BEWARE of the “Critical Language Period” Defense

At a D/HH conference this week, speakers were discussing the “Critical Language Development Period” during which language appears to develop naturally and with little effort by the child or family. To illustrate the urgency of capitalizing on this developmental period, the presenters included a dramatic graphic of a digital alarm clock. In bold red letters, the display on the clock blared: TOO LATE.

My hackles went up immediately. Too often I have heard professionals in Deaf Ed use the “critical period” as a reason for LOWERING EXPECTATIONS and DECREASING SERVICES for students who have passed whatever age is considered to be “the End” of that precious “Period”.  Consider an 8-year old child whose family chose for her to learn spoken language. The child’s teacher asks the SLP why there are no specific articulation or syntax goals in the IEP, and the SLP said, “She has passed the critical language period.”

NO!

These students have entered a “Period” in which they need MORE SERVICES and they need families and professionals to WORK HARDER, not give up. LANGUAGE practice is now more CRITICAL. PERIOD.

If a family has chosen spoken language for their child’s communication, I can offer guidance, options and research. But I cannot ignore the family’s choice. Period. My obligation is to do my best to provide that child with the best possible outcome, given the choice made by the family.

Because, maybe, regardless of what the research says, and what the theories propose, it really is true that “When you’ve seen one deaf child, you’ve seen one deaf child.”

Why You Should Consider “I Don’t Know” as a Helpful Answer

I recently rewatched Rick Lavoie’s F.A.T. City video. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you watch it — on a regular basis.

Among numerous bits of teaching wisdom he imparts, Lavoie advises teachers not to accept “I don’t know” as an answer because it gives students permission not to answer.

With respect to Mr. Lavoie, I haven’t noticed that effect in my classes over the years. At some point, I learned that “I don’t know” can be helpful to the teacher.

Teacher Challenge: Processing Time

One of the challenges of students who are deaf, using spoken language, is the need for more time to process language, including a teacher’s questions. Here’s a common exchange between teacher and student.

1. Teacher asks a question.
2. Teacher waits for student to respond.
3. Teacher continues to wait, allowing extra time for student to process the question.
4. Ultra-patient teacher restates the question and waits again.

This interaction can feel a lot like a game of chicken: each person waiting for the other to end the suspense.  It often ends with the student giving an incorrect answer and feeling defeated.

 

If, after truly ‘looking for’ an answer,  students are allowed to respond with “I don’t know,” then the teacher can choose how to proceed with less and frustration and less time lost.

How do you feel about “I don’t know,” as a student response? 

P.S. Here is a link to the Rick Lavoie F.A.T. City video.

 

Language and Deafness: Language vs. Speech

In IQ and Deafness  I discussed the assumptions about someone’s intelligence that we make  based on a person’s speech and language. I named four characteristics that can lead others to misjudge someone’s intelligence.

One of these characteristics is imperfect speech, discussed in Speech and Deafness.

Another effect of deafness that can cause us to make incorrect assumptions is imperfect language.

I will use 2 posts to discuss why those who are deaf sometimes have irregular language. You may also want to read the short post HOW DID YOU LEARN LANGUAGE?

Language & Deafness 1: LANGUAGE vs. SPEECH (this post)

Language & Deafness 2: WHY IS LANGUGAGE DIFFICULT FOR D/HH Students?

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Language & Deafness 1: WHAT IS LANGUAGE ?

Sidebar: SPEECH vs LANGUAGE

When we learned in school that nouns and verbs are “Parts of Speech”, that was technically incorrect. Nouns are verbs are really parts of language.

Speech is

• the sounds that we make when we talk. The word cat has three sounds: /k/ /a/ and /t/.

Language is:

• knowing what words means (vocabulary)
• knowing how to put those words together (grammar)

Note: This is a very oversimplified definition of language. People have been discussing and writing books on the subject for thousands of years. There’s a lot more to say about language!

Big Question: WHAT IS LANGUAGE ?

We have said that language has two main components: vocabulary and grammar.

Language Component 1: VOCABULARY  – NAMES for ITEMS, ACTIONS & IDEAS

Here are some words:   dog – boy – tiger – chased – the – and

To share an idea using these words, we first must know what they mean.

The nouns (dog, boy, tiger) and verb (chased) are easy to learn because we can see examples of them and learn what they mean.

Challenge: explain the meaning of  the  and  and. These are a couple of the words often omitted or misused by D/HH language learners. And think about it: often they can be omitted from a sentence without changing its meaning.

Commonly cited vocabulary statistics: 

• a 6-year-old child uses a 2,500-word vocabulary 
• the same 6-year-old understands 20,000 words 
• a 12-year-old child understands about 50,000 words.

Language Component 2:  GRAMMAR – HOW WE PUT WORDS TOGETHER

We all spent 12 years of school learning (among other things) the rules of language. But really, by the time we were 6 years old, we knew the most important rules about how to put words together. You learned these rules by listening to people talk. But language development is much more complex. So much so that scientists don’t yet agree on how it happens.             http://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html

Let’s use our familiar set of words to look at some of the most basic language rules.

dog     boy     tiger     chased     the     and

If I use these words to make a sentence for you, you could create a mental picture that should be a fairly accurate representation of my idea.

I could say

       The dog and the boy chased the tiger.     Or, I could say

The dog and tiger chased the boy.       Or

The boy and tiger chased the dog.

Each of these sentences creates a different picture. The sentences have a different meaning, even though they use the same six words.

It seems simple.

Rule #1: the order of the words changes the meaning of the sentence.

You know who is chasing and who is being chased in each sentence. That’s because you know the sub-rule: the first noun is the person or thing that is doing the action.

Let’s look again at our first rule: the order of the words changes the meaning of the sentence

Using that rule, these two sentences should have different meanings because the words are in different order.

The dog and the boy chased the tiger.

The boy and the dog chased the tiger.

Do they have different meanings? No.

Why? Because there’s another rule.

Rule #2: The order of the words DOESN’T affect the meaning of the sentence IF two words are joined by  and .

But now consider this pair of sentences,which adds 2 words.

                                      The tiger chased the dog.

                                 The tiger was chased by the dog.

The word order is the same, but the chaser and chase-ee have changed parts.

Sentences that use passive voice, like the last example above, are notoriously difficult for language learners.

Rule #3: There are many exceptions to rule #1.

But then there are …. IDIOMS

Idioms are phrases that don’t mean what their words say.

Type 1 Idiom – Colorful phrases

Here’s one popular idiom:    It’s raining cats and dogs!  We just have to explain this meaning to language learners. And they have to memorize it.

Type 2 Idiom – Multiple meanings

There are also more subtle idioms. Let’s go back to our dog, boy and tiger.

Dog says, “Tiger is after me!” That sentence can mean two entirely different things.

Boy: Dog, why are you running?                      Dog:Tiger is after me!

Boy: Dog, whose turn is it after yours?          Dog: Tiger is after me.

Type 3 Idiom – I-don’t-know-why-we-say-this.

Why do we say, “The alarm went off” when an alarm turns on?

There must be more of these puzzlements. Please share in the comments!

Click here for Language & Deafness 2: WHY IS LANGUAGE DIFFICULT for D/HH Students?

 

 

Speech and Deafness

In IQ & Deafness we discussed the assumptions we make about intelligence based on a person’s speech and language. I named four characteristics of students who are deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) that can lead others to misjudge their intelligence. The first of these characteristics was imperfect speech. Other features include imperfect language.

This man has perfect diction, so he’s obviously smart.

Proposition:

We unconsciously make judgments about the intelligence of an individual based on the characteristics of their speech.

Think about the actors who played the aristocracy  in the TV series Downtown Abbey – they all had perfect speech – each word pronounced carefully and precisely.

Now think about movies that have bumbling sidekick bad guys who talk with thick tongues and mispronounce words right and left.

As soon as they open their mouths, you know these guys are idiots.

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WHAT Exactly IS SPEECH? 

“Speech” refers to the sounds that make up our words. A common baby’s first word, “Momma,” has three sounds: mm, ah, and uh.

                             m + ah + m + uh  =    Momma!

Speech is NOT making sentences, using good grammar or knowing Nouns vs. Verbs.

Stated simply:

SPEECH is using the parts of your mouth  to make sounds. 

How Did You Learn to Speak?

Who taught you to talk? The answer is (if you had typical development) “no one”.

Human brains are programmed to learn to talk just BY LISTENING to adults talk. That’s it. The typical baby in a typical environment will learn to talk without any help.

HERE’S HOW WE LEARN TO TALK

• A baby listens to speech and imitate the sounds he hears — again and again.
• For months, he listens and babbles, listens and babbles.
• While babbling, he is listening to himself and refining his sounds, trying to match them to the sounds he hears from others.
• He also hears the melodic patterns of our speech and copies them when babbling. (This is adorable to hear.)
• By age 6, the sounds and melodic patterns he hears from himself match what he hears from others.

WHY IS DEAF SPEECH SOMETIMES IMPERFECT?

A baby who is born with a significant hearing loss doesn’t hear these sounds until he receives a hearing aid or cochlear implant. And even then, he is hearing the sounds imperfectly through man-made devices.

Imperfect sound going into the ear makes it more likely that imperfect sounds will come out of the mouth.

SLI = SLO Speech/Language In = Speech/Language Out

Even with hearing aids and implants some sounds are difficult to hear. These are the sounds often left out of the speech of someone who is deaf. He doesn’t say what he doesn’t hear.

Even after a child learns to make the sounds of our language, he is often unaware when they are used because he isn’t hearing them. A common example is s at the end of words.

The speech problem becomes more complicated when we think about the child hearing his own speech. When a child fails to include the s in the word cats, he is unaware of the omission because he hears himself speak in basically the same way he hears us – imperfectly. When you and I get to the end of the word cat, we know we haven’t heard the s yet, so we add it. So the production of those tough sounds must become a conscious act, and maybe eventually deeply ingrained habit.

HOW DO CHILDREN WHO ARE DEAF LEARN TO TALK?

A child who is D/HH  needs to be directly taught how to make the sounds of their language. He learns where to place his tongue, what shape his lips should make, whether or not to add his voice, and many other variables.

It’s more complicated than you think

Consider tongue placement: /t/  vs. /k/  

• The /t/ sound brings the tongue up just behind the teeth.
• The /k/ sound brings the tongue up at the back of the throat.

A diagram showing the places consonant sounds are produced. Notice that m, n, ng use more than one part of our mouth/nasal passage.

diagram from http://www.tuninst.net/PHONET-UNIL/text/IPA.htm

Is your voice on or off?  /f/  vs  /v/ 

• When we make the /f/ sound and the /v/ sound, our tongue is in the same place
• but for /f/, we don’t use our voice, and for /v/ we do

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When you consider all the challenges a student who is deaf overcomes to learn to talk, can you honestly question his intelligence?

 

IQ and Deafness

Hearing loss is often said to be an invisible disability. When we pass an individual who is deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) on the street, we probably would not know he was deaf.

Unfortunately, when we do interact with someone who is deaf, we may notice some traits that lead us to believe the person we are talking with has an intellectual disability (abbreviated ID) or “low IQ” .

In reality, hearing loss is A CHALLENGE of HEARING,

NOT a problem with THINKING. 

Nevertheless, when we are talking with a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, our misunderstanding of her challenges can lead us to misjudge her intelligence.

Speech and Deafness and Language and Deafness LINK look at why individuals who are deaf have difficulty with speech and language, sometimes even into adulthood.