Hard Of Hearing Essay

Hard-of-Hearing Students

Hard-of-hearing students comprise the majority of students with hearing loss enrolled in K-12 public education. They outnumber deaf students, generally performing better academically because they have less severe hearing loss. The needs of hard-of-hearing students in mainstream programs differ from those of deaf and hard-of-hearing students using American Sign Language. Hard-of-hearing students have cultural, social, and identity needs and feel excluded in the Hearing and Deaf Worlds. Hard-of-hearing students may withstand internal conflict while discovering American Sign Language and the Deaf community. The hard-of-hearing student struggling with cultural identity and feeling marginalized may lack a sense of belonging

Day-school instruction can be oral, signing, or a combination for deaf students. Oral schools focus on developing oral language, deploying residual learning with amplification, and other listening strategies without using or supporting American Sign Language. Signing schools focus on developing language skills using American Sign Language, not spoken language. In these schools, students can utilize spoken language while receiving speech therapy. Signing schools are more connected to Deaf Culture and the Deaf community than oral schools. According to Chimedza (1998), integration within a school setting involves placing students with disabilities in general education

The communication approach also evolved from the struggles of deaf and hard-of-hearing students to understand the spoken language when challenged to process the message content. Deaf students must be competent in their first language, which is most likely American Sign Language, before learning to read and write in their second language. If a deaf or hard-of-hearing student “does not have a language base, then learning a second language would be a spoken one, which may result in neither language mastered” (Paulston, 2001, p. 93). Deaf and hard-of-hearing students obtaining a spoken language as their second language for reading and writing also need exposure to the culture and spoken language they are learning, as American Sign Language does not have a written form. Deaf and hard-of-hearing students must integrate into the Deaf and Hearing cultural/social