made this discovery without IPA.

Learning the spoken form, while helpful for those who can speak moderately well, is not a sine qua non requirement for a successful learning of English. The written form sans speech can suffice for many deaf kids with the aid of fingerspelling. Deaf people are known to be excellent spellers world-wide, even by Vietnamese deaf school kids, where they hardly speak nor misspell words, including their intricate tonal diacritics.

Learning phonics or Cued Speech are, therefore, not a necessity.

Yes, people (deaf and hearing) can become good readers without formal teaching using phonics. But others (too many!) do not. If an understanding of phonics (through listening and IPA as Hartmut describes or through CS for those with little or no hearing) increases the successes of readers why would you not want it for your child?

However, I don’t think phonics teaching is the most important thing; CS will also give access to full English language and it’s lack of complete understanding of English which seems to be the main barrier to deaf children’s literacy.