for a baby born deaf, how does he/she learn language, especially written language (knowing that the word “CAR” means car even though he/she has never heard a single sound in his/her llfe)?
if sign language is one of the pathways to this success, then is it possible to teach a child who is born deaf to read and write without the intermediary of sign language?
would they be able to figure out the usage of words like “the”, “a”, and other ambiguous terms like “this”, “that”, “here”, “there”, “I”, “you”, “he”…etc without sound and sign language?
Those are pretty abstract ideas, and can a child learn how to piece these all together without the help of sound (being deaf) and without signing, to eventually write a grammatical sentence correctly conveying his/her thoughts? A sentence such as:
“That chair was moved here from there while he went that way”
also, would it be possible for such a child to make the following grammatical mistake of using “goed” as a past tense for “go”, or would he/she just base her sentences on pure memory such that he/she always uses “went” instead?
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man.. great queation.. i honestly have NO clue
With an infant, you’d begin with things in his immediate environment and he or she doesn’t need to be hard of hearing. (Google Baby sign, if you aren’t familiar with it). Once they are more of a toddler age, toys can be used to associate signs with objects. Then, the family and teachers would move onto pictures and/or actions to as the child ages. Text and sign would then move together naturally in the later preschool years.
sure-you can teach a child to read and write without signing–the same way you cna teach a hearing child to read and write without speaking (by locking them in a sound proof roomand never talking to them an only using written words)
but why,
signing (and speaking) are communication
you learn to sign similar to the way you learn to speak-
you see a CAR–soomeone says “CAR” you learn the label
or you see a CAR-someone signs ‘car’ and you leanr the label…
if teh cavemen never discovered speech-we would all be using signs to communicate….if someone grows up in a signing house–they learn to sign as natually as most people learn to speak
Children are language magnets. Imagine trying to learn in just three years all of the components of a foreign language and speak it perfectly to boot. They do it with no apparent effort.
All children, to develop normally, need a language in which they can express their wants, needs, desires, fears etc. If they don’t you will see immense frustration and behavior problems.
Reading is not expressive language. So the child can not become a speaker if they just learn to read. But, you have to teach them to read in order to write. Can you imagine their frustration? This one of the main issues for autistic children.
There is a huge controversy in the deaf and hard of hearing community whether to teach children to read lips or to teach them to sign first. In our country, there are two kinds of sign language, SEE or Signed Exact English. By using this you would teach children all the articles and the verbs for “go” and “went.”
The other language is ASL or American Sign Language, which highly preferred in the deaf community. It does not have verb tenses, instead, it uses the situation to have the other person understand. They also put the subject first, so that you will understand better. They also use now and later or tomorrow etc. to designate the tense. For instance if I were going to tell you I am going to the store, I would sign “Store I go now.” There are no articles in ASL. This is a beautiful and immensely efficient language.
As I have said, there is considerable debate between these three languages. Personally, I would teach a profoundly deaf child to use ASL. For some Hard of Hearing children the preference would be for lip reading so that they are not limited to the deaf community.
Also, with advent of cochlear implants, many profoundly deaf children can hear or respond to sound. However in the deaf classes I have been in, even for these kids they use a combination of ASL and lip reading.
One bi drawback of ASL only is teaching a child to write. Remember they are not using articles……………. It can be hard.