The handbook, in the format of an open letter to parents of hearing impaired (HI) children, responds to surveyed parent needs on parent concerns, books, resources, parent rights, and effectiveness of the aural/oral education method. Following identification of four major parent concerns such as increased awareness of the importance of the medical…

Undergraduates (N = 96), divided into 12 groups, first engaged in self-disclosure and consensus exercises and then were required to exchange personal feedback. Feedback was positive or negative in nature and delivered publicly or anonymously. Positive feedback was rated as more credible and produced greater cohesiveness. (Author)

A practitioner reflects on 30 years of work with parents of hearing-impaired children. She describes her own personal experiences, education, and professional development working directly with parents and babies, as a university professor, and as a school principal. She stresses the importance of parental participation for effective oral…

Principles of using Cued Speech with deaf children are discussed. Review of the literature suggests that Cued Speech has been unjustly criticized. Cued speech should be seen not as a method of communication, but rather as an intervention tool with application for both aural-oral and Total Communication programs. (Author/DB)

Tests 64 deaf students from oral and total communication settings to examine whether a deficiency in spontaneous strategy use accounts for their verbal short-term memory performance. Spontaneous rehearsal of both deaf samples seemed to emerge later than the hearing sample's and was inefficiently implemented and less effective in mediating recall…

This paper discusses the issue of oral versus sign language in educating people who are deaf, focusing on Hungary, which currently emphasizes oralism and discourages the use of Hungarian Sign Language. Teachers of people who are hearing impaired are trained to use the acoustic channel and view signing as an obstacle to the integration of deaf…

Two studies of the communication skills of orally educated, deaf elementary school children are reported. Severely and profoundly deaf children performed as well as hearing children on limited referential communication. Differences in performance were found among deaf children from three schools with different linguistic philosophies. (Author/DB)

Deaf children and hearing mothers using oral only communication spent significantly less time engaged in interaction than did mothers and children in the two groups using sign language or the hearing group. The major finding affirms the similarities between the deaf mother/deaf child pairs and the hearing mother/hearing child pairs. (Author)

Examines the differential mode usage (speech, vocalize, gesture and sign) of profoundly deaf preschoolers and their hearing mothers as a function of their level of communicative competence and method of communication. Relates simultaneous use of modes to higher communicative competence and specific pragmatic types of communication. (Author/MES)

Reports that when hearing-impaired children imitated nonsense words containing bilabial consonants, the rank order of correct responses and total choices was "b" (highest), "m," and "p" (lowest). The data are discussed in terms of auditory-visual perceptions of the hearing impaired and the order of the sounds in normal-hearing children. (Author/RL)

Fourteen orally communicating children (ages 7-14) with hearing impairments were able to provide story retellings following repeated reading of two stories and role-playing of one of the stories. Results showed the children were capable of narrative production and that sophistication and complexity of retellings improved with role-play. (Contains…

The article compares approaches to mainstreaming of students with hearing impairments in Spain and the United States. Discussed are mainstreaming as a matter of law, the importance of deaf role models, school placement in the U.S., integration practices in Spain, and the prevalence of oralism in Spain. (DB)

The study with 23 severely hearing impaired adolescents found that subjects using cued speech performed highest on Piagetian conservation problems, the oral-aural group performed better on linguistically-sensitive metaphor problems. Differences were not, however, statistically significant. (Author/DB)

The National Aural Group was formed to promote the use of an auditory-oral approach with families of very young children with hearing impairments in the United Kingdom. The group's activities include summer school programs to educate parents, follow-up weekend sessions, support networks and helplines, and fact sheets and booklets. (JDD)

This article reviews literature regarding service delivery of oral communication skills training to deaf students. To assist school boards to create more cost-effective means of meeting the oral communication needs of deaf students, alternative models of intervention are identified. Seeking an ideal arrangement, principles and characteristics to…