Babies with normal hearing learn to understand language and to talk apparently without any effort at all. Parents notice that as their child gets older, he/she can understand more of what they say, and he/she has more and more to say. Most parents are not at all aware of all the steps that their child has gone through that enable him/her to understand complicated sentences and to talk in paragraphs. A parent of a hearing impaired child is his/her most important teacher.When a baby has a hearing loss, the normal process of learning speech and language is disrupted. It begins later for this child, usually after they receive their hearing aid/s. So the task before a parent is to help them learn speech and language, following the same stages that normally hearing children pass through.
A parent teaches a hearing impaired child by talking and signing, or talking to him/her - through communication.
Communication is the exchange of information, ideas and feelings between people. People exchange information in many ways. The tools of communication are ways in which we exchange information, ideas and feelings. Some of the tools of communication are:
Some parents use Total Communication with their children. They are using the tool of sign language in addition to oral language (speech). Some families are teaching their children to communicate by using the tool of oral language (speech) alone.1. facial expression
2. body language
3. gestures
4. oral language or speech
5. sign language
6. reading and writingFor more information about various communication options for teaching a child with a hearing impairment see Links to other pages.
Language is the use of an orderly arrangement of words to convey meaning. When we talk, we tell people what we mean by using particular words in a particular order. We also use intonational patterns (the rise and fall of voice) to help convey meaning. We convey meaning by the rate of our speech - by talking fast or slow - and by the volume of our voice. All of these parts of oral language - words, intonation, rate of speech and volume - contribute to the meaning of what is said.
When we communicate, two processes take place sending information and receiving the information. In order for communication to take place the sender and the receiver must understand each other. In order for communication to take place, the sender and the receiver must agree on symbols (words or signs) to mean something in particular.
When language is taught to hearing impaired babies, we are helping them to agree with us on symbols (words and signs) that stand for objects or ideas. We help them learn the word or sign for "dog" - meaning that furry barking animal. We help them learn that the word or sign "off" means to take something from one place to another, or to remove something. How do we help them learn this? We do it by communicating, letting them hear and see the word or sign associated with the object or idea many, many times. There is no magic shortcut. The baby must hear or see the word or word/sign "dog" every time he/she sees a dog until he/she learns to associate the word/sign and the object so that when he/she hears "Dog". He/she thinks of a dog.
There are two processes when we communicate; sending and receiving information. The person sending information is using Expressive Language and the person receiving the message is using Receptive Language: he/she is understanding the ideas, information or feelings that have been expressed.