For Parents and Professionals
Parents new to the world of deafness face a number of important decisions, the most unsettling of which can be communication choices. Cued Speech is one option and one which research shows can be extremely successful in allowing deaf children to use and understand English.
Many parents use Cued Speech together with hearing aids or a cochlear implant. Other parents, who aim for bilingualism in a spoken and a sign language, use it to access spoken English visually. It is important to note that Cued Speech is a language tool that allows easy, stress-free, visual access to spoken language. Its use should not exclude other choices.
There are many deaf babies and children who would benefit from the use of Cued Speech and it is important that all parents have enough information about it to make an informed choice. Through Cued Speech, more children can reach their potential.
Just as Braille gives tactile access to written language for blind people so Cued Speech gives deaf people visual access to spoken language.
Hearing children begin to learn their native language from birth and have mastered most of the basic elements before they start school at the age of five. They can use their knowledge of spoken language to think, to communicate and to learn to read. They learn naturally and effortlessly, picking up new words and sentence structures in the course of their daily lives.
Deaf children who can hear all the sounds of speech with the help of hearing aids or cochlear implants may be able to learn in the same way as hearing children without the additional help of Cued Speech and most deaf children will benefit from being taught to make the best use of any hearing they have. However, even with modern devices, many deaf children simply do not have enough hearing to hear all the sounds of speech. Lipreading is of limited help because some sounds are invisible and the rest look similar to other sounds on the lips. For some children, cochlear implants work very well but sadly others do not acquire a full understanding of English through their implant.
In the past most profoundly deaf and many severely deaf children have been taught most of the spoken language they have learnt. The almost inevitable communication breakdowns cause frustration and anger. Delayed and incomplete language is almost a certainty in these circumstances; sometimes spoken language fails to develop at all. With an incomplete understanding of spoken language it is hard to learn to read and write.
The language of the deaf community, British Sign Language (BSL), can be used as the language of communication within the home. Other families may choose to use a sign system like Signed English, which is not a language in its own right. These alternatives have limitations as a first language in a hearing household not least because parents must first learn to sign before passing it on to their children. This can take years. In addition, the problems with literacy can remain.
Typically a deaf person’s use of written English is like that of a foreigner.
The RNID reported in 2000 that:
‘the educational achievements of most deaf children remain well below a quarter of the national average for GCSE results and they are leaving school with a reading age of nine’. By comparison, research shows that the literacy levels of profoundly deaf children brought up with Cued Speech are equal to those of hearing children (Wandel 1989).
The prime aim of our charity is to provide information about and training in Cued Speech for parents of deaf babies and children, for deaf and deafened adults, and for the many supporting professionals involved with deaf children.