How do you teach someone who was born deaf to communicate?

jd
#1. July 25th, 2008, at 1:55 AM.

Sign language. It’s the same as you would teach anyone else, just a different language.

Maria Jessa
#2. July 26th, 2008, at 10:50 AM.

Actually, u an teach born deaf sign language by letting them to be with their peer deaf….. they have same intuations thats why they can communicate with each other. Deaf had also their brains that they can easily learn things showed to them. They had a supernatural feeling that they can learn anything expressed to them.

I♥Amma
#3. July 28th, 2008, at 4:29 PM.

Did you know that babies can understand sign language much earlier than vocal language? If you sign to babies like “milk”, “mommy”, “daddy”, “eat”, etc., they will understand the connection. So that covers how easy it is to teach sign language to a deaf child, it’s all visual. The brain is very advanced and can make connections between something and the sign through repition and familiarity.

I am deaf and grew up in the oral method which they teach deaf children how to speak, lip-read and listen. First we are fitted with hearing aids which is critical in order to learn how to speak. So they would show us pictures, speak it, mouthing it clearly, so we can lip read. And encourage us to repeat.

Also to learn how to speak, they would put paper or a feather in front of our mouth to create the correct pronunciation, feel it on our throats or the teacher’s throat, nose for feeling the sounds and recreate it.

To read, is accomplished by showing a picture with the word below it like a flash card. It’s really not that much different with teaching hearing children how to read. It is more work and energy to teach a deaf child to speak and lipread, but it pays off in the long run, because I can understand almost 90% of the people that I encounter and have no problem communicating.

spedusource
#4. July 29th, 2008, at 9:55 AM.

You would get more detailed answers if you categorized this question in “Special Education.”

That being said:

Children who were born deaf are taught to communicate through several modes, including sign language, lip reading, written words, and communication devices like picture boards and written word keyboarding.

Some are taught to vocally speak through “feel” (touching the teacher’s throat, and then their own, and matching the “buzz” for pitch and volume).

The primary method of communication for fully deaf individuals is sign language. It is taught the same way any other language is taught… matching signs at first to concrete objects and observable movement, and then building into more abstract ideas.

Because deaf people do not have a real experience of sound, they do not learn the phonics matching of letters to sounds. Instead, they are taught all words as sight words, matching words to pictures or modeled action.