If deaf people can't hear sound, then how can they learn to read?

Question

My cousin is deaf. She and I have pretty much grown up together, since she is only about 8 months older. She is a very intelligent, college educated woman. I often think about her aquisition of language, and I can understand how she could pick up signing, but what about reading and sounding out unfamiliar words? I mean no disrespect to the deaf community, I have just always wondered.

Answer 1

When I first saw your question, I thought, "Huh? What a stupid question!"...but now I'm rethinking that. I think it depends to some extent on whether the person speaks or only signs. I say this because if they sign, I would imagine that their learning is not based on the "sounds" of words at all - it is strictly sight-based. But if they speak, then they would probably associate the "sounds" or the formations of the sounds with the phonemes in text.

Answer 2

Yes, "sounding-out" words is not the best way to learn to read when you are deaf, but that isn't the only way to gain literacy. We associate written words with the vocalizations of those words. Deaf people associate the written word with a sign.

The reason we need to "sound-out" words is because we already know the words as vocalizations before we learn the written version. Its the same with deaf children. They know the signs and then learn the written form.

Answer 3

This is based on the assumption that one can only learn to read by first hearing the word auditorially. Actually deaf people read the word first before learning how to speak it. The only way I can learn a new word (I'm deaf) is by first reading it and then learning how to speak it afterwards. My brain needs to see the letters involved first before it has some idea of how it is spoken. It gives me something concrete.

To teach us how to read a word before speaking it, all they have to do is show a picture of an object with the word below it in order to teach reading. I grew up in the oral method and was taught how to speak, lipread and listen with hearing aids. To teach me how to speak the sounds and its associated letters and words, they show it to me visually. To teach me how to speak "m", they would put my hand on the teacher's face/mouth to feel the vibrations of how it is produced and encourage me to copy it until I got it right. With the "p" sound, a feather is used in front of our mouths to try to make that puffing sound when saying "p".

It was not that hard. I mean deafness does not hinder our ability to learn language. You do not need sound in order to learn it. You can learn it via sight alone. Once you master the familiarity of how English is spoken through the familiarity of each sound that is used linguistically, then learning new words not having an idea of how it is pronounced can be learnt just by looking up the dictionary as it has the pronuncation next to the word.

Also once we have learnt how to lipread, and if the teacher wants to teach us something new to read, we first read it, then the teacher would mouth the words more clearly for us to lipread and also listen with our hearing aids to give us some idea of how it is spoken. We are asked to repeat to make sure we know how to pronounce it. If we mispronounce it, we are encouraged to repeat over and over until we get it just about right and are understood. It might have been slow at first around toddler to 2 years, but I'm sure after that it was no picnic speaking new words right away.

I hope I gave you some idea.

Answer 4

I'm not a deaf person..but I would imagine that they learn it much the way hearing people do...I don't sound out sentences to myself...I memorize the words..not the sounds.....it's all visual to me....in fact it may be easier..I've been learning mandarin for years and it would be a lot easier without having to pronounce the tones LOL.

Answer 5

It is hard but when I was learning to read years ago(I'm deaf too) my teacher showed me how her mouth looked with each letter and word. She also had me put my fingers to her lips as she said each word so I could feel the vibrations of the word being spoken.