2006 Volume 49 Issue 3 Pages 266-275
Communicating with hearing impaired children depends not only on the aural communication ability of the child, but of the conversation partner. In this study, we analyzed four different telephone conversations held with a 12-year-old boy with a profound hearing impairment. The conversations were between the boy and a Telephone Communication Training (TCT) teacher, his mother, and two female teachers (A and B) who teach physically and mentally handicapped children. The boy had received TCT.
The manner and content of the aural communication between the boy and each speaker was studied. In addition, the rate of appropriate responses from the boy was recorded. The speech of the TCT teacher appeared to be the easiest for the boy to understand, while that of teacher B was the most difficult. The TCT teacher's sentences consisted of four words or less. She intentionally made frequent use of communication strategy skills and avoided using words of agreement. On the other hand, the speech of teacher B was passive, and the teacher used long sentences and employed fewer strategy skills. In addition, the aural communication style of the child was also clearly affected by the conversational partner's manner of speaking. When what was said cannot be understood, communication strategy skills include asking again (Pardon?)”, requesting information (Could you speak slowly?), and reconfirmation.
It is important to use short sentences and communication strategy skills when communicating with hearing impaired children, and not simply ignore the child; this encourages the child to talk. By using many strategy skills, comprehensible conversation can be held. However, language training, such as TCT, appears to be necessary to develop the communication ability of hearing impaired children in both bottom-up processes, like hearing and pronunciation, as well as top-down processes, like thinking.
