Cued Speech

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Cued Speech is a building block that helps children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing better understand spoken languages.

When watching a person’s mouth, many speech sounds look the same on the face even though the sounds heard are not the same. For instance, the words “mat”, “bat”, and “pat” look the same on the face even though they sound very different. When “cueing” English, the person communicating uses eight hand shapes and four places near the mouth to help the person looking tell the difference between speech sounds. Cued Speech allows the child to make out sounds and words when they are using other building blocks, such as speech reading(lip reading) or auditory training (listening).

Like all building blocks, you can start using Cued Speech when your child is a baby. Experts in Cued Speech can work with you and your baby. This building block is often used with other building blocks such as speech reading or auditory training.