Table of ContentsHow Hearing Parents Can Help Deaf Children SucceedTelepracticeDirect ASL LessonsConclusionDeaf Children Face Additional Challenges When It Comes to Getting Started school. Most students arrive with language deprivation – American Sign Language (ASL). More than ninety percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. (NICID 2018) This means that families do not have the language tools necessary to converse with their children on a daily basis and to teach them what should be the child's native language. No matter how much speech therapy or lip reading instruction a child receives, he or she will always be at a disadvantage in conversation: tone contributes to important aspects of the meaning of spoken language. Although deaf children can read body language and facial cues, they need to be able to check their interpretation of meanings, and ASL can provide this opportunity. The medical community has been telling parents for many years that introducing ASL (sign language) to a child before he or she learns English or how to speak will confuse the child and slow down language acquisition. This couldn't be further from the truth. Just like bilingual children, deaf children learn to code switch and using one language improves understanding of the other. To enable deaf children to make the same educational progress as their hearing peers, the teaching of ASL, and more particularly of finger spelling in its different forms, must be introduced as early as possible and in the appropriate manner. as smooth as possible. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The current problem is twofold: deaf students traditionally read at a lower level than their peers, and because of small groups of 'deaf children Spread across the country, there have been no significant studies or findings on what works and what doesn't work in teaching deaf children to read. The main focus of the society has been oral production, thus enabling the child to become an adult capable of living in the hearing world. The most explicit teaching involved helping the deaf child to speak and read the lips of others in order to communicate. Deaf children spend hours in front of mirrors and with tongue depressors to learn the proper placement of lips and tongue to form words they cannot hear from others. While it is correct to say that deaf children will have to adapt to their environment, the most necessary mode of communication has long been neglected: reading. Reading in your second language, English, will be as necessary on a daily basis as lip reading. Whenever communication is interrupted or needs to be clear, the deaf adult then resorts to writing down their need or request. This written form of communication is then read for understanding. The deaf adult typically has a fourth grade reading level, which can seriously limit communication. This unfortunate fact is the strongest argument for raising a child's reading level so that they are on par with their hearing peers. The first thing to examine is how the deaf child is exposed to the building blocks of reading. Many families live in an environment rich in literature, having books available and setting an example for the deaf child. These same families, whilebeing readers, do not encourage reading in deaf children. (Stobbart 2018) Families involved in her study reported that their preference and energy was devoted to teaching their child to speak and make friends rather than signing or reading together. The study consisted of a sample of 29 families whose preschool children attended public schools for deaf children. These parents are not integrating their children, so many of them were also in signing programs, but several families discouraged signing, in part because siblings were not signing. Most families did not sit down to read with the deaf child and relied on gestures to communicate with the deaf child. For three to five years, the child remained in an environment where he had to adapt and guess what was happening. The emphasis was on oral expression and understanding the language spoken in the family setting. This leaves the teaching of language and literacy to schools. Waiting all this time for instructions is the root of the deaf child's problem. Morere says: “A consistent finding of research is that a strong foundation in the first language (L1) (regardless of the language used for the L1) is essential for reading success. » (Morere, 2011) For most deaf children, spoken or written English is not the L1. Most deaf children who come to school do not have a good L1. For some, ASL was used, for others, attempting to read lips and observing the gestures of family members was the only way they communicated with the outside world. Once all these children are brought together in the same class, they need a unifying language. ASL is the L1 that will bridge the gap for deaf children and allow them to excel in reading. Children born to hearing parents are at a serious disadvantage. Some families of children will learn some basic signs to communicate with their deaf members. Since learning ASL takes years to master, many families are unable or unwilling to devote the time or effort necessary to master the language. This is unfortunate for the deaf child because they do not have the chance to master their L1 before going to school like their hearing counterparts will. In addition, and especially for his mental and social development, he was deprived of 5 years of constant language. Children always acquire language, even before they can produce it themselves. Hearing parents talk to their hearing babies continually – in a constant chatter of names, activities and thoughts throughout the day. Even speech that is not addressed to the child is still processed and absorbed to learn the sounds and combinations common and necessary for English. The deaf child from a hearing family misses these important clues and keys to acquiring their L1. The deaf child has no chance of learning English as his primary language due to his deafness, and due to his parents' lack of ability, he cannot have ASL as his L1 either. To put the deaf child at the same linguistic level as a hearing child, he or she would have to experience all of the same situations mentioned above, in ASL or fingerspelling. The deaf child needs the freedom from constant chatter of signs and spelling to become a competent signer. Deaf children born to deaf parents have better ASL and fingerspelling role models and opportunities, so they become better readers. The native speaker's fluency level is what is necessary to develop the child's fluency. Deaf children of hearing parents will not know the linguistic context of signs anddigital spelling. Early understanding of fingerspelling is that of a specialized sign. The child sees all the letters together and recognizes them not as individual letters, but as a whole. Later, when the child can begin to spell, the letters take shape and begin to have meaning on their own. Loan words and lexicalized signs are thus perceived. Because it is a more specialized form of ASL, the deaf child of hearing parents can only grasp the neutral spelling, not the lexicalized forms used by native deaf people. Neutral spelling is the spelling of names, places or words that are not stylized or lexicalized as a "sign". If the deaf child's natural L1 is ASL, then the problem becomes clear. How can we give the deaf child, during the years of language training, sufficient input to promote his growth? Since the majority of deaf children come from hearing parents, the problem of learning ASL and fingerspelling becomes the biggest obstacle to overcome. The disparate way deafness presents makes it difficult for specialized programs and studies to implement. Inclusion is also a hurdle to overcome since many school districts do not have the staff or knowledge to effectively help prepare and re-educate deaf readers. How deaf students learn to read is gradually beginning to be understood. Some deaf children are good readers, while others have difficulty mastering this skill. Research has concluded that learning to read for a deaf child involves a mixture of ASL, fingerspelling, and English vocabulary, with the ability to recognize finger-spelled words as having the greatest correlation with the child's reading ability in 3rd grade. For a deaf parent, spelling is not a problem. They know all the rules by which words are finger spelled, and their child will learn the rules as easily as a hearing child learns basic grammar. The deaf child of hearing parents needs a tutor who will teach him to spell with his fingers and work on his receptive skills. Since this skill is most crucial to understanding how words are broken down and how new words are constructed, the hearing parent cannot afford not to seek out native signing situations for the child to build the foundation of reading. How Hearing Parents Can Help Deaf Children Succeed The simple solution to the problem of teaching deaf children to read is to teach them to sign. If some hearing parents find this task daunting, it is only because they do not realize the challenges their child will face when it comes to communication. The hearing parent of a deaf child must understand that their child will never be able to hear normally or communicate in the same way as their siblings. Using ASL is neither better nor worse than speaking, it's just different. The same is true if the family adopted a child from another country who was never able to learn English. The family would adapt and strive to include all members equally. Multiple studies and anecdotes show that this is not the norm in most families today. We can no longer allow this to remain the status quo. There are different avenues the family can take to help the deaf child: telepractice (distance learning) and direct ASL classes for the parent and child. With a few simple instructions and tips, families can support the deaf child.