Vocabulary notes

breathy - хриплый

facilitate – облегчать, содействовать

figurative – образный, переносный

guttural – гортанный (звук), горловой

hard-of-hearing – тугоухость

hearing handicap – слуховая недостаточность

hearing impairment – ухудшение слуха

hearing loss – потеря слуха

implication – вовлечение, причастность, смысл

nasal – носовой

pitch – высота (звука)

rhythm – ритм

Children with hearing handicaps represent a heterogeneous group. The effect of hearing dysfunction on individual functioning varies greatly depending on a number of factors: the type and degree of hearing loss, the child's age when the loss occurred, the child's IQ, the ability of the child's family and community to cope with the hearing impairment, and the child's linguistic and educational experiences.

Speech and Language. Children whose hearing losses occur before they have the opportunity to develop expressive skills in the language spoken by their families often have difficulty mastering oral language skills. Thus, an 8-year-old child with a profound hearing loss who became handicapped after her second or third birthday may have better speech, language, reading, and writing skills than a classmate with a milder hearing loss that occurred shortly after birth.

Children with hearing handicaps must often be taught these skills directly through much painstaking repetition and corrective instruction. These students' speech problems often include the omission or substitution of some sounds, problems with speech intonation and pitch, and difficulties with the normal rate and rhythm of spoken English. Speech may sound nasal, guttural, or breathy. Children with hearing impairment usually have limited vocabularies as compared to nonhandicapped students. These students may omit grammatical components. These children tend to use short and simple sentences. Students with hearing impairment may lack an understanding of alternative meanings for words and figurative language.

Instructional Implications. Because of the language difficulties that can accompany hearing loss, a hearing disability may affect how well a student is able to hear spoken language and other stimuli in the average classroom as well as influence performance in language related subjects such as reading and writing. Classes that rely heavily on students' reading and integrating printed material from texts and that require written products such as essays and reports can also be problematic for deaf children. Likewise, problem solving in so-called language-free subjects such as math and science depend on the use of language to manipulate and communicate concepts.

Social-Emotional Development. Few differences are noted among very young deaf and hearing children, who often develop friendships based on mutual play interests that are not impeded by their communication differences. With age, however, language becomes an increasingly important facilitator of friendships, socialization, and social-emotional growth.

Communication difficulties and issues related to parental acceptance of the child's deafness can have a negative impact on the parent-child relationship, which in turn may influence the child's social-emotional development. Recent efforts of early intervention programs have focused on assisting families in learning to adapt to these challenges and their child's special needs.

(L.M. Huntress. Aphasic Subjects Comprehension of Syntehetic and Natural speech. – Danvill, Ill.: American Speech and Hearing Association. – JSHD, 1988, Vol.53, No.4. – P.467- 474.)