Unlocking Voices: How Deaf Individuals Learn to Speak

Deafness, characterized by profound hearing loss, affects millions globally. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 430 million people around the world have some form of disabling hearing loss, 34 million of which are children. While some deaf individuals choose to communicate nonverbally, utilizing languages like American Sign Language (ASL), many others learn to speak. This article explores the methods and challenges involved in spoken language acquisition for deaf individuals, addressing common questions and misconceptions surrounding this topic.

Understanding Deafness and Speech Acquisition

Deafness is profound hearing loss, wherein people may only be able to hear very little or nothing at all. Some people may be born deaf (congenital deafness). In some, it may occur during early childhood due to genetic factors, trauma, infections, etc. Some people may become deaf later in life due to injury, exposure to loud noises, surgery in head and neck regions and other underlying medical conditions.

Normally, young children pick up and respond to auditory cues from their surroundings, including different sounds and tones of voice. By the age of one year, they may begin to imitate the sounds that parents make if their hearing is normal. Learning to speak is typically difficult for a person born deaf or became deaf at a young age. Learning to talk can be a long and difficult process. They may often never be able to speak because they have never heard normal sounds and speech.

The process is usually easier for people who have become deaf later during childhood or life after acquiring some speech skills. This is because they are familiar with sounds and speech. Hence, with appropriate training, such people would be able to regain their speech and language skills.

The Critical Period and Early Intervention

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) emphasizes that the first three years of life are crucial for language development. Early intervention is very beneficial in outcomes. For those born deaf or who become deaf at a very young age, this period presents significant challenges. However, early intervention with assistive devices and specialized therapies can greatly improve outcomes.

Strategies and Methods for Learning to Speak

A trained speech and language therapist works with people with hearing loss and helps them learn speech. Several strategies may be used to help learn speech. These strategies not only focus on teaching someone how to speak but also on listening and understanding what others are saying.

Speech training: This oral training focuses on teaching individuals how to produce various sounds, eventually stringing them into words and phrases. Instruction on volume control and tone of voice may also be included. A speech language pathologist often works to help people with hearing loss learn speech.
Auditory training: Auditory training presents listeners with various sounds, such as syllables, words, or phrases. The listeners are then taught ways to recognize and distinguish these different sounds from one another.
Lip reading: Using lip reading, someone with hearing loss can watch the movements of a person’s lips as they speak. According to the CDC, in good conditions, about 40% of English speech sounds can be seen on the lips. Many D/HH people become skilled at reading lips to understand spoken language. However, it's not perfect; it's estimated that only about 30% of English sounds can be seen on the lips.
Assistive devices: These devices help people with hearing loss to better perceive the sounds in their environment. Examples include hearing aids and cochlear implants. Assistive hearing devices such as hearing aids and cochlear or brainstem implants can help deaf people hear.

Read also: Universities for Deaf Students
- A hearing aid is a small removable electronic device that is worn in or behind the ear to improve hearing. Hearing aids can benefit those with moderate hearing to learn. A bone-anchored hearing aid is a type of hearing aid used in people who have conductive hearing loss and cannot benefit from a hearing aid. It is a surgically implanted device behind the ear. It allows the bone to transfer sound to a functioning cochlea (the inner ear) rather than via the middle ear, which happens in normal hearing.
- A cochlear implant is a type of assistive device that is surgical implanted in the ear. It can help those with severe or profound deafness. There is also an external portion that sits behind the ear. They work by directly stimulating the auditory nerve (nerve responsible for hearing) and amplifying sounds. These days, 80 percent of children born in the United States get a cochlear implant. Cochlear implant surgery may also be done for those who lost their hearing later in life. The outcome of cochlear implant surgery can vary. Children born deaf should undergo the surgery before the age of 6 years (the earlier the better) to get the best results. When done after the age of 6 years, they would be able to hear sounds but developing speech becomes difficult. When the cochlear implant is done early during childhood, most children often grow up to have normal speech and language. Children may undergo the surgery after 12 months of age. Adults with normal speech, who lost their hearing later in life also benefit from cochlear implant surgery. If the child has a very thin or absent auditory nerve, a cochlear implant will not help. In such cases, an auditory brainstem implant may be done. The implant is surgically implanted in the part of the brainstem that is responsible for hearing. The auditory nerve and other structures in the nerve are bypassed, and the brainy is directly stimulated.

The Role of Parents and Caregivers

It is also important that parents and caregivers take an active role in the process. Regardless of the strategy used, it’s vital that parents and caregivers take an active role as well. They can do this through facilitating and promoting the use of spoken language in the home and helping the recipient of training practice the skills they’re learning.

Challenges and Considerations

Even with training, it may still be difficult for people to understand the speech of a deaf person. For example, they may have difficulty using sounds that are softer or more difficult for them to hear. They may speak either too softly or too loudly. They may talk at a different pitch and sound different compared to a person with normal hearing.

When a D/HH person does speak, their speech may sound different, often called a "deaf accent" or "deaf speech." This is not a speech problem or a sign that they aren't smart. Instead, it is the natural and expected result of learning to speak without being able to hear everything clearly. Hearing people constantly listen to themselves and adjust their pitch, volume, and pronunciation by hearing their own voices.

Read also: Tone-Deafness and Singing

Beyond Spoken Language: Alternative Communication Methods

Not all deaf people choose to communicate using spoken language. In fact, there are other nonverbal ways in which they can communicate. One example that you may be familiar with is American Sign Language (ASL).

ASL is a language. It has its own set of rules and grammar, just like spoken languages. People who use ASL use hand shapes, gestures, and facial expressions or body language to communicate with others.

Because of these factors, an individual may choose to use ASL over spoken language, as learning spoken language is mostly for the benefit of hearing people.

The Bilingual-Bicultural (Bi-Bi) Approach

Today, the agreement among most educators and experts, including organizations like the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The focus has shifted toward "total communication" and empowering families to make informed choices based on what is best for their child. The choice to speak, to sign, or to use a combination of both is a personal one.

Assistive Technology for Communication

To make it easier for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community to still engage with people in their daily lives, there’s a range of assistive technology they can take advantage of.

Instant messaging. Even though most of us already use instant messaging in our day-to-day lives, they can be used for assistive purposes too.
Video chat.
Internet captioned telephone service. This is a tool that makes it possible to still have telephone conversations. Internet captioned telephone services provide real-time captions on a phone screen.
Text-to-speech software.
Alerting systems. When someone is unable to hear, school bells and alarms become useless.
Telephone relay services. This phone call device is one that doesn’t require an internet connection.
Video relay services. For deaf people who primarily communicate using American Sign Language, a video relay service can be useful.
Sign language translators.
Cochlear implants. In some instances, cochlear implants are an option. They’re implanted into the heads of people with complete deafness, allowing them to hear again to some degree.

Deaf Culture and Community

The deaf community also has concerns about the use of cochlear implants. This community is a group with a distinct cultural identity as well as shared language (ASL), social groups, and experiences. Some members of the deaf community are troubled by the perception that deafness is a problem that needs to be fixed. Others fear that the widespread use of cochlear implants may lead to a decline in ASL speakers, affecting deaf culture.

Tips for Effective Communication with Deaf Individuals

No matter who you’re interacting with, the most important thing to remember is that you should work together with the other person to create an accessible environment. Not all deaf and hard of hearing people prefer to communicate in the same way. Some might prefer to speak, some might prefer to sign, and some might prefer to write. Ask them how they want to proceed.

Wait until they look at you before you begin.
Wave your hand in their line of sight to get their attention.
If you know American Sign Language and you’re talking to a deaf or hard of hearing person who uses sign language, you should try to sign yourself.
Pause to acknowledge the change and state the new subject can be a big help when the topic of conversation changes.
Keep your mouth and eyes visible. Don’t cover your mouth with your hands. Lighting is an important factor in making sure the other person can see your face. If possible, try to communicate in bright spaces.
Speaking clearly and enunciating can help a deaf or hard of hearing person understand you. However, it does not mean shouting and speaking extremely slowly. Understanding speech is not always a volume problem.
Rephrasing often works better than repeating the same sentence over and over.

Language Acquisition in Deaf Children

Language acquisition is a natural process in which infants and children develop proficiency in the first language or languages that they are exposed to. The process of language acquisition is varied among deaf children. Deaf children born to deaf parents are typically exposed to a sign language at birth, and their language acquisition follows a typical developmental timeline. However, at least 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents who use a spoken language at home. Hearing loss prevents many deaf children from hearing spoken language to the degree necessary for language acquisition. For many deaf children, language acquisition is delayed until the time that they are exposed to a sign language or until they begin using amplification devices such as hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Sign languages are fully accessible to deaf children as they are visual, rather than aural, languages. Sign languages are natural languages with the same linguistic status as spoken languages. Like other languages, sign languages are much harder to learn when the child is past the critical age of development for language acquisition. Studies have found that children who learned sign language from birth understand much more than children who start learning sign language at an older age. Also, studies indicate that the younger a child is when learning sign language, the better their language outcomes are.

Bimodal Bilingual Language Acquisition

Some deaf children acquire both a sign language and a spoken language. This is called bimodal bilingual language acquisition. Bimodal bilingualism is common in hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs). One group of deaf children who experience bimodal bilingual language acquisition are deaf children with cochlear implants who have deaf parents. These children acquire sign language from birth and spoken language after implantation. Other deaf children who experience bimodal bilingual language acquisition are deaf children of hearing parents who have decided to pursue both spoken language and sign language. Some parents make the decision to pursue sign language while pursuing spoken language so as not to delay exposure to a fully accessible language, thereby starting the language acquisition process as early as possible.

Manually Coded English (MCE)

Manually coded English is any one of a number of different representations of the English language that uses manual signs to encode English words visually. Although MCE uses signs, it is not a language like ASL; it is an encoding of English that uses hand gestures to make English visible in a visual mode. Most types of MCE use signs borrowed or adapted from American Sign Language, but use English sentence order and grammatical construction. Numerous systems of manually encoded English have been proposed and used with greater or lesser success. Though there is limited evidence for its efficacy, some people have suggested using MCE or other visual representations of English as a way to support English language acquisition for deaf children. Because MCE systems are encodings of English which follow English word order and sentence structure, it is possible to sign MCE and speak English at the same time.

Learning American Sign Language

If you are a parent of a newly-identified child who is deaf or hard of hearing, you can request ASL instruction from your child’s early intervention system. Early intervention systems are designed to help your child develop in all areas. These systems also are designed to provide services to families so that families can support their child.

You can start learning ASL by attending a sign language class. Sign language classes can be found at community colleges, universities, libraries, churches, organizations/clubs of the deaf, and lots of other places. You can also expand your knowledge of ASL by practicing your signs with people who are deaf or hard of hearing and also know ASL. Generally, people who know ASL are patient about showing new signers how to sign different things, the correct way to sign something, and usually, they will slow down their signing so that you can understand them, too.

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