Teaching English to Hearing Impaired Students

I. Introduction

The task of teaching a foreign language to a hearing impaired student seems

impossible. When we teach our students English as a foreign language we typically
rely on oral teaching methods. Not only the material is delivered orally but students
are tested by how they comprehend listening materials or how they respond orally
during the lessons.
Teaching English to hearing impaired students can be a real challenge. English
teachers from special schools must be constantly searching for materials that meet
the special needs of the students.
Hearing impaired students have phonological difficulties, which affect not only
their speaking and listening skills but they influence their way of retaining and
expressing information, their organizational skills, their memory.
The aim of this paper is to point out the teaching strategies and assessment
strategies used during the English classes, that can help these students become
aware of the culture of English speaking countries and also focus on the development
of their reading and writing skills in the foreign language.

II. Teaching strategies

There is a range of inclusive teaching strategies that can assist all students to
learn but there are some specific strategies that are useful in teaching a group which
includes students with hearing impairment:
Encourage students with hearing impairment to seat themselves toward the
front of the classroom where they will have an unobstructed line of vision.
This is particularly important if the student is using sign language, lip-
reading, relying on visual clues or using a hearing aid which has a limited
range.
Ensure that any background noise is minimised.
 Repeat clearly any questions asked by students in the lecture or class before
giving a response.
Do not speak when facing the blackboard. Be aware that hands, books or
microphones in front of your face can add to the difficulties of lip-readers.
Students who lip-read cannot function in darkened rooms. You may need to
adjust the lighting in your teaching environment.
Allow students to record lectures or, preferably, make copies of your lecture
notes available. Flexible delivery of teaching materials via electronic media is
also particularly helpful for students who have difficulty accessing information
in the usual ways. For deaf students new technology and the internet in
particular, can be used to bridge many gaps.
During the English lessons teacher must adjust the methods and strategies
according to the students specific characteristics and individual needs.
When we start teaching a foreign language we always bear in mind the
different components of learning a foreign language receptive skills,
productive skills and the cultural awareness the new language opens.
For hearing impaired students the acquiring of receptive and productive skills
must focus on reading and writing rather than on listening and speaking.
The teacher must constantly insist on obtaining regular feedback from the
students in order to check their level of understanding and to adjust the pace.
Since the amount of information to be processed by language learners is high in the
language classroom, and considering the limitations of teaching English to people
with hearing impairments different memory strategies can be applied in order to
stimulate the learning process and especially for dealing with new words:
Studying the word with a pictorial representation of its meaning;
Connecting the new word to a previous personal experience;
Grouping words according to a topic;
Grouping words together within a storyline;
Studying the spelling of the word. People with hearing impairments have
highly developed visual memory;
Connecting the word with its synonyms and antonyms;
Using semantic maps of new words.

III. Assessment strategies for hearing impaired students

 Students performance can be tested and evaluated mainly through written tests
in which the most common types of exercises are included. For example, a multiple
choice reading comprehension, judging whether a sentence is true or false with the
help of a visual support, open-ended questions, matching exercises; gap filling,
giving synonyms or antonyms, word-formation patterns; using the correct form of
the verb (affirmative, negative, interrogative) within one and the same tense;
answering general and specific questions about themselves, describing their families
and homes, etc.
The assessment helps us diagnose the overall performance of our students,
identify their strengths and make conclusions for future improvement of the English
lessons.
In theory good assessment means:
Measuring meaningful learning outcomes in a fair, reliable and accurate way;
Informing the teacher about student performance and how students are
interpreting course experiences;
Meaningful feedback to the learner;
Learning experience.
The assessment during the English lessons with hearing impaired students is
based on writing an individual paper in class, class participation, homework
assignments usually multiple choice, true or false questions, short answers, gap
filling exercises which require correct answers. They are easy to be explained
because there are true answers. Teachers must pay special attention to the
students mistakes since they provide feedback for us and teachers can judge the
effectiveness of the teaching materials and adjust them to the special needs of the
students. Furthermore, the mistakes analysis is essential because it helps us
choose the most suitable approach and the most effective learning techniques and
strategies to enhance trainees language knowledge during the English lessons.
For the students self-assessment, teachers can use written quizzes and
interactive exercises which provide a quick opportunity for our students to check
their understanding and to measure their learning progress on their own. Developing
their self-assessment skills enable them to become capable of assessing their peers
and increase their self-confidence.
During the English classes, teachers must offer the students the freedom to work
on their own doing online language exercises. Thus students are encouraged to
search for other ways of learning and self-assessing their work.
IV.Conclusions

Teaching English to hearing impaired students is a complex process and teachers

must always adjust the content of the lessons according to the needs of the
students, especially when the curriculum for the special schools is the same with the
curriculum for all the schools.
It is a real challenge to teach English to hearing impaired students, but at the
end of any lesson the teachers work is rewarded by the students interest for
English and sometimes by their real progress.
The strategies used for teaching English to hearing impaired students turn
them into autonomous learners having insights into their learning styles and
strategies, taking an active approach to the learning task at hand [Lown].