Tharā Gabriel: The Hard of Hearing Linguaphile

Linguaphile: a person who loves languages and words.

​“Linguaphiles love language for all the things it can do. They often love how language sounds, as if it were music, and they love how it looks on the page. Linguaphiles love old words and new words, and they love knowing where certain words come from. They love collecting new bits of language and then using them.

Perhaps most of all, they love what language is used for: poetry, fiction, precise descriptions of real things and unreal things, passionate arguments, wise expressions, long conversations, good puns, bad puns, love letters, apologies—is there anything language can’t do? Not to a linguaphile.” (dictionary.com)

Just in case you were wondering what a “linguaphile” was!

I have always dreamt of being fluent in seven languages; why seven? It’s just my favourite number.  It has always gone hand-in-hand with my other dream of travelling the world and being immersed in explorations of different cultures, being fascinated by the norms, practices and inner-workings of societies other than my own. Malheureusement, c’est pas possible!

To my utmost dismay, in my country we are not exposed to foreign languages until secondary school. Thankfully, due to my exposure to international music and countless sagas from my father’s travel exploits, I had a much earlier encounter and quickly fell in love.

From Forms 1-3 we were taught both French and Spanish, extremely limited options in my opinion but I digress. I hated Spanish and didn’t truly appreciate it till much later, but French has always been my first love. Nevertheless, I encountered the same issue and bane of my language existence in both classes: Orals and Listening Comprehension. Ugh!

How does a deaf or hard of hearing person complete a listening comprehension exam? I’ll tell you how:

1. Focus intently on audio device (during my era this was usually the cheapest, oldest radio available on the market, pulled from a dusty staff room cupboard)
2. Squint your eyes to slits (I literally don’t know why we do this to hear but I suppose it’s because our sound is visual; i.e. we need to see you to hear you)
3. Hold your breath and listen to recording with all your might
4. Hear *muffled speech, distortion, ambient noise, shuffle shuffle shuffle, silence*
5. Try to interpret what was said using our unique processing capabilities and guess an answer on a hope and a prayer
6. Get answer wrong and score low in every. single. listening. exam.

At my secondary schools there were no accommodations or provisions for deaf or hard of hearing students. I went into every single oral exam with bated breath. Form 6 French was even worse than Form 5 French because the entire class was in French; if I can’t hear you in my mother tongue, English, worse yet for another language. Yet still, I persevered.

At University I took advantage of discounted language classes and took courses in Portuguese, Italian, German and Mandarin and in every instance I scored lowest in the Listening Comprehension. Thankfully at this stage the facilitators made accommodations for the use of headphones and additional time, but this didn’t rectify the issue: we still cannot “listen” to audio-only recordings!

This brings me to another challenge: Language Proficiency Tests.

I recently applied for a job through a recruiter platform which uses a series of assessments and skill badges to screen candidates before the interview stage. For the position in question there were six Skill Badges to be earned with the third being a Spoken English Proficiency Badge.

I completed the first two cognitive assessments and scored in the 85th percentile. Then came the language test the purpose of which was outlined as being to:

“Assess the verbal level of English using A.I. Asks candidates to repeat sentences or phrases that they’ve just heard, in increasing order of length and difficulty. Relies on the fact that people can generally hold in short-term working memory only 6-7 concepts at a time, and on the assumption that: for beginners in a new language those concepts are syllables, for intermediate users those concepts are words, and for advanced users those concepts are groups of words/sentences.” TrueNorth

The format of this test is a series of audio-only recordings using both male and female voices of different frequencies. These recordings are played exactly once and candidates must repeat what they hear. Sounds fine for a hearing person right? Of course it does; for me, not so much.

After completing this assessment I earned a B1 Proficiency Skill Badge for a language in which I possess C2 Proficiency, simply because the test given was non-inclusive. I was immediately rejected for the position and my application process halted as the job required a B2 Proficiency.

Without missing a step I took to the Contact Us/Support page to lodge a complaint as this could be described as nothing less than discriminatory. Why weren’t there accommodations for the differently-abled? Why weren’t there any options to indicate your status?

Why wasn’t there a video recording option to allow for lip-reading and the other visual cues we need to “hear”? Why was there no recourse to being rejected on the basis of inaccessible and non-inclusive software? With the current global wave of change as it regards diversity, equity and inclusion, this is a tragedy. What a start to International Week of Deaf People!

This is not the first time that I have been  sidelined, or just neglected to apply for a job requiring proficiency in any language. There is always that listening element which puts us at a hideous advantage; not because we do not possess the capability, but rather due to a blatant lack of accessibility for the differently-abled.

I love languages, that will never change. Whether or not I will ever sit an inclusive language proficiency test –  that remains to be seen. Regardless, not one of these instances have prevented me from wanting to learn additional languages or live in a non English-speaking country. As a matter of fact, I was able to fulfil my biggest dream of living in France.

Would you like to know what I was doing there? Teaching English (which by the way, you cannot do here with a B1 proficiency Level.*insert eyes rolling here*.

Teaching English in France at the primary level was the greatest professional experience of my life thus far. I promise it was not only because of the  bread (thinks fondly of daily guilty pleasures of a freshly baked baguette tradition et un pain au chocolat), but also because of the people and how accommodating and accessible the society was to me as a hard of hearing foreigner.

As an English Foreign Language Assistant in France, you are usually expected to be from the US, UK, Australia, South Africa or maybe even India. But an Assistant from a tiny Caribbean country with an accent they’ve never heard, and she’s malentendante?! How is this possible?! I was apprehensive at first so I can imagine them wondering how I could teach a foreign language to over 200 children.

Well, I did, and it was fantastique! A year later I also taught the most adorable group of Venezuelan children in my country. Remember how I hated Spanish? Well that came back to bite me. But I’ve evolved and am more appreciative of the language than ever (which can be evinced by my recent, lockdown-induced incessant binging of Spanish dramas on Netflix).

Teaching is rewarding in itself; in my opinion, teaching language is even better. And yes it’s possible even when you’re hard of hearing. I’ll show you how in my next article “Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!”

Till next time!

T.G.

Tharā Gabriel is a Creative Communications and Administrative Professional from Trinidad and Tobago living with genetic, progressive Sensorineural Hearing Loss. She sings in her family band and plays guitar-even though she can’t hear all the notes! Ultimately she loves shattering stereotypes about the way deaf people should look and behave.