[senco-forum] RE Teaching vocabulary

SharonHellen Keller was a truly exceptional person but some experience of sound is essential to a process that is either the vocalisation or the subvocalisation of sounds.  Sightedness is not essential in reading - the tactile sensing of Braille dots can replace the sight of text.There have been a number of  exceptional children who were able to read by the age of 18 months ( I cant quote the references) so that it may have been possible for someone of Hellen Keller's exceptionality to have assimilated all of the grapheme/phoneme relationships and who can say that she had absolutely no hearing after 18 months. It is my understanding that although some people are categorised as being 'profoundly' deaf - this is a box-ticking thing - complete and utter deafness is really extremely rare.  Eddie C. 