Support Services Handout Series
Number 6001 Language Sheet
Learning Disabilities and Deafness
Deaf Students With Language Processing Disorders
Strategy Comparisons

As teachers of the deaf review treatment principles or strategies suggested for use with students exhibiting language processing difficulties, they may find themselves saying "I already do that!" This is because many of the intervention techniques or principles designed for hearing children with language processing disorders are the same as, or similar to, the strategies commonly used to meet the language and educational needs of deaf students in deaf education programs.

Strategies that are common to both fields (deafness and language learning disability are outlined below; strategies specific to language learning disabilities are noted as "key differences."

Strategies in Common:

• Get visual attention
• Emphasize visual cues (body language, pictures)
• Specialize seating arrangements
• Minimize visual/auditory distractions
• Utilize comprehension checks
• Repeat input
• Rephrase input
• Modify complexity of input (concepts, structures, amount)
• Shorten or breakdown information
• Add information, expand context
• List key vocabulary
• Provide individual help

Key Differences:

• Control order of difficulty of concept presentations
• Concrete to abstract
• General to specific
• Less complex to more complex
• Maximize word familiarity in vocabulary selection
• Utilize grids, pictures cues, or color cues for word combinations
• Simplify number of concepts presented in a given picture
• Prolong or isolate the stimulus
• Add physical movement cues (tapping for words or syllables, gestures)
• Increase emphasis on breakdown and repair strategies (becomes child's goal area)
• Adjust speed, rate (extend production speed, waiting times for processing to occur

Developed by:Rita LaPorta, Support Services, Model Secondary School for the Deaf.

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