Hello Robin,

I was intrigued how a deaf person can acquire phonological awareness, and 
Googled to find:
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/pubs/stern.htm
This still leaves it as a mystery to me.  They say:
"An enriched language experience is the key to developing phonological 
skills and to becoming literate. "
but do not explain whether this experience includes lip-reading.  Logically 
it must.  Sign language bears no relationship to sounds.

Now I'm told that nearly all deaf children have some residual hearing, and 
that total (i.e. sensorineural) deafness is extremely rare.  (I need to 
check this out with Gallaudet and Bristol, so I'm copying this email to 
them. See P.S.)  Thus with hearing aids, or cochlear implants, together with 
lip-reading, nearly all deaf children could access oral language.  Then they 
could be taught by mainstream methods.  There is no reason why synthetic 
phonics should not work for all of them, as it does for normally hearing 
children.

An additional aid to lip-reading and phonological awareness would be a 
vibrating device, giving a tactile sensation for the phonemes.  I don't know 
whether such a device is already used for teaching deaf children 
phonological and phonemic awareness.  Perhaps Gallaudet or Bristol people 
can answer that question also.  If not, I'd be interested to develop such a 
device, according to an innovative design.  It is a major hurdle for deaf 
people to learn to read, unless they can somehow acquire phonological or 
phonemic awareness.

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

P.S.  Of children with special needs (SEN), about 6% have a hearing 
impairment according to statistics, but this is almost certainly an 
underestimate.  The MRC Institute of Hearing Research based at Nottingham 
University reports that the incidence of congenital deafness is 1.1 per 1000 
live births for hearing losses of >40dB and 1.1 per 4000 for profoundly Deaf 
(>95dB).  See http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/DeafStudiesTeaching/dis/dis4.htm

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Try WordAloud with synthetic phonics:
http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm
Tel: +44 208 742 3170  Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <robinschwarz1 at aol.com>
To: <learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 2:29 AM
Subject: Re: [LearningDisabilities] American Sign Language


Actually I have seen research that deaf persons who read well have
excellent phonological awareness--including phonemic awareness.   As
for any reader, it depends on how the student was taught early on as to
how their later reading will develop. Robin S.

-----Original Message-----
From: John Nissen <jn at cloudworld.co.uk>
To: The Learning Disabilities Discussion List
<learningdisabilities at nifl.gov>
Cc: Lisa Seeman <lisa at ubaccess.com>; Debbie Hepplewhite
<debbie at syntheticphonics.com>; New Vision Technology
<cph.newvision at virgin.net>; david fullerton <mail at accessequality.co.uk>
Sent: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:15:49 -0000
Subject: Re: [LearningDisabilities] American Sign Language


Hello Pam,

I cannot answer your question, but I would like to point out the
difficulty for a profoundly deaf person to learn to read and write at
all, because the basis of our writing system is a phonemic encoding,
and the deaf person cannot hear the sounds. Thus they have to
recognise whole words and remember their meaning, without any mnemonic
value. Considering the difficulties, it is hardly surprising that the
average reading age for an adult deaf person is 11 years.

So, if the deaf student is managing to write with a decent vocabulary,
and grammatically, it is a considerable achievement.

Cheers from Chiswick,

John

John Nissen
Cloudworld Ltd - http://www.cloudworld.co.uk
maker of the assistive reader, WordAloud.
Try WordAloud with synthetic phonics:
http://www.cloudworld.co.uk/teaching-synthetic-phonics.htm
Tel: +44 208 742 3170 Fax: +44 208 742 0202
Email: info at cloudworld.co.uk



----- Original Message -----
From: Pam Bryan
To: 'The Learning Disabilities Discussion List'
Sent: Monday, February 27, 2006 4:01 PM
Subject: [LearningDisabilities] American Sign Language


Hello,

I am looking for resource materials for one of our teachers. She is
working with a deaf student who uses American Sign Language to
communicate. As you may know this language is different in that they
do not communicate in full sentences as we know it. So the challenge
for the instructor is to teach the student to write in complete
sentences. Please let me know of any materials you have used that
might make this process easier.

Thank you!

Pam Bryan

ABE Special Projects Coordinator
and Regional Technical Assistant for
Literacy West Virginia
RESA III
501 22nd Street
Dunbar, WV 25064
1-800-257-3723 ext. 212
FAX: 766-7915

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