Deafness And Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)

A child begins to form words somewhere between ten and eighteen months of age. The first word of a child is often momma or dada. The child repeats the sounds or utterances heard from the adults around him. Speech does not actually occur until the spoken word is deliberate and meant to communicate. By the time a child reaches kindergarten he has likely gained a 2000 – 3000 word vocabulary. While this number may seem excessive Dr. Mary E. Dahlgren states that a beginning kindergartener should have a 6000 word vocabulary for optimum grade and class performance (Dahlgren, 2008). In the classroom a student’s vocabulary size was an effective predictor of reading comprehension. Children with a restricted or limited vocabulary also had declining comprehension scores in the third grade. The elementary teacher can promote speaking by allowing the student the opportunity to speak and by listening to the student completely. Discussing a recently read book, or open discussions are ways in which a teacher can aid a student’s speech development.

18 months – 3 years – They are now increasing the amount of words they use and joining words together, so that by the time a child is about 2 years old, they will know approximately 200 words. As the move into their 2nd year they start to use plural and although they are joining words together and their vocabulary is rapidly growing they often make errors with the tense of word , for example ‘I eaten it’

By 2 years old the child will have a developing vocabulary of around 50 words but will understand many more. At this stage the child will become much more independent, feeding and attempting to dress himself and his sense of identity increases.

I decided to attend this lecture by social geographer Gill Harold titled “Considering the Models of d/Deafness – the importance of making space for culture”, as I knew very little about the Deaf Community. To begin with Gill asked us if being deaf was a disability and what did we think of when we heard the word ‘Deaf’. Personally, I had perceived deafness to be a disability. In addition to this, when I thought about Deaf people, the silence was the first thing that came to mind, along with sign language and lip reading. It would also appear that the field of deaf education is dominated by hearing professionals, hearing researchers, and hearing policymakers. Regularly these professionals have not taken a sensitive approach to the Deaf Community or their wishes for the future of deaf education.

Throughout each assessment, my use of academic language was centered around unfamiliar vocabulary. As stated before, children who are deaf and hard of hearing need to be taught vocabulary directly. Research published by Cooke and Luckner stated that that the vocabulary knowledge of students who are deaf or hard of hearing is quantitatively reduced as compared to that of typical hearing peers. (2010, American Annals of the Deaf) Assessment number one focused on identifying colors and the vocabulary words: sort and group. The students had to sort the leaves into two or three categories (groups) using color as a key attribute. Assessment number two focused on the vocabulary: big and little. The words of “big and little” were used as a backdown

However, during the first-year children begin understanding words and phrases that they hear frequently. For example, around 5- to 6-months children should show signs that they recognize their name. Also, around 8- to 10- months, children can understand simple phrases and they begin to understand individual

Vygotsky  he focuses on the social dimension of the child and in the importance of language during child’s infancy. Language is seen as a tool that allows the child to do things and organise information through the use of words as symbols. During early years, children talk to themselves while they are playing (private speech). As children get older they speak less and less aloud, and differentiate between social speech and inner speech. This is called internalisation. This implies a transformation, the interpersonal talk during doing something, later becomes intrapersonal mental action by one individual.

Aged 10-17 months: They will now understand simple instructions which could be considered as ‘one-step instructions’ i.e. ‘nappy’ to say go to the nappy room to change your nappy or ‘two-step instructions’ i.e. ‘wash hands’ and the child will now be able to process the instructions and carry out the instruction given. The children’s vocabulary would expand more going from 1 word or 1 syllable words to either 2 words or 2 syllable i.e. a child is very familiar with the term ‘tah’ however their vocab by now would have expanded to: ‘bye-bye’ ‘mumma’ and ‘dadda’. The child now will be at the stage where their tunefully experimenting with the different tones of their voices i.e. making their voices go up and down just like adults do when they are talking to each other. At this point in time the child can now understand that words stand for people, objects, what they do and what happens, e.g. they know that the words boy and girl aimed at people where as the word broke or broken may be represented towards an object/toy.

To see, to touch, to smell, to taste, but not to hear. Imagine living in a world where lips are moving a mile a minute or where sound is only visually depicted, but acoustically absent. Where everyday of your life is spent trying to decipher the words leaping off the tongues of those around you. For over 30 million people in the world this has become or has been their reality. Deaf individuals, spend their lives trying to ways to maneuver around in a hearing world. Although the United States provides some form of resources to deaf individuals this is does not alleviate the fact that America still has some growing to do; in terms of accepting and truly embracing the Deaf Culture especially within education.

Every child develops all aspects of development at different rates; this is the same for speech and language development. Some children will enter early years settings with a high level of communication, however some children may start early years with very little or no speech at all. This could be because of an underlying speech and language impairment/delay or that the child is developing at a much slower rate than his peers. It is paramount to keep in close contact with the child’s parents/carers to fully understand the child’s needs, and to understand if any additional support is in place or weather the parents would like some help with understanding the development with their child.

Generic deafness can be classified into two sections syndromic and nonsyndromic. Nonsyndromic affects the ear only and consists of 43 genes that hold recessive mutations and 25 genes, which consist of dominant mutations.

She said that it is too dangerous for a deaf girl to be outside alone. Because Rosa could be hit by a car or kidnapped. No, because deaf can do anything and can be yourself no matter what. Deaf can manage to be careful when you see car or people touch that you don’t know a person. Deaf can communication with other people like write back and forth

Walton (2014) stated “The prevalence of deafness has been increasing rapidly over the last 30 years. Since 1971 deafness has gone from about 13 million to almost 30 million (Walton, 2014). Of all the students with an IEP under IDEA, almost 2% of them are classified with hearing disabilities and that is not accounting for the others with comorbidity” (Walton 2014). Some people are born deaf whereas others acquire a hearing loss. There is no genetic disposition for being deaf although some disorders and diseases are associated with hearing loss. Hearing is characterized by degrees, types, and patterns of hearing loss. The variations in hearing loss mean no two people experience deafness the same way even if their hearing loss is the same.

In most instances, the communication process between hearing and deaf is difficult and a continuous struggle. For example, a joke is told, everyone laughs, and the deaf person misses it. Now the hearing person has to re-tell the joke, which does not have the same response as is it was first told. As a result, the deaf person will feel frustrated and in some cases loneliness and isolated (Mindess, 1999). Communication issues such as this can impact someone’s identity because they’re missing information and feels left out (Mindess, 1999). That’s enough to make them think about who they are and where they “fit in”

This type of learning is called operant conditioning by Skinner which can be translated as training by means of voluntary responses (the word ‘operant’ means a voluntary response rather than an automatic one) and Skinner suggested that a vast majority of human learning take place via this mode, including learning of language(,Aitchison,2008,p.9). In his book Verbal Behaviour, Skinner argued that child efforts to speak are rewarded by parents. Each time the child produces an utterances that comes close to sounding like an acceptable word or sentence, the parent offers a reward in the form of praise or encouragement. As this conditioning goes on, the closer the child gets to the adult model of utterance the more parental rewards that he/she gets. Thus, the operant conditioning relies on the learner producing a linguistic behaviour that is progressively shaped through rewards, until the desired behaviour is achieved (Saxton,2010,p.90).