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The specialized curriculum of a class for the deaf includes 1) speech development 2) speech reading and auditory training 3)Language development 4) reading and other school subject.
- Speech Development
- Speech training through vibrations and sense of touch
- Visual aids
- Kinesthetic or Proprioceptive cues
- Use of hearing aids
- Speech reading or lip reading
Speech training through vibrations and sense of touch
The tactile sense was used intensively by Kate and Sophia Alcorn in teaching deaf-blind children and also in teaching deaf-seeing children. With his eyes closed the child feels speech vibrations by placing his hand on the teacher's cheek, near the mouth, and so begins to discriminate between sounds, words and sentences. He develops comprehension through touch before he is required to speak, just as a normal child understands through hearing before he speaks. Understanding of ideas precedes expression of ideas.
Speech Training Through the Use of Visual Aids
Although deaf blind children rely primarily on the tactile sense, the-deaf-seeing child is taught to use visual cues in addition to tactile cues. He learns to read people's speech and by watching the face of the teacher and a mirror he learns to reproduce what he sees as well as what he feels. The Alcorn system described earlier uses visual cues at a later stage when it combines speech reading with speech. Visual symbols representing the form of the mouth are presented, such as:
 Speech Training Through Kinesthetic or Proprioceptive Cues.
In addition to vision and touch (both responding to external cues), the child learns to control his speech by sensing the muscular movements within his own mouth, jaw, tongue, lips, larynx, and so forth. Through practice his use of these kinesthetic cues eventually becomes automatic. Initially, however, he must be made conscious of these internal cues. He will eventually learn to control his voice and articulation, not because he hears them, but because he feels them internally.
Speech Training Through the Use of Hearing Aids.
Many deaf children have some residual hearing even though not sufficient to understand or learn speech. Through powerful hearing aids their residual hearing can help them to discriminate differences and is used in teaching speech. This is a supplementary help to the training of speech which must utilize the tactile, visual, and kinesthetic methods. Thus hearing aids are used in classes for the deaf even though profoundly deaf children are not able to understand speech by them. The highly technical task of teaching speech. to deaf children is only part of the curriculum. Teaching speech is related to teaching language, speech reading, reading, and the content subjects.
- Speech Reading or Lip Reading
Deaf f children must rely heavily on their ability to interpret the lip and face movements of other people in order to understand their speech. For this reason lip reading is emphasized from a very young age. As in other areas of education, various methods of teaching deaf children to read speech have developed. Lip reading requires the ability to interpret speech by seeing a few clues to a word or sentence. Those who are able to lip-read well "fill in," so to speak, most of the speech they read. For example, one can see the articulator movements in sounds such as th, p, and f. But the articulation of the sounds such as ‘k’ or ‘h’ or ‘g’ is not visible. Some sounds such as ‘n’ and ‘t’ cannot be visually differentiated. The oval sound of ‘ee’ and ‘ay’ are indistinguishable visually example- man and bat are not easily distinguishable by sight. So a combination of various methods is used to develop speech.
- Language Development
Reading and language are combined because the deaf child learns language through reading, and reading primarily through language
- Language is most complex skills & only human species has this ability
- Language involves many facets, including concept formation
- It may be easy to teach the child the concept of a ball through lip reading ,whether the ball is small or big or red and blue but how can one develop the idea of ‘the’, ‘of’, ‘for’ and the different shades of the same word eg word ‘run’ - The boy runs,The river is running, A road runs in front of the home
- Reading and language go hand in hand ,Language through reading
- Reading primarily through language,
- Written than spoken language
Teachers emphasize different methods at different stages of development.
Silverman has given some general principles (Hyperlink the following)
- Language teaching should be related to significant and meaningful experiences of children.
- Language should constantly be made to serve a purpose for the child.
- All sensory channels should be used to teach language.
- Teachers need to be alert to ideas that are developing in children so that they may furnish the language to express them.
- Children need many varied contacts with the same language in order to make it theirs. Many children need formal, systematic aids to acquisition of language. Many shun language when they feel insecure in its use.
- Schools and homes should create an atmosphere where Ianguage is used and where books are read regularly.
- Reading
Language development for the deaf child is slow and laborious. Reading achievement is likewise slow and laborious. Some deaf children can learn to read like hearing children if they are properly taught and possess adequate intellectual abilities. The teaching of speech, speech reading, language, and reading creates conflicting problems for the teacher of the deaf. An understanding of language, for example, is necessary for progress in reading, yet it is through reading that a deaf child best learns to understand language. Reading comprehension is dependent on language comprehension, and language development is dependent upon the child's developing grammatical sequences, relationships, and nuances of meanings through context clues derived from reading.
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