A First Language: Whose Choice Is It?

Acquisition vs. Learning

In approaches based primarily on early exposure to natural signed language, will the child miss the "critical period" for acquiring spoken language?

This is one of the questions I asked during my first visit to Sweden. One linguistic researcher from the Stockholm University Department of Scandinavian Languages expressed her concern over my assumption that critical period effects would apply to the learning of speech by deaf children. She explained their view (also held by linguists in the U.S.) that the distinction between acquiring and being formally taught a language is central to the discussion of critical period for both first and second languages (K. Svartholm, personal correspondence, January, 1990). The term acquisition is used to refer to the subconscious process through which children acquire their first language, while learning, in this context, refers to the conscious process through which simple grammatical rules and other facts about the workings of the language are understood.

Except in cases where the Deaf child has sufficient auditory processing to acquire the spoken language naturally through everyday processes of interaction, the learning of speech through teacher-directed repetition, feedback, correction, and explanation is not considered to be an "acquisition" process. If the child's hearing loss is severe enough that, with or without amplification, speech must be consciously learned through training and practice, the process is very different in character from other language acquisition processes in children (Risberg, 1968). This training of speech skills to children who have little or no auditory access to the speech signal is considered by researchers in Sweden to be more an intellectual or memorization task than a language learning task (Svartholm, 1993; I. Ahlgren, personal communication, April 2, 1990). It therefore is not regarded as falling under the purview of the critical period discussion as it applies to first language acquisition. In other words, except for those Deaf children who can pick up speech through exposure alone, the "critical period" is not considered to be critical by linguists and many educators of Deaf children in Sweden. What is considered critical for teaching speech is cognitive readiness—and motivation—for the learning task, and access to the spoken signal.

The more experience professionals in these countries have with Deaf children who are exposed to Sign Language early, the more they trust that those who are going to acquire speech naturally through their hearing will acquire it even if they are addressed much of the time in Sign Language. In other words, spoken language models are everywhere. When children do have sufficient hearing and tend to be responsive to speech, the hearing adults in their environment use it with them in many contexts. Studies in early mother-child interaction show that much of parents' early communication with their children is comprised of "automatic" responses that reinforce their child's efforts to communicate (see Bouvet, 1990 for extensive discussion). In other words, if the child is getting enough of the spoken model to start producing it himself, hearing parents and teachers will automatically respond in speech and support that development.

Unless a child is very isolated from hearing society, it is likely that no amount of exposure to Sign Language will keep that child from acquiring the spoken language that is prevalent in society or in his own home, if it is accessible to him through hearing (Axelsson, 1994). Conversely, there is much evidence that those children who do not have enough auditory access to the signal will not learn the spoken language through a natural acquisition process no matter how much they are exposed to it. These children will need to be taught much of what they will ultimately know about speech.

Access is the Key

Conversely, a child who does not have access to the auditory or visual channels through which a language is transmitted, even if that child is addressed regularly in that language, will not acquire that language naturally (see section on early amplification).

The key word is ACCESS. We would consider it ludicrous to expect a blind infant to acquire Sign Language simply by being in an environment where it is used by the adults around him. This visual/gestural language—for an infant who does not have the sense of sight—simply does not exist. In much the same way, there are very real biological limits for most Deaf children to acquiring spoken language through natural interactive processes. These limits persist even if the child has some hearing, is given amplification, or is taught the language through a step-by-step process that relies heavily on vision for reception. Such a teaching process, by nature, must often involve structured, repetitive practice. In most cases, such teaching cannot capitalize fully on the natural processes of daily interaction and conversation that are so important to linguistic and cognitive development (Vygotsky, 1962), nor does the outcome of that teaching give the Deaf child full access to normal-paced spoken conversation with a group of hearing people. Spoken language is, by nature, an auditorily perceived language.

Access must be considered at the heart of every issue when generalizing to deaf children findings that are based on hearing children who have full auditory input from spoken conversation for natural, interactive acquisition in both their first and second languages. If we recall the widely-researched premise that all language acquisition is based on comprehensible input (Krashen, 1981), it follows that exposing deaf children to more spoken conversation or to earlier spoken conversatio when they have limited auditory access to that conversation will result in very limited language development. In order for language to develop, the input simply must be comprehensible to the child. The development of the first language, which contributes to later success in acquiring the second language and other language forms, must not be sacrificed to insufficient input or intervention-type training processes in lieu of natural acquisition.

A Hard Reality

Speech is a hard reality with its own laws and requirements. In disregarding or not respecting them because they are not simple, we certainly complicate the lives of the deaf children whom we want to teach to speak. We make them pay dearly for our lack of honesty, sometimes jeopardizing their entire equilibrium. The only way that we can better respond to deaf children and free them from our own false assumptions is to adopt an approach that `recognizes the complexity of things.' (1990, p.34).

The more conscious learning process Deaf children must employ to master this extremely complex task requires a certain level of cognitive maturity, developmental readiness to attend to the tasks presented, motivation, and some way of gaining access to the form and structure of the language—typically through literacy—since that form and structure is not readily available through the spoken signal or through signs. In other words, deaf children who are learning speech skills, but who do not have enough hearing to acquire the spoken language through natural processes, still need a way to develop competence in the language if they are to produce and comprehend spoken structures without auditory models or feedback.

Because it provides a Deaf child access to the structures of the language, the written form of the majority language, acquired by Deaf children through sufficient exposure (R. Andersson, 1994; Svartholm, 1994) offers a basis upon which learned pronunciations of spoken words can be related to the language as a whole. Functional use of the spoken form of the majority language is then considered by some to be more "teachable" for children who do not otherwise acquire it naturally, because these children now bring to the task solid competence in their first language, world knowledge, and knowledge of the written form of the spoken language (Hansen, 1989; Kuntze, 1994). Speech therapists in more and more schools in the U.S. not only support Deaf children's natural acquisition of Sign Language, but also work very closely with teachers to make sure the tasks they are teaching capitalize on concepts the child is able to talk about in Sign Language or can read. Since the children already know (or are in the process of learning) the English language, training in pronunciation is not isolated from the structure of the language. Speech teachers regularly observe that children in such settings have more to talk about.

Early Amplification