Building Languages

The auditory-oral program teaches babies and young children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing to use whatever hearing they have. They also use lipreading (speechreading) and gestures to understand and use spoken language. This program includes building blocks such as Natural Gestures, Listening, Speech (Lip) Reading, and Speech.

Auditory-Verbal: The auditory-verbal program teaches babies and young children who are deaf or hard of hearing to use their amplified residual hearing or hearing through electrical stimulation (cochlear implants) to listen, to understand spoken language, and to speak. This program includes building blocks such as Listening and Speech.

Bilingual: This program teaches babies and young children who are deaf or hard of hearing two languages, American Sign Language (ASL) and the family's native language. (for example, English or Spanish). ASL is usually taught as the child's first language and English (or the family's native language) is taught as the child's second language through reading, writing, speech, and use of residual hearing. This program also teaches respect for Deaf and hearing cultures. This program also includes building blocks such as Finger Spelling and Natural Gestures.

Cued Speech (Building Block): Cued Speech (sometimes called "cueing") is a building block that helps children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing better understand spoken languages. Many speech sounds look the same on the face even though the sounds are different. For instance, the words "mat", "bat", and "pat" look the same on the lips and mouth. 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.

Total Communication: The Total Communication program teaches babies and young children that are deaf or hard-of-hearing to use a combination of building blocks to communicate in the English language. Most Total Communication programs use some form of Simultaneous Communication (speaking and signing at the same time). This program includes building blocks such as Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE), Finger Spelling, Listening, Manually Coded English (MCE), Natural Gestures, Speech (Lip) Reading, and Speech.

Hearing Aid: Hearing aids make sounds louder and clearer. Hearing aids are be worn by people of any age — including infants. Young babies with hearing loss can better understand sounds using hearing aids. This gives them the chance to learn speech skills right from birth.

There are many styles of hearing aids. They can help many types of hearing losses — mild, moderate, severe, and profound. Your baby's audiologist will help you pick the best type for your baby's hearing loss. A young child is usually fitted with behind-the-ear (BTE) style hearing aids because they adjust better on growing ears. Behind-the-ear hearing aids come in skin tone as well as many bright colors.

Mild Hearing Loss: A person with a mild hearing loss may hear some speech sounds but soft sounds are hard to hear.

Moderate Hearing Loss: A person with a moderate hearing loss may hear almost no speech when another person is talking at a normal level.

Severe Hearing Loss: A person with severe hearing loss will hear no speech of a person talking at a normal level and only some loud sounds.

Profound Hearing Loss: A person with a profound hearing loss will not hear any speech and only very loud sounds.

"Building Blocks" refers to the different skills that parents can use to help their child learn language. There are many types of building blocks, and a family can pick and choose the building block (or blocks) that work best for their child and family. The following is a list of many commonly used building blocks.

• Conceptually Accurate Signed English (CASE)
• Cued Speech
• Finger Spelling
• Listening / Auditory Training
• Manually Coded English (MCE)
• Natural Gestures
• Speech
• Speech Reading (Lip Reading)

Even though American Sign Language (ASL) is not a building block, it is sometimes used together with one or more building blocks.