Hints on ESL/EFL for deaf/HoH kids
December 19, 2019 5:10 AM   Subscribe

I am helping out some with teaching/tutoring English at an afterschool space for the deaf, mostly 7th through 10th graders, in Japan. If you are deaf/HoH or have family/friends who are, what effective ways have you found to study a foreign language?

The kids I help with cover a fairly wide range of hearing level, academic ability, and motivation; I see them anything from once to three times a week, in a fairly informal context. What I want to do is help them feel more confident about the English they need to know for school/exams (at whatever level suits them), and/or be able to enjoy communicating one way or another in English, especially so as to eventually be able to make connections with deaf people outside Japan.
(If it matters, I am fluent in Japanese and have a novice level of Japanese Sign Language (although no ASL, sadly), so we get by total-communication style with speech, signing, writing, and other JSL-fluent instructors helping out (Japanese-born).)

The Japanese system of English education is deeply, deeply flawed and is doing them no favors; their teachers are obviously trying hard, but it boils down to "memorize everything visually and spit it back," which is tiring, boring, and extremely difficult. If you have experience with studying a foreign language as a deaf/HoH person, what have you found that works? Any suggestions, large- or small-scale, welcome. Many thanks.
posted by huimangm to Education (4 answers total)
 
Cannot speak for Deaf students, but as a HOH language learner: Focus on building listening comprehension via watching news broadcasts and in-person conversations where you can see faces. Probably most of your HOH students are lip-reading either consciously or unconsciously, so they will need to learn to match the movements of a speaker's face with the sounds they hear, and if they're doing it unconsciously they won't know how to learn this intentionally. If you can get video of people with different accents, that may help. I'm HOH (passing as fully hearing), speak native English, and I can barely understand southerners in the US - I need to watch their face closely.

When you are speaking to them to practice listening comprehension, try to avoid overly enunciating your words by using exaggerated mouth / tongue movements. You'll get in the way of building that pattern recognition. Conversely, for speaking, think really hard about what your tongue is doing inside of your mouth to make a certain sound, to see if you can communicate that. They may not be able to "hear" a certain sound, but they can learn what a certain sound "feels" like and memorize that instead. Talking to a speech therapist, if you have one available, might give you some insight into how to teach/communicate that.

Using audio recordings will probably frustrate them tremendously. I had to drop out of my language classes in college because the curriculum relied heavily on transcribing audio recordings for homework and I couldn't do it. I was able to do fine with the 12 years of instruction I had until then because it was based on reading, writing, and listening/speaking in person, but without a visual (written or face) I was stuck.
posted by ProtoStar at 6:28 AM on December 19, 2019


As a parent of a Deaf child, I'm really against people who have no educational background on something teaching my child - it's really common and teaching Deaf children isn't a charity. They need teachers with a strong background on a topic and the skills to teach it, as much as and probably even more than hearing children. I appreciate that you are volunteering, but please learn JSL first, then go back to the classroom. People wonder why Deaf children struggle in school, and if their educators are not *educated* on how to teach them, or what is being taught...then that is your answer.

In regards, to your actual question on how to teach English to Deaf children. You should probably first learn about how to teach Deaf children - which you can start here . Deaf schools in America do teach foreign languages, so you should connect directly to them once you are ready, to get advice directly from educators experienced and trained in this topic.

I just want to also emphasize what ProtoStar posted above: Using audio recordings will probably frustrate them tremendously. I had to drop out of my language classes in college because the curriculum relied heavily on transcribing audio recordings for homework and I couldn't do it.

This is an unfortunate reality when people who are unprepared to teach Deaf children do so badly.
posted by Toddles at 7:01 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


I have a friend who is an educator in a Deaf and HOH school in the US and focuses on children who are English Language Learners.

As others have indicated, this is a specialist expertise and not something one can do casually.
posted by k8t at 7:12 AM on December 19, 2019 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thank you all for sharing various thoughtful and helpful perspectives.
posted by huimangm at 2:55 AM on December 21, 2019


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