2012 Volume 55 Issue 2 Pages 118-125
A survey was conducted in elementary school students wearing cochlear implants in special-needs classes for the hard-of-hearing, to examine the current status of support provided for them and the problems that they might face in school life.
The subjects were six students wearing cochlear implants, their parents, and their teachers in charge of the class for the hard-of-hearing. I interviewed the parents and the teachers to inquire about the children's behavior in school, educational considerations and support, before visiting the classrooms to observe these items.
Four students were using FM hearing systems, and the remaining two received support through sign language interpretation. Different types of support were provided for each of the four students using FM hearing systems: “Write-down”, “Sign language interpretation or write-down”, “Verbal support only when the student could not understand”. Even children with a relatively good hearing ability sometimes had difficulty understanding students' conversations. Therefore, consideration should be given to the way one talks to hearing-impaired students, and support needs to be provided to promote communication among them. “Unable to understand what they heard”, “having a limited vocabulary”, and other problems attributed to insufficient language skill were also cited, which suggests that speech therapy should be provided on a continuing basis to these children.
