Stanford Magazine - Seeing at the Speed of Sound - March/Apri... http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id...

March/April 2013

Seeing at the Speed of Sound

Lipreading, which makes one sense do the work of another, is a skill daunting to describe. Rachel
Kolb, '12, deaf since birth, shares its mysteries.

By Rachel Kolb

I AM SITTING in my office during a summer internship. Absorbed

by my computer screen, I do not notice when my manager enters
the room, much less when he starts talking. Only when a sudden
hand taps my shoulder do I jump. He is gazing expectantly at me.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in," I say.

"Oh, right." His expression changes: to surprise, and then to

caution. He proceeds to say something that looks like, "Would you
graawl blub blub vhoom mwarr hreet twizzolt, please?" I haven't
the faintest idea what he said. I have no excuse, for I was looking
straight at him. But despite my attention, something went wrong.
He spoke too fast; my eyes lost focus.

Julia Breckenreid "Um, could you repeat that, please?" I ask.

His eyebrows raise, but he nods and says it again. I sit up straighter, attempt to concentrate, but
again it reaches my eyes as a garbled mess.

"It's fine," he answers. "I'll send you an email."

Well, at least I understood that part, I think as he walks out.

Lipreading, on which I rely for most social interaction, is an inherently tenuous mode of
communication. It's essentially a skill of trying to grasp with one sense the information that was
intended for another. When I watch people's lips, I am trying to learn something about sound when
the eyes were not meant to hear.

Spoken words occur in my blind spot, a vacancy of my perception. But if I watch a certain way, I
can bring them into enough focus to guess what they are. The brain, crafty as it is, fills in the
missing information from my store of knowledge.

Want an example?

---- the ---- before --------- when ------------- the house

not --- cre --------------------- even ---- m------

Do you recognize the opening of "The Night Before Christmas"? Perhaps so, because in American
culture the poem is familiar enough for one to fill in the blanks through memory. Filling in the
blanks is the essence of lipreading, but the ability to decipher often depends on factors outside of
my control.

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IT IS MY FIRST WEEK as a freshman at Stanford, and I feel lost. Instead of coasting through routine
interactions with people familiar to me, I have thrown myself into a place where almost nothing is
predictable. I sit down at a table of strangers. One of them, I realize, is the guy from the room
next to mine. "What's your name?" I ask him.

He answers, but I frown.

"Could you say that again?" I say.

He does, but I still do not understand. The name starts with a B, and ends with a Y, but it is not a
name I have seen before. Bobby, Barry, Buddy—none of them match what I saw on his face.

My neighbor, sensing my struggle, mumbles, "Just call me Ben."

Later that day I find out his name is Benamy.

EVEN THE MOST skilled lipreaders in English, I have read, can

discern an average of 30 percent of what is being said. I believe
this figure to be true. There are people with whom I catch almost
every word—people I know well, or who take care to speak at a
reasonable rate, or whose faces are just easier on the eyes (for
lack of a better phrase). But there are also people whom I cannot
understand at all. On average, 30 percent is a reasonable number.

But 30 percent is also rather unreasonable. How does one have a

meaningful conversation at 30 percent? It is like functioning at 30
percent of normal oxygen, or eating 30 percent of recommended
calories—possible to subsist, but difficult to feel at your best and
all but impossible to excel. Often I stick with contained discussion Photo: Greg
topics because they maximize the number of words I will Sorber/Albuquerque Journal
understand. They make the conversation feel safe. "How are you?" ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
"How's school?" "Did you have a nice night?" Because I can Profound bilateral hearing
anticipate that the other person will say "Fine, how are you?" or loss notwithstanding, Kolb
"Good," I am at lower risk for communication failure. earned her bachelor's in
English with a minor in
My companions could be discussing any topic in the universe: the human biology and is working
particulate nature of matter, the child who keeps wetting the
on a master's degree in
bed, the villa in Nice that they visited last summer. And, because English. She is managing
the human mind is naturally erratic in conversation, ever
editor of the literary
distractible, ever spontaneous, this is just what will end up
magazine Leland Quarterly,
happening. How am I to predict the unpredictable? The infinity of active with Christian
the universe, and of man's mind, strikes me as immensely
ministries and as a disability
beautiful—but also very frightening.
advocate, and president of
I don't like superficial remarks and predictable rejoinders, but the Stanford Equestrian
Team. In November, she was
staying in shallow waters is better than sinking. So long as I
named a 2013 Rhodes
preserve my footing, I keep up the appearance of being able to
Scholar.
converse—to other people and, more important, to myself.

"YOU KNOW, you could be a spy," David, who lives in my dorm, tells me as we are sitting at
brunch.

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"Why do you say that?" I ask.

"Because"—he leans in excitedly—"because you could look through binoculars and lipread and
understand everything people are saying!"

"Oh." I smile and cross my arms.

"Could you understand those people over there?" David points to a couple at another table.
"Maybe," I say, without trying. I dare not explain that they're too far away.

THE TERM "LIPREADING" implies that the skill is, in a sense, exactly like reading—in which the
words on the page are clear and perfectly legible. "Can you read my lips?" strangers ask when they
meet me. (Never mind that the question is inherently illogical: If I couldn't lipread, how on earth
could I answer?) As they ask it, I can see the other, unspoken questions reeling in their
heads—What if she can't? What will I do then? Mime?

When I answer that, yes, I can lipread, they relax. Then they prattle on as if all preconditions are
off. Because I can "read" their lips, I must therefore be able to "read" everything they say. After
all, it would be absurd for me to protest that I can sometimes read the words in a book, but
sometimes not. Either you can read, or you can't. (Likewise, either you can hear perfectly
—meaning hear and understand everything—or you can't hear at all. Forget hearing aids and
microphones and other assistive devices.)

"How did you learn to lipread?" is another common query. I do not have a satisfactory answer. The
truth is, I can't explain it. No more than I could explain how I learned to walk, or than anyone else
could explain how she learned to hear and understand language. "Practice," I usually answer. Since
I entered a mainstreamed public school in first grade, there have been no other deaf people
occupying center stage in my life. My world is primarily a hearing one, and I learned to deal with
this reality at a very young age. There was no reason to sign with anyone besides close friends and
family, no reason to expect anyone to communicate on my terms. Surrounded by hearing people
all the time, my only option has been to adapt, and lipreading is the skill that I have practiced
most.

But this answer is too simple. The foundation for my success with communication was laid in my
earliest years, at a deaf preschool. That was perhaps the only time in my life when I experienced
full communication access each day. Everyone—students, teachers, speech therapists, parents,
siblings—signed. From ages 2 to 5, I lived, breathed and conversed with people like me—at least,
as alike as a young child understands. There was no reason for me to doubt myself or my abilities,
so I grew fluent and confident with language. I learned its nuances, its facial and emotional
expressions. I learned that it was not inaccessible, as it would sometimes later seem.

Self-confidence fuels the desire to practice and protects against the degradation of
communication breakdown; but my ability to lipread is attributable not only to my own efforts,
but also to the contributions of others. When I was less than a year old, my parents started me in
speech therapy, which I continued for 18 years. There, I encountered the visual and physical
fragments of the sound that was so absent from my world. This sound was mysterious to me. I
could not grasp it—even with hearing aids—but I could see it. Under the tutelage of a succession of
speech therapists, with support from my family, I became a student of its aftereffects.

In teaching me how to make sound's shapes with my own mouth, they taught me how to focus on
their faces with the deepest intensity. Like a detective-in-training, I learned to recognize

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consonantal stops, the subtle visual differences between a "d" and a "g." (On the other hand, "p"
and "b" are all but impossible to distinguish by lipreading alone, because their only difference is
that one is voiced and one is not.) I learned how to zone in on the minutest changes in the muscles
of the face. Over many years of drills and refinement, I learned how to construct the appearance
of functioning like a hearing person. But I did not hear: I saw.

IT IS THE FIRST WEEK of first grade, and the teacher has instructed us to line up by the door so
we can follow her, duckling-like, to lunch. I do not know that she has asked us to line up in
alphabetical order. My interpreter, who is usually around, seems to have disappeared. Satisfied to
follow the other children, I take a spot in line and wait. Only then do I realize that my peers are
talking, that they are rearranging themselves. I frown when the girl in front of me says something.

"Uh, what?" I say, not understanding her.

She says it again, to no avail.

"What?" I repeat, frustrated at the way the words brush off her lips and fly away.

She repeats herself. This time I understand that it is a question. Well, most questions are easily
answerable with "yes" or "no."

I decide fast, "Yes." Surely a positive response will make the girl happy.

Instead, she frowns, and I realize I have said the wrong thing. Panicking, I tell her, "No," then,
"Um, I don't know."

She giggles, as if I have said something funny, and whispers to a friend. Then she says it again—and
everything clears in a rush. "What's your last name?"

As I answer, a cold surge rises in my chest. Without knowing it, I have made myself look too dumb
to say my own name.

SOMETIMES I FEEL GUILTY that I lipread at all. I fear that I am betraying myself by accepting the
conventions of the hearing world. I fear that I lack balance—that I am abandoning the
communication tactics that work for me, in order to throw myself headlong at a system that does
not care about my needs. When I attempt to function like a hearing person, am I not sacrificing
my integrity to a game that I lack the tools to tackle, a game that in the end makes me look slow
or stupid?

Deaf people—meaning Deaf people who live solely in the Deaf community, and hold on to an
inherent pride in their Deafness—often speak of communicating as they please and letting the
hearing world "deal with it." They believe in the beauty and, dare I say it, the superiority of sign
language. Spoken language, compared with the visual nuances of signing, might as well be
caveman guttural grunts.

When I lipread, I leave the clarity of sign language behind. I attempt to communicate with hearing
people on their terms, with no expectation that they will return the favor. The standards I am
striving for seem ridiculous: I am trying singlehandedly to cross the chasm of disability. Might not
my stubbornness be of more harm than good?

I struggle with this. Some days I wonder what it would be like if I refused to speak. I could roll out
of bed one morning, decide to take control of my communication on my terms, and make

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everyone write it down or sign, as other Deaf people do. Some days I resent myself. I wonder if I
am weak, ashamed or overly anxious to please.

I AM 12 and at a summer camp for the deaf. The entire group has just gone whitewater rafting
and is stopping to get ice cream. My peers line up by the counter, signing to each other about the
flavors they want. I smile and join, finding the conversation perfectly normal. But when the clerk
speaks to us, the other kids freeze like mice after the shadow of a hawk has swooped over the
grass.

With a jolt, I realize that they have no means with which to understand this hearing woman. Most
do not speak, go to deaf schools, have never had reason to learn to lipread. Their barrier is the
same as mine, but completely—instead of partially—insurmountable.

"What did you say?" I ask the store attendant, looking her in the
eye. My voice feels thick from disuse, but still I am aware of its
clarity. The other kids stare at me, their hands slack.

"I said, would you like a free sample?" the attendant says. I
understand her and sign the message to the others. They nod, and
sign which flavors they want to taste. I repeat, speaking, to the
attendant.

Courtesy Rachel Kolb hand, I feel strangely lightheaded. This—being able to endow
HAPPY CAMPER: Summer
camp was a place where
everyone signed, but not
everyone could lipread.
After the ordering, when I finally sit down, my own ice cream in
spoken words with meaning, rather than having them translated
by somebody else—is new for me. Because I have so often felt
powerless, I have never realized the power that I possess.
What would I do, I wonder, if I could not lipread? How could I ever
stand it?

SOME PEOPLE ARE all but impossible for me to lipread. People with thin lips; people who
mumble; people who speak from the back of their throats; people with dead-fish, unexpressive
faces; people who talk too fast; people who laugh a lot; tired people who slur their words;
children with high, babyish voices; men with moustaches or beards; people with any sort of
accent.

Accents are a visible tang on people's lips. Witnessing someone with an accent is like taking a sip
of clear water only to find it tainted with something else. I startle and leap to attention. As I
explore the strange taste, my brain puzzles itself trying to pinpoint exactly what it is and how I
should respond. I dive into the unfamiliar contortions of the lips, trying to push my way to some
intelligible meaning. Accented words pull against the gravity of my experience; like slime-glossed
fish, they wriggle and leap out of my hands. Staring down at my fingers' muddy residue, my only
choice is to shrug and cast out my line again.

Some people, though not inherently difficult to understand, make themselves that way. By
viewing lipreading as a mysterious and complicated thing, they make the process harder. They
over-enunciate, which distorts the lips like a funhouse mirror. Lips are naturally beautiful,
especially when words float from them without thought; they ought never be contorted in this
way. There are other signs, too: nervous gestures and exaggerated expressions, improvised sign
language, a tic-like degree of smiling and nodding.

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I sense that such people are terrified of not being understood. What they do not realize is that,
when they are not at ease, I cannot be either. I am used to asking for repetition when I miss
something, but if I do, such people will only freeze. In their minds, they have not tried hard
enough. They turn this into a failing—instead of an unfortunate circumstance.

Encountering people who are nervous about lipreading gives me a strange complex. I wish only for
them to be comfortable, not agitated or guilty. I want them to perceive me as more skilled, more
normal, more approachable than they first thought. I do not want them to see me struggle. If I
detect nervousness in a companion, I do my best to gloss it over—and present a semblance of
normalcy, not the chaos I feel inside.

But despite its frustrations and misunderstandings, lipreading is sustenance for me. I once heard
that prominent deaf educator Madan Vasishta said that he would rather have an incomplete
conversation with a hearing person, one on one, than a conversation using a sign-language
interpreter in which he understood everything. I take his point: The rawness of unfiltered contact
surpasses even the reassurance provided by translation.

When the connection clicks, when I can read the curve and flow of a person's face, my ebullience
soars. Our exchange is less like taking wild guesses at my own risk, and more like using the
deftness of strategy and skill. I interact with hearing people as if I am one of their own. That they
don't notice, don't remember that I am deaf! However unconscious, that is the greatest
compliment of all.

DANIEL IS FROM Singapore. He speaks English, but his accent makes his syllables march in dizzying
formations. To my eyes, his every utterance is bewildering.

Most people, once they figure out that I have such difficulty understanding them, stop trying. They
feel the breakdown in the air, as I do, and they cannot tolerate its weight. But not Daniel. One
day, he walks into my dorm room, says hi, and looks down to type on his cell phone. Thinking him
sidetracked, I look out the window and wait. But soon he comes closer and shows me the screen.

How are you today? it says.

I grin. I want to leap up and hug him. "I'm fine," I announce. "How are you?"

He types: I'm pretty good. Sorry about my accent. I know it makes it hard.

"It's all right," I say. "I really wish I could understand you."

Daniel shrugs and smiles. How are your classes? Have you written anything new lately?

Anyone passing by in the hallway, hearing only my voice, would find this an odd, one-sided
conversation. But, for me, it is perfect clarity.

EVERYONE HAS an Achilles heel, something that exposes her weaknesses. Mine is darkness. When
it is dark, my appearance of communicative normalcy no longer stands. No speaker, no
understanding can reach me. There is no way for me to penetrate any mind but my own, or to
grasp whatever words other minds might exchange.

That sounds bleak, but it isn't really. With utter darkness comes resignation, a kind of peace.
When it is completely dark, the responsibility for communication is no longer mine. Lipreading,
writing, seeing: There is nothing more that I can do. I am free to retreat into the solace of my

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thoughts—which, in the end, is where I can feel most comfortable.

It's dim lighting, or bad visual aesthetics, that is a torment. When there is even the slightest sliver
of light, there is still a chance. When lighting conditions are impractical or when I cannot squarely
see the person who is talking, I still try. More often than not, I frustrate myself in the effort.

With lipreading, each day brings a moment in which I literally cannot do it anymore. I grow too
tired of the guessing game that I can never quite win. The muscles behind my eyes ache from the
strain. (Hearing is very different from sight, in that it does not involve muscular tension. I think of
ears as very passive, whereas eyes are continuously moving to focus and see.) Often my corneas go
dry; my vision gets blurry. The words on people's lips melt away, sliding down their faces like
condensation on glass. I am back in the blind spot again.

THE AUDIOLOGIST sits in the booth, where I see her face from my seat in a soundproof testing
room. It is time for the tests I take every few years to monitor the ongoing status of my hearing,
sometimes for official disability documentation. We have just finished a tone-recognition test, and
now she will ask me to repeat back the sentences she reads. It is, of course, pointless to say that I
will not be able to do it.

She places a piece of paper over her mouth, and I hear her voice as garbled noise, individual units
barely distinguishable. I sit helpless, but once in a while take a guess. At most, I catch a word, or
two. After nearly 40 sentences, I struggle to remain composed. This, such a simple exercise for
anyone else, but for me —

I see her lower the paper from her face. My eyes latch onto her clear, articulate lips. "The bag of
candy was on the shelf," she says.

"The bag of candy was on the shelf," I say, instantly smiling.

"The rabbit ran into the hole," she says.

"The rabbit ran into the hole."

We continue, then she wags her eyebrows and turns off her microphone. A new trick! "The mouse
stole the cheese," she says, soundlessly. Any hearing person would spin into murkiness, but I can
see, and that is enough.

"The mouse stole the cheese," I say, wanting to laugh.

Several more, almost perfectly, before she lays down her pencil. We gaze at each other. "You're
amazing, you know that?" she says, and I glance down, letting my eyes take a rest. I smile and I
smile.

RACHEL KOLB, '12, is a graduate student in English from Albuquerque, N.M., and a STANFORD
magazine intern.

Comments (17)

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interesting ...
Posted by Ibrahim Kahveci IX, A.I.A. on Mar 6, 2013 2:28 PM

Delightful piece. Thank you for sharing part of your experience.

Posted by Mrs. Barclay Dunn on Mar 6, 2013 2:37 PM

You have a wonderful way with words, Rachel. I really enjoyed your fascinating article!
Posted by Ms. Charlene Vanessa Noll on Mar 8, 2013 11:23 AM

A beautiful story. As a sign language consultant and interpreter it's wonderful to see your
perspective on direct communication and the challenges it sometimes poses. Godspeed in your
next adventures!
Posted by Kyle Edward Duarte, Ph.D. on Mar 9, 2013 11:12 AM

Inspirational story. As parents of our now 18 year deaf daughter (Julia) your article only
reinforces the importance of the methodology choices that we make for our deaf children. We
picked oral as we felt she needed to be able to survive in the real world and very glad we did.
Julia was mainstreamed at an early age , wears bilateral CI , lipreads and is now getting ready
to attend college. Congratulations to you and your parents. We wish you continued success!
Posted by Mrs. Natalie R Marinez on Mar 10, 2013 11:34 AM

Thank you for sharing your perspective. You have opened my eyes to the challenges
experienced by the deaf and made me more sensitive to their needs... I will not change my
speech patterns! Your article also resonated with me since I have an 18-year old daughter who
is a dwarf. People also make assumptions about her and what she can or cannot do. Thank you
for being an inspiration to so many of us!
Posted by Ms. Yvette Yeh Fung on Mar 10, 2013 5:16 PM

This is so good! But, I have to say, I've been a fan of Rachel Kolb's work for a while. In fact, the
radio show I work for, the Stanford Storytelling Project, has produced two stories by Rachel.

In our Human Voice show, we had a story about lipreading: http://www.stanford.edu/group

/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season3/209-episode-310-the-human-voice.html

And in our brand-new Listening show, we told the story of Rachel's experience learning to listen
with a cochlear implant.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/storytelling/cgi-bin/joomla/index.php/shows/season-4/355-
episode-410-listening.html

Thought you might like to know. And I should add, the Stanford Storytelling Project is always
looking for more great stories about universal human experiences.

Charlie Mintz
Producer

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Stanford Storytelling Project

camintz@stanford.edu
Posted by Mr. Charles Aaron Mintz on Mar 11, 2013 10:46 AM

Dear Rachel,

I am a fellow Stanford grad (B.S. Mech Engr. 1997) and my life experience is almost exactly like
yours. I am deaf (100% hearing loss in both ears from meningitis infection at a age 5), I grew up
reading lips in exact same fashion as you did, I got my first cochlear implant a year after I
graduated. I used to do sign language until the age of 6 when my parents put me into an oral
mainstream school in 1st grade. I still rely about 60%-70% on lipreading and the remaining from
hearing through cochlear implant to communicate with people.

With 16 years of post-college experience behind me, I will tell you this much about life after
college: it gets harder, not easier if you are an ambitious person (which I presume you are).
Your ambition in the professional world will be frustrated by your disability because you will be
competing with hearing peers every working hour (at least in high school and college, your
destiny was completely in your hands since all you needed to do was use your brain to get the
A's). The professional world can be merciless and no amount of brainpower will overcome the
sine qua non of moving up the career ladder: communication skills.

If you would like to learn more about what to expect in the professional world, just contact me
anytime at sheth (at) rushabh dot com and I would be more than happy to discuss my experience
with you.

With regards,

Rushabh Sheth
Posted by Mr. Rushabh Mayur Sheth on Mar 11, 2013 7:08 PM

Howdy!

I would like to counter Rushabh with my experience that

post-graduation, life gets easier, not harder. Struggling
to understand professors and lectures was, for me,
torture, I find collaborating and working with my teams
in a professional environment to be much more pleasant.

But then, my cochlear implants are helping me a lot, and

perhaps as a technical professional I don't encounter the
same situations that Rushabh must deal with.

Your story is beautiful; please continue to share and

inspire. Everyone's path is their own but learning what
is possible if we persevere can make all the difference.

-tom

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Posted by Dr. Tomas Gerhard Rokicki on Mar 13, 2013 12:28 PM

What a wonderful article! Thank you so much.

I would like to add that most of what Rachel says also applies to people with some degree of
hearing impairment such as old duffers like me. I also find that context along with some lip
reading can be a magic key. It is amazing how the brain can fill in the gaps.
Posted by Edgar C. Smith, Jr., Ph.D. on Mar 13, 2013 2:21 PM

I agree with Edgar - I have moderate to severe hearing loss and have been wearing hearing aids
for about 30 years. I really rely on lip cues to hear. Rachel's difficulties (so well-described and
accurate) are also experienced by those who are hearing-impaired even if not deaf. It is
exhausting for me to hear, especially in loud environments, perhaps because I am taxing two
senses at once.

If you're in the Stanford area in July-August, there is a new play opening at TheatreWorks called
"The Loudest Man on Earth". It was done last summer in the company's New Works Festival, and
now will premiere on the main stage. It's about a relationship between a deaf man and hearing
woman, and the deaf man is played by a deaf actor. Lots of signing - lots of humor. I go to the
theatre often (I sit close to the stage and use the assistive listening device, normally), and this
play was the first ever where I felt I could "hear" more of it than the rest of the audience,
because I could read lips as people were signing. The play is terrific and I encourage you to go
see it. http://www.theatreworks.org/shows/1314-season/
Posted by Ms. Julie Kaufman on Mar 13, 2013 3:42 PM

Dear Ms Kolb

Let me alone with my awe of the above - but let me raise these questions:

1. May I presume you've read (are readingI) all of C Dickens (Little Dorrit my absolute favorite - 5
readings, now hearing it on MP3 audio), W Collins, and A Trollope. I could not survive long
without these medications.

2. Plus the PhD in English, may I also presume that your work in biology will lead ultimately to
your working on restoring hearing via stem cells or other miracles. You're way too smart to stop
at the Eng doctorate and the R scholarship. I want to live long enough to see how you are
contributing to hearing recovery.

John Hills, '49

Posted by John J. Hills, M.A. on Mar 13, 2013 3:52 PM

Rachel;

My mother, Helen Dwight Fisher became profoundly deaf as a young woman, after graduation
from Vassar. She learned to lip read on her own. My father (H. H. Fisher) was Chairman of the
Hoover, and my mother had to lip read all kinds of accents.

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I must confess that I had no idea how hard she had to work at it. She was a very intelligent, very
able woman. She lived a somewhat closed but active life. I'm even more proud to be her son
than I was before I read your piece.

Thanks for that.

A. D. (Tony) Fisher, Ph. D. 1966 (AB 1958)

Posted by Professor Anthony D. Fisher on Mar 13, 2013 5:03 PM

I am familiar with the struggle blind computer users have with screen readers. It never occurred
to me that deaf lipreaders encountered a similar experience of "trying to grasp with one sense
the information that was intended for another", as you so eloquently put it. Thank you for
sharing your story with us.
Posted by Mr. Darin McGrew on Mar 13, 2013 5:09 PM

In 1972, five years after I began teaching at Ohlone Community College, in Fremont, the
legendary George Attletweed and others set up the Deaf Studies program there. (As I recall,
George was the third Deaf person in CA to earn a teaching credential.) Until he died, in 1991,
George advocated "Total Communication" for the Deaf. Ideally, a Deaf person would be fluent in
American Sign Language and be able to lip-read. George was quick to point out that an excellent
lip-reader would, as Rachel Kolb says, be able to read about 30%. What George didn't say was
that he was brilliant; not all would be able to be as skilled in "Total Communication" as he and
Rachel.

Ohlone has favored ASL over the oral (lip-reading) approach.As a hearing English teacher of
many Deaf students for many years, I was often saddened at the inability of my ASL Deaf
students to use and enjoy the English language as I did--but ASL is also a beautiful language, one
that allows the Deaf to be fully a part of a vibrant community, within which they can understand
100% of what is being said. My most successful and happiest Deaf students were comfortable
with language very early--most either had Deaf parents or hearing parents who learned ASL.
Rachel credits her Deaf pre-school experience for her ease with language.

Karen Rosenbaum
Posted by Ms. Karen E. Rosenbaum on Mar 13, 2013 5:55 PM

I am amazed at the language skills you managed to acquire in spite of being deaf, and to choose
English as a major, wow! Keep writing, Rachel.
Posted by Dr. Suzan Shoshana Barazani on Mar 14, 2013 12:44 PM

Rachel, you are so articulate! Congratulations first on your English skills. One of the challenges
of being able to function both in the Deaf world and the world of English is that ASL, a beautiful,
compact, complete language, is not English. It is a language of its own. Herein, I believe, lies
the problem of Total Communication as it has evolved over the decades. Having raised two
children who were born deaf, I have lived the other side of the challenge you have faced. Two

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languages are required, not just one. There are many strongly held beliefs in the world of
Deafness and I'm not here to push any of them. I commend you for communicating the breadth
of the chasm that can separate the deaf world from the hearing while closing the gap rather
than adding to it.
Oz Crosby
MS Chemistry 1971
Posted by Mr. Osmond Crosby on Mar 14, 2013 12:49 PM

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