Where Does Speech Fit In? Spoken English in a Bilingual Context
Using Bilingual Strategies
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Where Does Speech Fit In? Spoken English in a Bilingual Context Using Bilingual Strategies
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About the Author Is He Still Talking? Factors Involved in Spoken English Development Sign vs. Speech Realistic Expectations Using Bilingual Strategies Conclusion References Sharing Ideas Home Page |
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In order for any child to become bilingual, it is important that he or she receive meaningful exposure to two languages. For many
hearing children, this happens naturally when there are two languages necessary for the child to negotiate his or her environment.
However, for most bilingual children, a determined strategy must be implemented to provide full access to at least one language,
or the child may be in danger of not fully developing either language. A number of different strategies can be employed,
including designating specific people to use each language, setting specific times that each language is used, using one language
in the home and one outside the home, or using both languages interchangeably.
Which of the above strategies would be effective in helping a deaf or hard of hearing child develop spoken English in addition to ASL? That answer will depend largely on the child's ability to access spoken language. In general, the two strategies that work well are: 1) having specific people use each language, and 2) designating specific times, settings, or circumstances for each language to be used. In order to illustrate how the first strategy can work, let's look at a class of two- and three-year-olds at a school for the deaf. In this class there are six children, a deaf teacher, and a hearing teacher's assistant. The children come from a variety of backgrounds and have a variety of hearing losses. The primary language of the classroom is ASL; however, language use is tailored to individual needs whenever possible. Most activities are presented with ASL as the common language, as the goal is to make sure all children have full access to the information presented. At center time, the children are free to move around the classroom deciding what activity they want to participate in. They may participate in such activities as the sand table, building blocks, or the dramatic play area. The teacher and the assistant interact with different children throughout the classroom. The teacher has just finished playing with two students who are placing blocks one on top of the other and knocking them down when the speech-language therapist joins the class. The therapist-the designated spoken English model-goes over to the students and begins to play with them. As the blocks fall down she says "uh-oh" using visual (such as a voice light) and/or tactile (placing the child's hand on her throat) cues to encourage the children to imitate these sounds. One of the children knocks down the blocks again and approximates "uh-oh." The therapist later moves to another area where a little boy is playing with a doll. The boy puts the doll down and says "baby." The therapist responds by saying "the baby is sleeping." "Sleep," copies the boy. A little later at the water table, the therapist makes her voice go from high to low as she pours water into a container. As you can see in this example, the strategy used is to have two people using the two different languages. The children learn that the speech-language therapist is presenting auditory information and this information can be individually geared to the receptive and expressive skills of each child. Interacting with the children in the classroom is often easiest with children of this age. A therapist can move around the room and engage children in activities that interest them and are tailored to their abilities. This also allows the teacher and therapist many opportunities to observe the children using both languages in natural contexts. As children become older, strategy two may be utilized more, as it maybe less disruptive to bring children to a separate area or room to work on spoken English. During these separate times, the therapist would be primarily using spoken English with sign explanations or visual cues as necessary. At home parents could also use the second strategy by setting aside specific times or predictable parts of each day to work on spoken English skills with their child. As the children move into the pre-kindergarten and elementary years, I place them into three general groups depending on how much access they have to spoken English. In one group are the children who develop spoken English skills that, on the surface, appear similar to those of hearing children. Their auditory skills, with hearing aids, are sufficient to allow them quite a bit of access to spoken English. The needs of these children are very different from the needs of another group, which consists of children whose auditory access to English is more limited. They depend on speechreading, other visual cues, and tactile information to learn spoken English skills. The children in this second group do not naturally acquire speech skills; rather these skills must be taught, and the children will acquire them to varying degrees. Yet another group of children, due to profound deafness or some disability, will not easily develop any substantive spoken English skills. Time and effort are better spent developing speechreading and general communication skills. These groups are distinctive not only in the way they develop spoken English skills but also in the way they will use these skills. Although they all share the goal of developing their communicative competence to their utmost potential, each of these groups requires a different strategy for presenting spoken English.
Acquiring Spoken English through Natural Interaction Some people may question why a child who can develop spoken English skills should be in a signing environment. As was discussed earlier, it is very difficult to predict how well a child will acquire English through the auditory channel when he or she is very young. We know that most deaf and hard of hearing children can fully acquire language through the visual mode, so it seems wise to provide them with a "sure thing" and not take chances when it comes to all-important early first language development. Research indicates that the brain does not discriminate between signed and spoken language as input for developing a first language, since both have the formal properties of language (Petitto and Bellugi, 1988). Therefore, a child who acquires ASL as his or her first language and is also able to acquire spoken English has lost nothing, as compared with the child who struggles to acquire spoken English through an insufficient auditory mode with no access to a visual language. This child may be in danger of achieving little competence in any language, or only a surface comprehension of spoken English. This surface competency is what Cummins (1980) refers to as "basic interpersonal communication skills" or BICS. The next level of language competency is what Cummins refers to as "cognitive/academic language proficiency" or CALP. A child needs to achieve this level of competency in order to form the base of knowledge upon which to develop cognitive and academic skills (Barnum, 1984). In other words, spoken English, while sufficient for everyday face-to-face interaction for some deaf and hard of hearing children, may not serve the same function for exchanging complex, abstract information as the more deeply developed sign language competency can for a deaf or hard of hearing child. If a child's spoken English skills do develop to a point there they can succeed in a public school setting without an interpreter, then he or she will still have the grounding in sign language to maintain contact with the deaf community. At our school, a number of our students were placed in public schools after their preschool years. Although it would be difficult to prove, it is my belief that these students greatly benefited from their early exposure to a visual language which provided a firm grounding for understanding their world and a link to English. Clearly, this exposure did not prevent these students from continuing to develop their spoken English skills. With this first group, spoken English can be promoted in much the same way as it would be for a hearing child. In our preschool, the speech-language therapists routinely borrow the books and materials that the classroom teacher is using and duplicate the activities using spoken English with the child. The goal is to present activities in either ASL or spoken English separately, so the child gets natural, comprehensible exposure to both. The classroom teacher presents a selected story or activity first in sign language. The student is able to receive the full message and discuss the meaning of the story in this visual mode. When the story is then presented in spoken English, the child knows what to expect. Because the story is already familiar, the less accessible spoken English becomes easier to understand. In other words, as struggling for meaning is now less of an issue, the child is freed to focus more on the form of the spoken language. As the child grows, he or she may need to work on specific English grammatical structures and/or aspects of speech. While they do develop intelligible speech, children in this group demonstrate a variety of errors in spoken English. It can be beneficial to begin to address these errors before they become "fixed" in a child's language. For example, some of the deaf and hard of hearing children with whom I have worked have had delayed use and understanding of spatial prepositions such as "in," "on," "under." Teachers and clinicians can work on these delays by playing hide and seek games in which the teacher or student verbally describes where items are hidden. Other types of errors cannot be addressed until the child has developed metalinguistic skills, or the ability to reflect and talk about one's own use of language. For example, a child who cannot hear the high frequency sound /s/ may not be able to work on plurals until he or she understands the concept of plurals, usually not until about age 4 or 5. Once a child has an understanding of plurals in ASL, he or she can be taught the concept in written English (by making the connection to the printed "s" in words), which can then be taught in spoken English. Children also tend to have an easier time developing the production of the /s/ sound when they understand its purpose in a word. Close collaboration between the classroom teacher and the speech language therapist in addressing such issues can help children grasp aspects of English that are inaccessible to them through hearing and are different from ASL. All of this work is supported and facilitated by having a full-fledged language with which to practice, use, and discuss these metalinguistic concepts. Parents are often concerned when their child, who is already speaking, enters a program that uses sign language. They are worried that their child will stop speaking or that his or her spoken English skills will not progress. As noted earlier, this concern has been unfounded in my experience. A young child who is exposed to both ASL and spoken English skills quickly learns a skill known among linguists as code switching-using the language or form of language called for in a given communication situation. Initially, the child may be a bit confused and occasionally frustrated as he or she learns a new language and tries to determine how to communicate with the different people in his or her environment. However, once skills in both languages are sufficient for communication, the child will put them to work as needed. One staff member told me a story about a preschooler whom the adult assumed was profoundly deaf and lacking in any spoken English skills. One day the little girl's mother picked her up early from school. The student ran to her mother saying, " Mom! Today I painted during center time." The staff member was shocked. Obviously, this four-year-old knew when to sign and when to speak.
Learning Spoken English through Teaching and Practice Students in this group often benefit from a traditional approach to therapy, including activities designed to teach individual speech sounds or specific grammatical and syntactical structures, as well as conversational discourse skills. In other words, children in this group must be taught specific language and articulation skills, as they do not have sufficient access to sound to acquire them through social interaction. This teaching process is very different in character from natural development of language and therefore is slower. However, having a first language with which to discuss what is being learned and create meaningful practice can speed the process. There are a number of structured programs for teaching deaf and hard of hearing children articulation and language skills. As with any child involved in speech and language therapy, it is very important to keep activities meaningful and content-driven. This can be achieved by using materials from the classroom as well as activities that are of special interest to the child. For example, with one of my students who loves football, we use NFL team names to practice articulation skills. Receptive and expressive spoken language skills should be practiced in a realistic and motivating context; for example, practicing how to order at local restaurants (our school's Community Communication trip program will be described in the next section). In an environment where ASL is the primary language of instruction, some professionals worry that a deaf or hard of hearing child who falls within this second group will not receive enough exposure to spoken English. It may be true that the overall amount of exposure to spoken English will be less during the hours the child is in school for these children. However, the quality of that exposure for children who have a fuller understanding of the communication process and of each language may actually be greater.
Communication in the Community Traditionally, children in this group would either remain in speech therapy that had little benefit for them or would not receive any services. A more effective approach is to focus on the skills each student can utilize to communicate with the general community in which they live. This includes speechreading, written communication, gesturing, uttering single words or short phrases they can say intelligibly, or "mouthing" (using mouth movements without voice to approximate spoken words). Some of these children have good ASL skills and have a good understanding of what they need to do in different communication situations, but need the opportunity to practice independently in safe contexts and develop new skills. Others have communication problems in a broader sense, never having developed full competence and confidence with either language. In each case, it's important to assess children's abilities and help them learn skills that can be employed in a variety of situations. In order to keep these skills meaningful, they are first practiced in the classroom where students can use ASL while reflecting upon and discussing their communication processes; then the students go out into the community to use the skills in various contexts, such as in stores or restaurants. For the past several years we have used this communication approach with all our elementary students. Although it was originally intended to be used with students with no oral communication skills, it has been very effective with a variety of students. The goals and methods vary with the skills of the student, but each student learns about communicating with the general public. The skills developed include:
There are several different factors to consider when planning communication therapy. Which modes of communication can a child use? What trips will interest and challenge the child and have real meaning? Can the child role play with or without props? For example, some children need to completely act out the planned communication exchange using real props (bringing in donuts before going to the bakery). Other children can handle role playing using pictures or less realistic props. It is important to teach the children there can be a number of different ways to communicate in a given situation. For instance, at an ice cream store where the flavors are displayed, children could choose to point or write to communicate. They may also need to change modes within a given situation, for example, writing or saying the ice cream flavor but then pointing to indicate they want sprinkles. Our trips have ranged from a simple trip to buy donuts to visiting a geology lab at the local university. These trips are valuable learning experiences that can have a significant impact on a child. After the first year of these trips, one of my students told me about going to McDonalds and telling her mother, "I can do it myself," when it was time to order. This is a great example of how communicative competence can lead to greater independence and self-esteem.
Contact Ken Kurlychek with comments or suggestions about this web page. Last modified May 4, 1998 Copyright © 1997 All Rights Reserved Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center
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