[SENco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

'Lack of appropriate teaching' as in both of your cases does not prove
inability to learn to read without hearing.

Helen Keller could type using Braille or normal text.  She could also 'read'
words albeit via Braille or fingerspelling.  That she had hearing until 18
months would not have been enough on its own to support her extraordinary
learning thereafter.

Sharon

-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk]On Behalf Of Eddie Carron
Sent: 11 February 2007 16:09
To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Subject: [senco-forum] Re Teaching vocabulary

Sharon contributes: Deaf people 'read' without sound.  They can see,
comprehend, manipulate and use the symbols before them without ever hearing
them. I have a problem with this. 'Losing' their hearing after having been
able to hear, does not of course preclude learning to read nor does the
possession of only some residual hearing. Why should it? I have considerable
age-related hearing loss myself but this does not affect my abilty to read.
Those who are profoundly deaf from birth and have never had any hearing are
very rare indeed but it is my understanding that such people can never learn
to read. A profoundly deaf person is apparently (and understandably) also
mute. Henry VIII is said to have put a new born baby on an island with a
deaf mute nurse to settle an argument about how speech was acquired.
Naturally, all the child could do was to emulate the calls of the seagulls.
One researcher taught a profoundly deaf mute to recognise some words printed
on cards together with a picture of their meaning eg a picture of a dog with
the textword 'dog' printed underneath.  This person acquired a limited sight
vocabulary of a few hundred words which enabled them to acquire a very
limited form of reading - but very limited! The graphemes in the text their
learned could never be associated with sounds therefore they could never
generalise a decoding skill because sound is a critical component of
decoding. I regard words as sounds and that in reading, these sounds are
recreated from the text sub-vocally.  This summons their meanings from
memory as well as a cascade of associations which we call comprehension.
Eddie C.

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