Guest Bloggers

I’m interested to find out if any other cuers are interested in guest blogging.  Are you a cuer, the parent of a cuer, a person who supports cuers?  Do you have stories concerning the history of Cued Speech, Orin Cornett, or early cuers?  Are you willing to share your story?  Let me know by leaving a comment to this post or by clicking on the link at the top of the page for “Submit Article”. 

GTHR LV

I’ve mentioned in the past that I am a hearing parent of a deaf/HOH cuer, but that I personally did not learn phonics as a young reader.  My grade level in school was taught the whole word method to learn to read.  I really didn’t even understand what phonics and phonemes were until I learned to cue.  How much difference does it make to learn to read via whole word method vs. a phonemic method?  I’d never really thought much about it until…

Ray, my “cue kid”, and I were riding in the car a few days ago.  We stopped at a stop light and I looked at the vanity license plate of the car in front us.  It said “GTHR LV”.  I began pondering what it represented.  I immediately thought that the LV might represent the roman numerals for 55.  That seemed logical since 55 is the standard speed limit and this was on a car.  But what would GTHR represent?  Get there? Got her? 

I was still pondering when Ray must’ve noticed me staring at the tag.  He asked “do you know that means”?  I asked him what he thought it was.  He said “That’s easy, Gather Love. They just left out the vowels”.  I realized a bit abashedly that he was right.  My son who learned the English language through Cued Speech is obviously better at phonemic awareness than I am.  I’m not sure if this a statement on how well he has internalized phonemic awareness, thanks to Cued Speech, or how poorly I have internalized it, but I certainly found it an idea worth further pondering. 

Any Favorite Quotes?

Are any of you reading the new book “Cued Speech and Cued Language for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children”?  I’ve been reading my copy.  Have you found a favorite quote in the book yet?  One of my favorites is right in Chapter 1 which was written by Carol LaSasso.  Here’s an excerpt:

“There are two primary advantages of cued language over signed language for the 95% of parents of deaf children who are themselves hearing.  First, learning to cue a language that one already knows can be accomplished in a weekend.  Parents who do so can be fluent visual language models of English and other traditionally spoken languages for their deaf child in a very short period of time.  …

A second advantage of cued English over ASL is that it offers the same advantage in learning to read that English speaking children have, compared to children who are learning English as a Second Language.  This is, learning to read a language is much simpler for children who are familiar with the conversational form of that language before formal reading instruction than it is for children who are learning to read while simultaneously learning the language.”

I’m sure there are those who will see this quote and be ready to argue its validity, but this statement was not made off hand.  It was made based on years of research and experience with deaf students.  For 10 years, Dr. LaSasso directed diagnostic reading clinics for more than 400 deaf and hard of hearing children and their parents from multiple modalities. 

So, dear blog reader, have you found a favorite quote yet?  If so, please share it! 

Video from a BSL user

I love when I stumble upon videos concerning Cued Speech.  I found this video on YouTube. I’m glad it was captioned.  The person in the video is a BSL user who used Cued Speech until she was 7 years old and then switched to signing.  Now, as an adult, she wishes she had continued to use Cued Speech together with signing, and is going back to school to relearn it.  I find her openness and willingness to learn Cued Speech to be refreshing.  I so often see negative posts from those who’ve never learned Cued Speech. 

I wish I knew more about this lady’s background.  I wonder why she switched at age 7. I wonder if her family, or school, or someone else was the primary influence for the change.  I wonder how she will do learning as an adult.  I hope I find more videos from her.

Just in case you can’t see the video, here’s a direct link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSs4PTV8UPs

Cues on Tap – Fairfax

The next Cues on Tap – Fairfax will be held on Saturday, January 9th 2010 from 7pm to 9 pm. The location is Auld Shebeen, 3971 Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax, VA.  To keep updated on future Cues on Tap – Fairfax events, join the Cues on Tap – Fairfax group on Facebook.

Vote for NCSA with Chase Community Giving

Chase wants to give away $5 million.  Simply vote for your favorite nonprofit (hint – National Cued Speech Association) through Chase Giving on Facebook and then ask your friends to do the same.  The voting ends soon, December 11th, so don’t wait!  http://bit.ly/dimpO

Practice, Practice, Practice

I guess this post is really aimed at those hearing individuals who are learning to cue, or who’ve learned to cue, in order to support someone who is either hearing impaired or using cued speech for other educational reasons. I want to talk about finding creative ways to practice and improve your cueing skills. I can relate some of the ideas which have worked for me, but I’d be interested to learn what has worked for others as well. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, when I started learning to cue I had to begin to think of the sounds I made when I spoke, as opposed to the actual letters. For me, this took a lot of practice. I’d completed the beginning class and understood how the mechanics worked, but I knew I needed to get faster and more fluent. Some people like to work from rhyming books such as Dr. Seuss books. I needed to get more comfortable cueing single words before I advanced to the point of cueing sentences. In order to help me remember the hand shape and position necessary to form a specific consonant vowel combination, I needed repetition of single words. I found that driving, while alone in the car, a good place for me to practice. I would prefer to practice alone so others didn’t see my mistakes. I would find a street sign and figure out how to cue that short group of sounds. I kept a Cue Chart stuffed down beside my seat for the times I needed reminders, but I would try to practice without it. "STOP" was one of the first street signs I tackled. Speed limit signs helped me to begin cueing numbers. I felt I’d really accomplished something when I successfully cued "Fairfax County Parkway". I know that the idea of cueing while driving sounds rather dangerous, but we have a lot of stop lights around here and I could use all that wait time to concentrate on a different sound combination.

As I progressed to the point of sentences and phrases, I started to think about what things I would say frequently during the day, especially things I would say to my son. I began practicing phrases like, "Time to go", "Are you ready?", "Where’s your backpack?", "All done?"… When I found myself repeating phrases during the day I’d add them to the list.

Eventually speed became my goal. My accuracy had improved greatly, but I was too intimidated to cue to anyone older than my son for fear of being judged. So, I began cueing to music. I’d walk for exercise and wear my ear buds while listening to music. Familiar songs with words I already knew were best. Often to get one sentence right, I’d miss the next three, but that was ok because I’d gotten one right. I was making progress and that was the important thing.

Cue Camp VA is all a Twitter

Are you on Twitter?  Cue Camp Virginia is.  You can become a follower at http://twitter.com/CCVA.  CCVA hopes to be posting updates to Twitter through out the camp weekend of August 27th to August 30th.  So, if you can’t come to camp, you can still follow along with what is happening on Twitter!

You Cue!

Today was a first for me.  While at the mall with my son, a lady walked up to me and said “You Cue!”.  Indeed as my son and I wandered through the mall talking, I had been cueing to him.  She was from neighboring Montgomery County, but we knew some of the same people.  I was so surprised though to have someone actually come up and know what it was I was doing, that I was somewhat flabbergasted.  I don’t even remember if I told her my name!  I know my son told her his name and we talked about where he goes to school.  I just thought it was so neat that someone stopped me in the middle of a mall to say “hello” because they saw me cue. 

Have any of you ever met someone because they saw you cue?

Cued Speech at NOVA Community College

This fall the Northern Virginia Community College will offer “Cued American English: Level 1″ for the first time.  The class will begin on August 24th and will meet on Mondays and Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:20 pm. It will be worth 2 credits.  You will find the class in the course catalog under Interpreter Education.  You can see more information on the class here.  The class instructor will be Suhad Keblawi.