Introduction

Over time, the average hearing impaired student, as compared to students with normal hearing , shows an ever increasing gap in vocabulary growth, complex sentence comprehension and construction, and in concept formation. Hearing impaired students often learn to "feign" comprehension with the end result being that the student does have optimal learning opportunities. Therefore, facilitative strategies for hearing impaired students are primarily concerned with various aspects of communication. Other problems arise because deafness is an invisible disability. It is easy for teachers to "forget about it" and treat the student as not having a disability. It has also been shown that hearing impaired students with good English skills also have good science concept formation. ( After "Mainstream Teaching of Science: A Source Book", Keller et al.)

Deaf: "A hearing impairment which is so severe that a child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification, which adversely affects educational performance."

Hard of Hearing: "A hearing impairment, whether permanent of fluctuating, which adversely affects a child's educational performance but which is not included under the definition of 'deaf'."

Deaf-Blind: "Simultaneous hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes such severe communication and other developmental and educational problems that a child cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for deaf children or blind children." (All definitions are from IDEA.)

General Courtesy

(Note: all of these strategies will work on some of the students--some strategies will not. The degree of impairment and the background training of the student will affect the usefulness of the various strategies).

General Strategies

• Have students sit closer to the lecturer.
• Look directly at the student.
• Speak slowly, naturally and clearly.
• Slowing down slightly may help.
• Do not exaggerate your lip movements or shout.
• If you have a mustache, keep it well trimmed.

• Speak directly to the student rather than to the interpreter.
• Signing may be distracting at first, but you and the other students will soon become accustomed to the interpreter's presence.
• Give the student and the interpreter outlines of the lecture or written material, in advance, so that they can become familiar with new technical vocabulary.
• Interpreters should not give their opinion of a student's progress as this can violate the student's rights.
• Provide scripts of video and laser media when possible for both the interpreter and the student with a hearing disability (with or without captioning).
• The interpreter is not to answer lesson related questions from the student with a hearing impairment. The student should direct all lesson related questions to the instructor.
• The interpreter should stand closer to the section of the chalkboard that is being used by the instructor, thereby allowing the student to simultaneously see both the signs and the writing on the board.

• Break up long sentences.
• Reduce difficult vocabulary load.
• Reduce concept density.
• When using a pronoun be sure that the antecedent is very clear.
• Don't omit words such as: that, where they will clarify a sentence connection.
• Stay with simple coordinating conjunctions (e.g., but, so, for, and) and avoid less common transitional words (e.g., however, as a consequence, nevertheless, although).
• Keep cause-and-effect expressions very simple in form.
• Keep conditional expressions which influence the meaning of a statement (such as; if, when, assuming that,, suppose, provided that, etc.) to a minimum.
• If there is no other way to avoid using a difficult word, include a brief explanation in parentheses, however keep parenthetical explanations to a minimum.
• If an important basic or technical word is to be taught:
• Make meaning and application absolutely clear.
• Use context as a memory aid.
• For a new term, repeat the word numerous times in a variety of contexts.

• Passive voice verbs.
• Negative forms of verbs and other expressions of negation.
• Too many modifying forms, such as prepositional phrases, relative clauses. ( if a relative clause must be used , the relative pronoun [who, which, that, where, etc.] should be next to the word to which it refers).
• Stylistic embellishments, such as rhetorical inversions.
• Colloquial and idiomatic expressions.
• Cut wordiness while retaining simple English.
• Avoid the use of idioms.

Teacher Presentation

Recitation

Reading

Group Interaction and Discussion

Testing

Last updated:
September 23, 2002

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Ed Keller