View Content #27285

From https://acadeafic.org

Matt Hall, Wyatte Hall and Naomi Caselli write, "The ability to use language is important for all people. For most people, language acquisition happens naturally and automatically in early childhood. By age 5, most children have basically mastered all major parts of their native language(s), without needing formal instruction or therapy. This is true for children who have effortless access to language in their everyday environment such as hearing children, and also for Deaf children who are raised by proficient signers. Unfortunately, the situation is different for a majority of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children born into families that use primarily spoken languages and do not know a sign language. For them, language acquisition is often delayed and/or incomplete by age 5, which means that these DHH children, in contrast to most other peers, enter school without the language foundation that will be required for success in the classroom and beyond.

"Because of this, mastery of at least one language – spoken or signed – needs to be an urgent priority for DHH children. Unfortunately, the current systems that are in place to support DHH children’s development don’t usually frame things this way. Instead, these systems typically privilege the acquisition of a spoken language. This can happen explicitly (e.g. professionals specifically dissuading parents from using other languages and forms of communication other than spoken language) or implicitly (e.g. parents having a default preference for their child to share their home language, which is almost always spoken). 

"In any case, the result is typically that early intervention with DHH usually focuses on the acquisition of a specific language (usually English), rather than at least one language (which would include spoken languages like English and Spanish, but also natural sign languages like American Sign Language – ASL)."

Read the full essay or watch a video in ASL at https://acadeafic.org/2019/07/11/deaf-children-need-language/