Is Cued Speech considered an oral method, a manual method or both?

Question

When talking about options for using ASL vs. an oral method for a deaf child.

Answer 1

Cued speech is considered a visual communication system. Because the purpose of oral deaf ed is to try to get the student to use as much of their auditory skills as possible, cued speech can be regarded as too 'manual' (but not all oral deaf educators feel this way). I've seen it help many kids with hearing impairments that are oral. I would say it's a mixed bag, regarding to using it with manual or oral methods. Check out this website for more information:

http://www.cuedspeech.com/whatis.asp

Answer 2

A manual method.

From Wikipedia:
Cued Speech is a system of communication used with and among deaf or hard of hearing people. It makes traditionally spoken languages accessible by using a small number of handshapes (representing consonants) in different locations near the mouth (representing vowels), as a supplement to lipreading. It is now used with people with a variety of language, speech, communication and learning needs.

Cued Speech was invented in 1965-66 by Dr. R. Orin Cornett at Gallaudet College. After discovering that children with prelingual and profound hearing impairments typically have poor reading comprehension, he developed the system with the aim of improving the reading abilities of such children through better comprehension of the phonemes of spoken English. As many sounds look identical on the lips (such as /p/ and /b/), the hand signals introduce a visual contrast in place of the formerly acoustic contrast. Cued Speech may also help people hearing incomplete or distorted sound — according to the National Cued Speech Association at cuedspeech.org, "cochlear implants and Cued Speech are powerful partners".


Good Luck....