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From: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Lipreading
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Date: 25 Jan 91 17:26:27 GMT
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Index Number: 13245

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Lipreading skills can be taught, yes. But theindividual being taught 
determines the degree and indeed the failure or success of theteaching. 
Now you take a born deaf person. This person will never really develop 
a fullmastery of the broad variety of phonetic properties inherit in 
English. Consequently, that person is not normally going to be such 
a good lipreader. Now frankly there are exceptions to this. I know 
at least one such person who is a direct contradiction of what I just 
said. However, she is a rarity. She is oneof those people who ha that 
special aptitude for learning languages. As you may know, some people 
seem to learn languages very easily, while others struggle to no end 
and practically their efforts are futile. I believe those few (and 
they are few compared to the general population of deaf people) who 
are extraordinary lipreaders, are people with that special aptitude 
for language. Theyhave that talent, just as some people have a talent 
for math or music whilethe rest of us poor souls just shake our heads 
and wonder how they do it.
 
I think that a deaf child or persons (should be the same thing though 
someparents might disagree about kids being people) should be allowed 
to have alanguage that is more readily mastered before having lipreading 
or anything else crammed down their throats (or eyes in this case). 
However, those who do display an aptitude for lipreading or speech 
training, should by all means received the highest possible focus in 
this area. The bottom line continues tobe that the MAJORITY of deaf 
people do not master English. And that majority won't unless they have 
a primary language to begin with, to use as a reference, to allow them 
to develop environmental awareness at a rate comparable tohearing kids. 
ASL is the logical answer for this primary language as it fits the 
needs of the deaf person. Itis not phonetic ( the deaf person cn't 
hear teh phonetics anyway or only marginally so) andit makes full use 
of the primary input instrument, namely the eye. Moreover, it provides 
a background for a structured language model and exposes the child 
to a means of easily understood communication to learn thos ethings 
most people simply take for granted. Hopefully, educators will recognize 
this fact and stop wasting so many deaf people's lives and times by 
stressing English to people who can't hear what is regarded by hearing 
people in many countries as thehardest language to learn and the most 
mixed up and warped one to boot.

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