I guess the bottom line of what I am trying to say is that I agree that more deaf students should be focusing on their English skills because I feel that many capable deaf college students have lost the opportunity to develop good English skills (once they become adults these skills are very difficult to obtain). However, I also feel that deaf children should be screened to determine their strong learning mode (visual vs. literal). I don't know if there are any such screenings available out there, but if there aren't, it would be nice if some research was done in this area. This is a very complicated issue and there is really no black and white, instead there's a lot of gray areas that need more studying. Don't get me wrong Juggleman, I do agree that more deaf students should be taught better English skills. I'd like to point out that more and more deaf students are currently being mainstreamed in hearing schools so I think we will see more deaf adults with better English skills in the next 10 to 15 years. However, I also suspect we will see the high visual learners faring worse than they do today."
—LOCOMOJO
"I am a hard-of-hearing mother of 3 daughters. The older two are hearing and the youngest is profoundly deaf. I was raised with oral communication, and I am raising our daughter using oral and cued language. She has a cochlear implant. When I was in college, I had many culturally deaf friends. I was fluent in ASL. The one thing that struck me back then, and then subsequently later after the diagnosis of our daughter's hearing loss at 14 months, was that all of my deaf friends were in remedial classes. Now I am not saying that all deaf people are in remedial classes. It just so happened that the group of deaf college students I knew then were in remedial classes. After my daughter was diagnosed, I began to research our options. I was appalled when I read statistics about deaf adult reading scores being at or around the 3rd to 4th grade level. In the beginning, we were trying to use Total Communication through PSE and spoken English because of our concern for her learning to read and write English proficiently. I knew that ASL was a different language than English, and so it lacked the syntax and nuances of the English language. However, my husband and older two daugthers who were 9 and 7 at the time were getting very frustrated. Justina had been without a language system for 14 months, and was voraciously picking up vocabulary everyday. They simply could not keep up with it. And Justina's dependence upon me as the interpreter was frustrating me also. It took my poor husband a whole week to figure out that Justina was signing apple. The other frustrating thing was that the Early Intervention class she was attending was only doing one or two signs for something, or saying one word phrases, but not simultaneously. They insisted that was TC. I recenty visited the TC preschool and I am so saddend to see these kids who do not know much spoken language, and their signing skills are poor too.
When we were told that Justina would benefit from a cochlear implant, I posted our news on a message board we belonged to at the time. I received some vial and nasty e-mail messages in ASL syntax. I think the only think more difficult for a hearing person who has no knowledge of ASL to read through is for them to read an e-mail cussing you out in ASL. It solidified my resolve to ensure that our daughter learned to be proficient in English. And that is why I chose Cued Speech. When I read the story behind Cued Speech, I realized that Dr. Cornett was concerned about the reading levels of deaf and hard-of-hearing adults as well. He showed a letter her received from a deaf individual and asked someone to give their opinion of the person who wrote the letter. That person replied that he thought it was a foreigner who wrote the letter, someone whose original language was not English. Justina has beautiful speech and is doing well with using her implant to "hear". But for me, speech is simply not enough. For me, the totality of language is infinitely more important.
I think is disgraceful that deaf and hard-of-hearing students are continually being short-changed. The lack of proficiency in English is not a new phenomena. With the exception of a few programs, I cannot believe that it is not taken
