Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Psycho
Psycho
Psycho
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
1.1. Deafness............................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
All over the world there are deaf people. Some of these people are born deaf, and some become
deaf as a result of childhood illnesses, accidents or other traumas. Some children are deaf
because there is an inherited type of deafness in their family, but these make up a very small
number of the total of deaf people in the world. There are also many people who begin to lose
their hearing as they become old. Since the human being interacts by using communication
system either spoken or sign, there is a great necessity to maintain the interaction among deaf
people.
In this essay, the group discusses, in detailed way, deafness and sign language as well as
different strategies that can be used when teaching language to deaf people.
The group had to discuss different perspectives, according to different authors, about the topic at
the end the conclusion was brought.
In the last paper, the group listed down the sources which were used to develop this essay, order
to allow the reader to accomplish the studies.
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The group agrees that deafness is partial or complete hearing loss because The RNID (Royal
National Institute for Deaf people) uses the term to cover people who are:
D/deaf;
Partially deaf;
Partially hearing;
Deafened;
deaf/blind and
Hard of hearing
Hearing loss may be caused by a number of factors, including: genetics, ageing, exposure to
noise, some infections, birth complications, trauma to the ear, and certain medications or toxins.
Sign languages are the natural languages of deaf people. They are the languages deaf people use
when they communicate with one another.
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As example of a sign language the group will have a brief look at American Sign Language.
American Signal Language is a complete, complex language that employs signs made by moving
the hands combined with facial expressions and postures of the body. It is the primary language
of many North Americans who are deaf and is one of several communication options used by
people who are deaf.
American Sign Language is sharply distinguished from manual forms of English that translate
English sounds into signs. The best known is fingerspelling, which, as the name implies,
translates English words letter by letter into manual form. It is a secondary gestural system,
derived from the English language. In contrast, ASL is independent of English and derived from
French Sign Language. Although America and British share the same language which is English
they do not share the same sign language. It means that the sign languages do not depend on the
languages spoken in the country, thus each country have they own sign language regardless the
spoken language they use.
individuals living around the world, facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language can
considerably contribute to overall interaction and communication.
There are both similarities in these two types of languages and differences between them.
By the other side, CARROLL (2008:27) says that the sign and spoken languages vary in terms of
“iconicity and arbitrariness, simultaneous and sequential structure”
In the same view of similarities between sign and spoken language, CARROL (2008: 28) goes
further saying that both the sign and spoken languages possess morphology, reciprocity,
linguistic productivity and phrase structure.
a) Morphology- American Sign Language has a rich morphological system that signals various
grammatical distinctions. For instance, the distinction between first and second person is
marked on a sign such as ask. When the utterance is in the first person (ask me), the
movement of the sign is toward the signer, whereas when it is in the second person (ask
you), the movement is away from the signer and toward the addressee.
b) Reciprocity – deals with the distinction between they pinched them and they pinched each
other—that is, whether there is a subject that is the agent of the action and an object that is
its recipient or whether there is mutual interchange between subject and object. In English,
this distinction is made with pronouns. In ASL, there is a reciprocity morpheme on the verb
so that pinched each other is conveyed by movement back and forth across the signer’s
body. Again, in all of these instances the marking of these distinctions is sequential in
English and simultaneous in ASL.
c) Linguistic Productivity – The property of embedding one sign into another also occurs in
ASL shows the durational form of the sign, which means ‘‘to give on a continuous basis’’;
part c shows the exhaustive form, which means ‘‘to give to each.’’ It is then possible to
combine both of these meanings into a single
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d) Phrase Structure – As we have seen, English marks grammatical categories, such as subject
and verb, via word order. American Sign Language sometimes does this as well for example,
with transitive verbs (verbs that require a direct object, such as give, kiss, and tell), the order
in which the constituents are signed is subject-verb-object (SVO).
The grammar of sign language relies on space, hand-shape and movement; this language also has
non-manual components – facial expressions, body movements – that play an important
linguistic role in constructing visual-spatial utterances. On the whole, just as in spoken
languages, sign language, such as American Sign Language(ASL), is structured at syntactic,
morphological and phonological (Stokoe, 1960), cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign Language in
Communication” levels of analysis. It means that the acquisition of the sign is complete and
efficient when the deaf child has knowledge of all these language levels. Then, for the
acquisition to take place with efficiency, it will depend on how early and frequency the child is
exposed to the sign.
There a sort of difference in sign language acquisition between deaf children with deaf parents
and deaf children with hearing parents, as it discussed below.
McIntire (1977), cited by HAPALIYA in “Sign Language in Communication” reported that the
growth of sign language vocabulary also appears to be faster: a child had a vocabulary of more
than 85 signs at 13 months while hearing children exposed to spoken language at that age are just
acquiring their first words. This suggests that manual signs may emerge earlier because
neuromuscular development of the system used in signing occurs earlier than development of the
systems used for speaking.
There are still different kinds of visual input to which deaf children might potentially be
exposed: home signs, or non-native signing. Hence, it would be interesting to look further into
gestural language emergence among home signers within their peer context, particularly, in the
case of symmetric situations where the home sign of one child could serve as a linguistic model
for another deaf child. This could provide new insights into the nature of visual language
development in home signers as joint precursors of linguistic constructs.
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a) Speech
Speak clearly and at a reasonable pace. Try to keep the rhythm of your speech as natural
as possible. If in doubt ask the deaf student if the pace is right.
b) Visibility
To be able to lipread the deaf student needs to be able to see the teachers face.
When speaking make sure that your mouth is not covered in any way and ensure that you
face the person to whom you are speaking .Try to keep beards and moustaches trimmed;
Do not cover your mouth with pens, cigarettes, coffee cups or hands while speaking.
Try not to nod the head too much or speak while writing on the board or walking around
the room as this creates nearly impossible lipreading conditions.
c) Face:
Try to maintain eye contact when talking to a deaf student one to one.
Try to use expression in your face as well as gesture as this helps to convey the sense of
your words to a lip reader. Make use of natural gesture and facial expression as a clue to
meaning.
Speak clearly; but avoid speaking artificially slowly, exaggerating your lips, or shouting
as this affects the natural rhythm of speech.
Check comprehension; encourage and direct questions.
d) Position:
The deaf person should be seated to best advantage. She or he will know where best to
sit. This will usually be a seat near the front, slightly to one side of the speaker (the
optimum distance for lip-reading is about 6 feet).
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Allow the student to position themselves so that he/she can lip-read you easily and see
the projector or board and as much of the class as possible if there is to be a group
discussion.
e) Distractions:
Try to keep light reflecting or bright jewellery to a minimum, and wear plain clothes.
Bright clothes, especially checks, stripes or dots can make concentration difficult.
f) Gaining Attention:
The teacher must be aware that he needs to attract the deaf person's attention before
starting speaking.; firstly try to get into their line of sight, and if that is not effective
consider touching the person gently on the arm, bearing in mind it may startle them. It
may be useful to agree a “signal” with the student for when you are about to start. This
could be a wave of the hand at the student, flashing the lights on and off or, if necessary,
asking the person's neighbor to tap a shoulder or arm to alert him or her.
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Conclusion
From the discussion held by the group, mainly about differences and similarities between sign
and spoke languages, there was concluded that though sign language differs from spoken
language in linguistic features such as iconicity and morphological structure, there are more
similarities than differences in the early stages of acquisition of sign and spoken languages. The
primary difference is that infants acquire their first signs two to three months earlier than infants
typically acquire their first words.
All in all, as the theory of Nativity suggests, all children will demonstrate the similar process in
the language acquisition, as it is biological, no matter if it spoken or sign language.
And focusing on deaf people, the group concluded that deaf students will need more time to
assimilate the new language of their subjects - limited access to the spoken language around
them inhibits the assimilation of vocabulary and forms of expression. Also the auditory memory
is likely to be less useful for them than for other students as an aid to study - it is thought that this
aspect, vocabulary assimilation, and the lack of personal voice when reading, can significantly
affect reading fluency. For some, written expression may be affected by deafness.
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Bibliography
CARROLL, D. W. (2008). Psychology of Language. 5th edition. Thomson Wadsworth, USA.