Whenever we hear the term ‘sign language’, traffic-signs are first to come to our minds. But when it is explained that this sign language is different from the traffic-signs and is used by persons with hearing impairment, chances are that the confusion will still not wither away. Following are the two most common misconceptions which we will think of during our first contact with a child or person with hearing impairment.
1) So what if they cannot listen to what I am saying! I will simply write my question!
The most common mistake you will probably or possibly make when coming into contact with a person/child with hearing impairment is to think that both of you can communicate through writing. But after you have written your question on a paper, chances are that that person/child won’t understand what you have written. He will either get confused or simply doesn’t know what those words are.
In my blog, A technique to teach a deaf student, uploaded on Thursday, March 31, 2011, the ability or inability of the child with hearing impairment to spell the words was discussed and emphasis was made on making them practise.
So, why a person with hearing impairment cannot retain or confuse letters of the written words? The answer can be sought and found in the basic human psychology. Chapter 8: Memeory from Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology twelfth edition, shares with us about the encoding processes for the short-term memory, which includes visual, acoustic and semantic. It further says that all three are important but acoustic are more favoured as compared to others and because of this we will try to keep the information active by simply rehearsing.
Rehearsal is regarded as something very important when it comes to retaining information related to digits, letters and words. Therefore, when remembering a phone number, at least before the advent of the cellular phones, we will rehearse the sounds of the names of the digits while dialing the number.
Let us consider an experiment from the very same chapter in support of the acoustic encoding. Subjects (with normal hearing ability) were showed a list of six consonants. After removing them, subjects were asked to write all six letters in order. Even though, the entire process was of only one or two seconds, errors were made by the subjects. The incorrect letters were similar in sound to the correct one. For example, RLBKSJ was written as RLTKSJ and T was replaced with B because of their similar sounding. The hypothesis was that subjects who encoded each letter acoustically (bee for B), sometimes lost part of this code (only the ee part of the sound remained), and then responded with a letter (tee) that was consistent with the remaining part of the code. This very hypothesis also explained that it is difficult to recall acoustically similar items, such as TBCGVE.
We can use visual representation in case of nonverbal items such as pictures but acoustic code will be the dominate form of encoding when it comes to words and digits. In case of a child with hearing impairment, there is no possibility of him learning or encoding through acoustics. In fact, his primary resource is the visual encoding. So, using visual encoding to encode something that required acoustic encoding creates hurdles for both, the teacher and the student. He will probably write Teet instead of Tree. Therefore, the child with hearing impairment is deprived from one of the crucial modes of remembering and will find it very difficult to read what is written on the paper.
However, children and persons with hearing impairment will communicate through writing and they are more active when it comes to typing cellular phone messages. The only way to work here is to make the child practise. This is the job of the teacher and the parents to focus on the writing skills of that child and give it special and extra attention.
2) Isn’t sign language a universal language?
Sign language is a universal language! This is what many people think but it is not true. We will naturally assume that a person with hearing impairment, who is unable to speak*, is using a sign language as a mode of communication. We will think that by doing so, that person had not only avoided the complications of accents and pronunciations but he is able to communicate with anyone who knows sign language. Even on our part, just by learning few signs we should not expect to be able to communicate with any child/person with hearing impairment.
The truth is that there was never a sign language. In fact, there are sign languages. A sign language of one country will most probably vary from that of the other. Sometimes, even the signs of two schools, in the same city, teaching the same curriculum to the child with hearing impairment, will differ greatly form each other.
The first lesson that you will be taught is to learn Alphabets. The technique used is called the Fingerspelling or Manual Alphabets. Following are some modes of Fingerspelling used in different countries.**
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| Hand Spelling-Hand British System |
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| Hand Spelling- Hanyu Pinyin |
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| Hand Spelling- Japanese |
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| Hand Spelling- American English |
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| Hand Spelling- Russian |
In Pakistan, we will start by teaching our students the method of American and British Fingerspellings and then they are taught Pakistan’s Urdu Fingerspellings.***
There is also a common practise of adopting signs which can easily be related and understood.
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| (left) The Chinese sign for ‘and/&.’ (right) The American sign for ‘and/&.’ |
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| (left) Sign used in Pakistan for Fulfill. (right) Sign used in Chinese for Accomplish. |
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| (right) The original sign for ‘J’ in American sign Language (left) The Pakistani sign for ج (Jeem) in Urdu. |
The next step is to teach our students counting in sign language. Adan R. Penilla, II and Angela Lee Taylor, in their article, “Counting on Numbers in American Sign Language” explain that there are 27 different ways through which we can count and they discussed Cardinal (counting) and Ordinal (ordering) numbers. Following are the American (cardinal and ordinal), Chinese and Pakistani counting in sign language. ****
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| Counting in American (cardinal) sign language |
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| Counting in American (cardinal) sign language |
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| Counting in American (cardinal) sign language |
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| Counting in American (ordinal) sign language |
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| Counting in Chinese[Han-Yu, Pin-yin] sign language. These signs are used by everyone in their daily routine life. |
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| Sings taught for counting in Pakistan. |
Signs are always changing and new ones can be replaced by the old ones. New signs can be adopted and coined. In Pakistan, this kind of effort was also seen in Islamabad by NISE (National Institute of Special Needs Education) and PSL related to the syllabus of middle school from, July 11th to July 16th, 2011. In case of Pakistan, we will try to remain as close as possible to the standard and signs approved by the government of Pakistan but to communicate, we just have to make an effort and within a very small spam of time we will be communicating to that child irrespective of the country or school’s sign language manual he is using. The only difficult thing is to establish your first contact and the rest, like flowers of spring, will come naturally.
* A child with hearing impairment can learn to speak if option of an auditory-oral education to hearing –impaired is explored like the one offered by Auditory/Oral School of New York.
** the scans are from 手语基础 (book) published by 人民教育出版社 (1999). (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpasden/sets/72157600040021901/)
*** the scans are from Pakistan Sign Language (book) published by TRUST’47 (1989).
**** the scans are fromLearn Chinese With Me (Book) published by Peoples’s education and Article: Counting on Numbers in American Sign Language, By Adan R. Penilla, II and Angela Lee Taylor (http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/counting-on-numbers-in-sign-language.html).
