Using Sign Language For Deaf People

In 1997, Mark Drolsbaugh printed a book titled Deaf Again. In this book, Mark narrates his life story from a hearing child to deaf adult and all of his hardships. Mark was a hearing child born to deaf parents. As he matured, his hearing began to worsen and soon he was labeled as deaf, communicating became harder. He would make mistakes in class and be ridiculed for it. He did not understand the reason for the ridicule and eventually stopped putting effort in his studies. A pediatrician told his parents to look into speech therapy and hearing aids for him. His parents felt he would be happier if he connected more with his hearing side than subject him to a life ruled by his disability. However, his parents were fluent in ASL and regularly communicated with each other by signing. His guardians felt being taught to sign would hinder his development. As he aged, he experienced a larger disconnect from the hearing world, resulting in an isolating feeling. Eventually Mark learned ASL and gradually let the Deaf culture become a bigger part of his life. As his involvement in the Deaf culture grew he found a comradery that he had never had before. Soon, he began to see the value that came from communication and relationships with others above all else.

In this book, Deaf in America, by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, the two authors wrote stories, jokes, performances, and experiences of Deaf people. They also wrote Deaf culture and Deaf people’s lives from various angles. This book is great navigator of Deaf world for hearing people and even Deaf people as me. There are several factors attracting reader. To begin with, I could learn about backgrounds of deaf people and hearing people. Authors wrote about a Deaf boy who was born into a deaf family. Until he discovered that a girl playmate in neighborhood was “hearing”, he didn’t notice about “Others”. Authors

After reading Deaf Again, I can imagine some points about deaf people’ lives. It is really hard when someone tries to fit into something but it is not for he or she. I realize that the words “Never mind,” or “It is not important” can hurt someone. Moreover, I extremely admire the author, Mark Drolsbaugh, and other Deaf people because they are very patient and they are not easy feel down like hearing people.

In Mark Drolsbaugh’s book, Deaf Again, he is able to bring the reader through his life struggles and triumphs as a member of the Deaf community. There were three major themes that reoccurred throughout his life. These themes consist of communication barriers, a negative image on deafness, and limitations on social experiences. An example of communication barriers starts in the beginning with his birth. From the beginning, he talked about how his parents struggled to communicate with the doctors when the epidural was not administered properly or when the anesthesia machine was not working. This communication barrier caused his mother to go through a natural birth and almost lose her life because she could not tell the doctors that something was wrong. Under the circumstances that Drolsbaugh’s grandparents did whatever they could to preserve his hearing this left him with feelings that deafness is bad. This notion fostered a negative self-image. Due to Drolsbaugh’s loss of hearing he had a hard time making meaningful social connections. This affected him greatly in his dating life. As he talked about in the book he dated a girl who was hearing but could sign for three years until they broke up. He said how he tried to hold onto that relationship because he knew that there are not many girls that he knew at the time that could sign and be able to communicate with him fully. This affected him socially with friends as well.

This book was very interesting and I learned quite a bit about Deaf culture. I've found that there is no definition of what constitutes a deaf person. There is so much diversity among

The book also describes how life has changed for deaf adults through the years. Previously, many deaf adults were not able to get jobs in many places, because there were not many places that were accepting to them. These days, however, almost every business or company is looking for those that are fluent in American Sign Language, due to the simple fact that they would be able to accommodate that many more people and earn more money for their business. Also, there were not many outlets for deaf adults to use in relation to entertainment or basic needs, because again, mostly everything was catered to hearing adults only. However, they have recently developed many different ways for the deaf to communicate with the hearing and with one another, including TTY, full-keyboard, and internet phones and closed-captions on television stations and movies.

The Book I decided to read is called “Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf”. In this book the author Oliver Sacks basically focuses on Deaf history and the community of the deaf developed toward linguistic self-sufficiency. Sacks is a Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He became interested in the problem of how deaf children acquire language after reviewing a book by Harlan Lane. The book was titled “When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf”. This book was first published in 1984 and was published again in 1989. Before reading Harlan’s book Sacks did not know any sign language. The book encouraged him to begin studying sign language. Sacks became extremely interested on how the deaf learn to communicate with the ability of sound being nonexistent. He wanted to know what this process may tell us about the nature of language. Seeing Voices is made up of three chapters, the history of the deaf, a discussion of language and the brain, and an evaluation of the problems behind the student strike that occurred at Gallaudet University, in March of 1988.

I personally love deaf people and I will always support them and help them in any way possible. Deaf people do make natural sounds when they sign especially when they are emphasizing a point or expressing intense emotions. There are some deaf people who use certain sounds to communicate that are understood perfectly by their friends and family. Aristotle is a Greek philosopher that labeled deaf individuals as being dumb because he believed that they were not able to learn or reason which is completely wrong. Deaf individuals go through a variety of obstacles in their life but they do not give up. Unfortunately, there are hearing people in the world that believe that people who can’t speak are not intelligent and don’t have much going for them but it is completely wrong because deaf individual are extremely

The movie Trough Deaf Eyes shows us that Deaf people are just like everybody else. One individual in the movie said, "Being deaf is part of me, it's something I have to deal with, but it doesn't keep me from being happy. It's just like being tall instead of short." One thing that I thought was interesting, that was explained

While reading " Deaf in America: Voices From A Culture " I notice the purpose of this book was to wrote about Deaf people in a new and different way. The book main focus is that Deaf people have a condition that they can't hear. The culture of Deaf people is what both authors want to begin yo betray. What I found interesting while reading is that the majority of indidivauls within the community of Deaf people do not join it at birth. While reading these chapters I've seen both auhtors try to present the culture from the inside to discover how Deaf people describe themselves and how they think about their lives.

The book “A Journey into the Deaf-World”, by Harlan Lane, Robert Hoffmeister, and Ben Bahan, is about the different people who are considered deaf: hard-of-hearing, deaf, and CODA. People who are hard-of-hearing are people who don 't hear well; people who are deaf lack the power of hearing since birth; you can be born hearing and throughout time lose some or all of your hearing sense. People who are CODA (children of deaf adults) are often signing because their parents are deaf and CODA’s often are helpful by being interpreters. CODAs become a great link between their parents and the hearing world. This book explains about deaf culture and how sign is a visual and manual way of conversing. The benefits of sign language are many and the ASL “foreign language” is growing among hearing as well. About more than 500,000 people sign in America alone. ASL is dated from 1779, but probably even earlier. Sign language promotes cultural awareness; deaf culture uses sign language as their main form of communicating.

Imagine if you were deaf, the constant fear of not hearing again. Not being able to hear the simple sounds of the world we live in today. If you had a choice in losing your ability to hear, would you do it? If I were to lose my hearing, by choice, I know that I would take it. There are some down sides to losing the ability to hear but there are also some very good points to it as well. The process of hearing consist of the vibrations of sounds entering our ears and then being interpreted by our brains’. The different interactions of my life would change but I would be able to connect to the world in a deeper more intimate level. Of course there are some downfalls like the sensation of loneliness even though I’m surrounded by people, and the constant awareness and vigilance that I have to keep up in case of emergencies. Being deaf brings new challenges to a person’s life, especially if it’s by choice. However, I would be able to join a new community of people who are just like me and can relate on life experiences.

One of the main impacts of hearing loss is on the someone ability to communicate with others. Spoken language in children with deafness often delay development. Hearing loss and ear diseases that can lead to deafness can have a significantly give an effect on the academic performance of children. However, when opportunities are provided among people with hearing loss to communicate, they can participate as usual. The communication may be through spoken or written language or through sign language. They also get limit access to services and exclusion from communication can have a significant impact on everyday life, causing feelings of loneliness, isolation and frustration, particularly among older people with hearing loss. If a person with

One quality deaf people need to have is concentration. When you can’t make any sound you have to be really focused on the gestures and body language the other person is demonstrating. Conversations can be completely transformed with just a simple shift. Nonverbal communication has to be practiced. The language for the deaf people is facial expressions and gestures to bring meaning. Deaf children have to deal with inequalities

Helen Keller once said, ¨Blindness separates people from things; Deafness separates people from people.¨ Sign language is not just a way of communication for deaf people, it is a culture. Ninety percent of deaf children are born to deaf parents. The challenges facing parents with deaf children are numerous when it comes to identifying educational strategies that will maximize language acquisition, a sense of belonging, concept development, social competency, and ultimate societal contribution of their children. There are variations in how a person becomes deaf or hard of hearing, level of hearing, age of onset, educational background, communication methods, and cultural identity. The deaf and hard of hearing community