Ravin Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 I had some customers come in to my store last night and make a nuisance of themselves. The nuisance was because they were complaining about the price of a swimsuit, and trying to talk us down to the price they'd seen in a store in another city, trying to argue that our company's written policy of giving the correct, low price means we have to match other stores--which is not the case, prices vary by area, it's only WITHIN a store if the shelf price and bar code don't match or to match a printed circular ad that we can change the price. Anyway, there were three of them, and they were college-aged (probably students, we have a big university here). None of them spoke a word aloud, and when I tried to speak slowly and clearly in hopes that they could read my lips, they just made it clear they were deaf and didn't understand me. I had to carry on a conversation with them via notes jotted on a piece of paper (my pen, and a piece of receipt tape). They spoke in sign language with each other. I've communicated this way with a deaf person before; most notably with a young woman I met on a train once in Japan--she was fluent in written English and Italian and read lips in Japanese as well as signing in a couple of different sign languages. She carried a notepad and pen to facilitate conversations when she had difficulty reading someone's lips. My question is, is it common these days for young deaf people to be taught only sign language and no speech or lip-reading? I know there is a school of thought in deaf education that calls for only lip-reading/speech and mainstreaming, and another that calls for using sign language as well, but...is sign-only still done much? And, if someone only communicates in sign and writing, why wouldn't he or she carry a note pad or something to facilitate what must be a relatively frequent need for quick written conversation? Was this guy just yanking my chain by making communication more difficult in addition to arguing over the price of the swimsuit, or what? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joannqn Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 I don't think he was trying to make it more difficult on purpose. I personally haven't observed a deaf person carrying around a pad of paper. Every time I've needed to communicate via writing, we've had to track down paper and pen. I don't believe lip reading is very common. Even when it is known and used, only 30-40% of English speech can be distinguished through sight alone...so it isn't really all that useful. For example, the phrase "where there's life, there's hope" looks identical to "where's the lavender soap". (percentage and example from wikipedia) It works best in conjunction with sign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyMcGillicuddy Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 My question is, is it common these days for young deaf people to be taught only sign language and no speech or lip-reading? I know there is a school of thought in deaf education that calls for only lip-reading/speech and mainstreaming, and another that calls for using sign language as well, but...is sign-only still done much? In Deaf schools, this is how they are taught. Sign language only...their first language. In public schools around here, it's sign language supplemented with speech therapy/lipreading. There is one private school that is completely oral. No sign language allowed at all. And, if someone only communicates in sign and writing, why wouldn't he or she carry a note pad or something to facilitate what must be a relatively frequent need for quick written conversation? I would feel bad for my Deaf friends if they had to carry enough paper around to always have a written conversation everywhere they went. :001_smile: I find it odd that the customers didn't have a Sidekick with them so they could type instead of write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaik76 Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 In Deaf schools, this is how they are taught. Sign language only...their first language. In public schools around here, it's sign language supplemented with speech therapy/lipreading. There is one private school that is completely oral. No sign language allowed at all. I would feel bad for my Deaf friends if they had to carry enough paper around to always have a written conversation everywhere they went. :001_smile: I find it odd that the customers didn't have a Sidekick with them so they could type instead of write. Most deaf people I know don't have Sidekicks...they're expensive! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 My question is, is it common these days for young deaf people to be taught only sign language and no speech or lip-reading? I know there is a school of thought in deaf education that calls for only lip-reading/speech and mainstreaming, and another that calls for using sign language as well, but...is sign-only still done much Speech reading is *extremely* limited, much more so than oral-only proponents would have us believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravin Posted July 5, 2009 Author Share Posted July 5, 2009 Speech reading is *extremely* limited, much more so than oral-only proponents would have us believe. I can believe that. The only person I've known who used it wasn't completely deaf; between hearing aids and lip reading she could understand what someone was saying to her. I think if it was me I'd carry a small dry erase board or something. I usually kept a scratch pad and pen on me when I was in Japan, because while I only knew about thirty words of Japanese, most Japanese people understand a fair amount of written English but not necessarily spoken, because the written was emphasized in school to pass tests. The whole thing just seemed inconvenient, for the customer as well as for me. It didn't help that he insisted on arguing; "no, sorry, that's not how the store policy works" can only be repeated so many ways. Besides that, I really doubted the price difference between here and Tuscon was as much as he said it was. Maybe he was a U of A student, that could explain why he was so dense. :banghead: :tongue_smilie: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 (edited) I personally haven't observed a deaf person carrying around a pad of paper. I have, but he was an international student. If there was a section in the Book of Records on whipping out notepads, that guy would be in there! If they were deaf, they wouldn't have been going out of their way to make things harder for you, but they wouldn't have been going out of their way to make it easier either. If they were being that dense, I would hazard a guess that they weren't actually deaf and were pretending. It's a game language students like to play. It was even an assignment for us when we were studying Auslan! (Not for the purposes of irritating shop staff though!) That aside, depending on the level of hearing loss, speech classes can be a waste of time. Speech relies on hearing, and they won't get better at that no matter how they practise. Rosie Edited July 5, 2009 by Rosie_0801 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Home'scool Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 (edited) It is very common for deaf people to only know sign language and not English. I was surprised, too, when I first learned that in class, but as my teacher put it, "how many here can speak more than one language?" I know I can't. Sign language is their first language, and sign language is NOT the same as signed English. Sign language is set up completely different from English, with a different grammatical structure and almost no prepositions. Learning sign language doesn't set you up to know English. The sentence "do you like pizza?" would be signed as "pizza you like?" and is supported by facial gestures to show that it is a question. If you wrote the word "calculator" on a piece of paper they might have no idea what that word is. They only know it as a sign, not a series of letters. If these deaf people were only fluent in their language, sign, then perhaps that is why they don't carry around paper and pen to them. I could carry all the paper and pens I wanted and still not be able to converse with someone in Swahili. Edited July 5, 2009 by Home'scool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dirty ethel rackham Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 So, are you saying that deaf people who sign only are don't read written English? Do they not read books? Do they only learn from people who sign? Wow. To address a PP, I think that, to ask a group of Americans if they know a second language is a red herring. Most Americans wouldn't because they don't need the second language to function on this continent and have little to no opportunity to practice it outside a classroom setting. I took 9 years of Spanish - including a minor in college. I so desperately wanted to speak Spanish. However, since I didn't NEED Spanish, I never got more than 80% fluent. And that disappeared after college when I didn't have opportunities to use it. Even if I met people who spoke it, they refused to speak anything but English with me. If I had spent time in a country where Spanish was spoken all around me and I needed it to have interactions with most of the people around me, I would not only not have lost what I did learn, but I am sure that I would have become fluent. If I were traveling to a country where I did not know their language and couldn't be sure if there were enough people who knew mine, I would certainly bring tools along to help me communicate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cin Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 I think you just ran into a stubborn deaf person. Just as there are stubborn hearing people. The fact that he was hearing impaired just made it more difficult for you. There are jerks in every group. If we don't speak the same language, it just makes the confrontation all the more difficult, and therefore frustrating :cursing:. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OHGrandma Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 I think you just ran into a stubborn deaf person. Just as there are stubborn hearing people. The fact that he was hearing impaired just made it more difficult for you. There are jerks in every group. If we don't speak the same language, it just makes the confrontation all the more difficult, and therefore frustrating :cursing:. :iagree: A friend of mine has a deaf granddaughter. She is in a preschool that feeds into a grade school for deaf children. Those children are taught to sign, verbalize, and read lips as much as possible. Notice I did put 'sign' first. Another school in a nearby city does not teach the children to sign, they are 100% lip readers and teach the children to verbalize; it's very difficult for a person who is completely deaf. Any school that discourages methods of communication with others, does a disservice to their students, imho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TraceyS/FL Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 Maybe he was a U of A student, that could explain why he was so dense. :banghead: :tongue_smilie: :lol: :lol: :tongue_smilie: (former ASU student here :tongue_smilie: ) Sounds frustrating, although i'm glad to read about the fact that most wouldn't be able to lip read. I'll file that away to use when helping people in the future. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janet in Toronto Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 You might be interested in this short article on Deaf culture. I am not deaf, and probably cannot speak adequately to the subtleties, but have a good friend who is deaf and he runs up against the aversion to lip-reading all the time. (He is an excellent lip reader and has been used by authorities to "eavesdrop" on conversations using his skills in lipreading.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 So, are you saying that deaf people who sign only are don't read written English? Do they not read books? Do they only learn from people who sign? Wow. If there are people like that, their parents, educators and the government deserve a slap in the ear. There is no excuse for deaf adults not to have literacy skills as good as ours. In Sweden (my literature is 25 years old, so they might have gone down hill) deaf children graduate with fluency in Swedish Signed Language (their first language,) fluent literacy skills in Swedish and English, and may have taken spoken Swedish classes. It depends whether the parents felt it was a worthwhile use of time or not. With a mild or even moderate hearing loss, kids can learn English via speech. Obviously if they are profoundly deaf, they are better off learning via literacy as a second language once their first language (sign because it's accessible for them) is properly established. Rosie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merry Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 it sounds like they have pride in being deaf and don't want to be "hearing" so they don't do lipreading or carry on conversations on paper unless they're forced to resort to it. It doesn't mean that they can't read and write in English though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joannqn Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 So, are you saying that deaf people who sign only are don't read written English? Do they not read books? Do they only learn from people who sign? Wow. The literacy rate in the deaf is surprisingly low, except in the most well educated. Among 17 and 18 year old students in school, the median reading level is 4th grade. (info from Gallaudet) My understanding is that it has to do with the fact that they can't hear or speak English and that their own language differs so dramatically in grammatical structure. When it comes to education, I think that the systems in place are really doing a huge disservice to the deaf. Only a small percentage are lucky enough to get decent schooling and to have parents who are involved in their lives and education (most hearing parents don't bother to learn sign to communicate with their children, for example, and 85% of deaf children are born to hearing parents). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merry Posted July 6, 2009 Share Posted July 6, 2009 nt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reya Posted July 6, 2009 Share Posted July 6, 2009 Speech reading is *extremely* limited, much more so than oral-only proponents would have us believe. I had a deaf classmate. I was the only person whose normal speaking voice frequently hit the very narrow pitch at which she could hear anything. She almost never missed a beat in a conversation. Because of her lip reading ability (by that time, she'd forgotten most of her sign language), some deaf people shunned her as a traitor. After all, it's a culture, not a disability! It's a bad idea for intellectual development to go oral-only. It is isolating and increases low literacy (and apparently also has an intellectual impact) to go sign-only. But sign-only is a lot more common than oral-only, and it's better for most if you are only going to pick one. Answer? Don't pick one. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reya Posted July 6, 2009 Share Posted July 6, 2009 So, are you saying that deaf people who sign only are don't read written English? Do they not read books? Do they only learn from people who sign? Wow. Typically, they read at a 3rd grade level. This is called SUCCESS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fivetails Posted July 6, 2009 Share Posted July 6, 2009 Random, but a couple of years ago, I had our son in for an assessment at a center for children with visual and/or hearing impairments - we were staying there for a week and we ended up sharing a room with one of the ladies who worked with hearing impaired children.... Our son is completely blind.. This lady was completely deaf.. She did not speak nor did she read lips... He could not see her signs, she could not hear his words. He's also autistic, adding another stone to the wall between their worlds. A week later when we left that placement, both of them cried when we said goodbye ~ they had found a way to communicate through touch and built a friendship right through what seemed like an impossible to break down barrier. It was one of the most fascinating things I have *ever* watched. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 A week later when we left that placement, both of them cried when we said goodbye ~ they had found a way to communicate through touch and built a friendship right through what seemed like an impossible to break down barrier. It was one of the most fascinating things I have *ever* watched. :) Wow. I'm not very good at it, but I have had a bit of experience with tactile signing. It's cool, but tricky for me because I have personal space issues, lol. :) Rosie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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