Advances in the Spoken Language Development of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children
Patricia Elizabeth Spencer and Marc Marschark
Abstract
Throughout history there have been efforts to help deaf children develop spoken language through which they could have full access to the hearing world. These efforts, although pursued seriously and with great care, frequently proved fruitless and often resulted only in passionate arguments over the efficacy of particular approaches. Although some deaf children did develop spoken language, there was little evidence to suggest that this development had been facilitated by any particular educational approach, and moreover, many, even most deaf children — especially those with profound loss — nev ... More
Throughout history there have been efforts to help deaf children develop spoken language through which they could have full access to the hearing world. These efforts, although pursued seriously and with great care, frequently proved fruitless and often resulted only in passionate arguments over the efficacy of particular approaches. Although some deaf children did develop spoken language, there was little evidence to suggest that this development had been facilitated by any particular educational approach, and moreover, many, even most deaf children — especially those with profound loss — never develop spoken language at all. Recent technological advances, however, have led to more positive expectations for deaf children's acquisitions of spoken language: innovative testing procedures for hearing allow for early identification of loss which leads to intervention services during the first weeks and months of life. Programmable hearing aids allow more children to make use of residual hearing abilities. Children with the most profound losses are able to reap greater benefits from cochlear-implant technologies. At the same time, there have been great advances in research into the processes of deaf children's language development and the outcomes they experience. As a result, we are for the first time accruing a sufficient base of evidence and information to allow reliable predictions about children's progress which will, in turn, lead to further advances. This book presents information on the new world evolving for deaf and hard-of-hearing children and the improved expectations for their acquisition of spoken language.
Keywords:
deaf children,
spoken language,
hearing world
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195179873 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179873.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Patricia Elizabeth Spencer, editor
Gallaudet University
Marc Marschark, editor
National Technical Institute for the Deaf
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