The hear impairment

Contents

Introduction ----------------------------------------------pag. 2
Definitions of deafness-----------------------------pag. 5
Types of deafness--------------------------------------pag. 6
Discussion of deafness-----------------------------pag. 8
* Medical model------------------------------------pag. 8
* Social model----------------------------------------pag. 9
Theeducational approaches for deaf students ----------------------------------------------------------------------pag. 11
* The Oral approach----------------------------pag. 12
* Total communication approach-------pag. 13
* Sign Bilingualism approach--------------pag. 13
Literacy and deafness------------------------------pag. 15
* Perspectives on Reading Achievement andDeafness----------------------------------------------pag. 17
* Word identification---------------------------pag. 18
* Syntax-------------------------------------------------pag. 20
Conclusion--------------------------------------------------pag. 26
Bibliography----------------------------------------------pag. 28


Introduction

A pupil has educational special needs when he presentsmore difficulties than the rest of his classmates to accede to the corresponded age and needs learning. In many occasions teachers find students with sensory difficulties in classroom; the main sensory difficulties are audition and vision. In my case, I have worked with an Otitis media children in a regular school in Spain.
In this essay, I am going to focus on Audition because it is increasing thenumber of students with a hearing loss are entering higher education in Great Britain. As hearing loss, in particular prelingual hearing loss, can have a profound effect on the literacy levels of deaf people.
Another reason is that I have worked with this specific context in my country, so I think that my own experience can help me to develop the main topic.
I am going to focus on the area ofthe teaching of reading because it is in which the deaf have particular difficulties and I want to learn more fully how this skill is affected by deafness.
I consider that with this essay I am going to have the opportunity to investigate the areas of language, deafness and teaching and I hope that my findings be able to improve my own teaching of my future students with especial needs.Before starting my main topic I would like to introduce a little history about the status of the deaf throughout history:
Deafness has been subject to different cultural discourses in different points and historical context. Deaf people were seen as subject to be healed (Woll and Ladd, 2003). People treated the deaf as they were not human beings, depriving them of their legal rights, education andequity in society (Lee, 2004). Their lives were described by isolation, oppression and invisibility resulting into tragedy and despair.
Only few positive records can be found, attributing some value to the use of signs as a way of communication and to the possibility of educating the deaf. The Venerable Bede, for example, recognized that the fingers could be used for counting and spelling and heinvented a manual alphabet that has been used in Europe for centuries (Marschark, et al., 2002). Around 1580 the monk Pedro Ponce de Leon was educating the deaf through reading and writing.
However, those are rare examples, as for over 1300 years deaf people were considered to be uneducable (Lee, 2004). Prior to 1750, deaf people were criticized upon their inability to acquire speech and were,therefore labeled “dumb” or “mute” (Sack, 1989). Only at the 17th century, people realized that deaf individuals can be educated ( Corker, 2002; Woll and Ladd, 2003).

Definitions of deafness

The degree of deafness is defined by the quietest sound a person can hear, measured in decibels (dB).
Mild deafness: difficulty in following speech, mainly in noisy situations. Would hear a baby crying...