“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! 

To show you how so very important prosody is in communication, I’ve embedded two short videos of myself cueing several short sentences, one with prosody, one without. See which one you can get the most meaning out of:

WITHOUT PROSODY

WITH PROSODY

What were the differences?

In the second video, I used prosodic markers like longer and shorter pauses, elongated words/vowels to show stress, and body language. You could far more easily tell what the most important words were, and what meanings I meant to convey.

So, would you rather watch someone cueing with, or without prosody?

You probably said “WITH!!”
I agree. As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, watching someone who cues with almost no prosody can be boring. They also convey much less meaning. For this reason, it is important to get into the habit of cueing prosody. Especially if you’re a transliterator… Different speakers will have very different ways of using prosody.

Stay tuned for part III!

“Imagine, if you will, a family that has just had a new baby. These new parents never talk to the baby and somehow manage to keep the baby from most conversation until he is about two years old. At two, they decide it is the correct time for baby to begin to talk. Each day, for fifteen minutes, they have talking lessons. They don’t speak to the baby the rest of the time. These well meaning parents spend a lot of money and research and find the perfect talking curriculum. Unfortunately, they quickly become frustrated with their child’s inability to speak.”

“Now If these parents came to you for advice I’m sure you would be horrified that they hadn’t been speaking to their baby all along. It is likely you would tell them to dump the complex ‘talking curriculum’ and just start conversing with their child. You would reassure them that teaching him to talk is really not that complicated and if they would just start to make conversation a regular part of his environment, he would absorb (learn), most of the necessary skills.” http://kbagdanov.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/819/

The quoted paragraphs above were not written about raising a hearing impaired child.  The title of the article is “3 Keys to Great Writing” and it was found on a blog called Substantive Education.  The focus of the blog is a home school education.  The writer goes on to draw parallels between how children learn to speak and how they learn to write.  Now don’t get all upset with the author for putting an emphasis on speaking, she does have hearing children.  However, when I read these opening paragraphs I was struck with the similarities to what happens in many hearing households who suddenly find themselves with a hearing impaired child. While the Substantive Education blog article focuses on learning to speak, the physical act of speaking the words is merely a way for the hearing author to assess her hearing child’s ability to learn language. So understand my point, look back at what was said, not in the context of learning to speak, but in the context of learning language. 

For years many families didn’t even know that their child had a hearing problem during these early years because there were no screening tests.  Unbeknownst to the parents, they did manage to “keep the baby from most conversation”.  But, even in today’s environment of early screening, parents find it difficult to provide a first language model in the home. How does one just start conversing with their hearing impaired child?  To speak their native language while cueing is often not even provided to the family as an option by the professionals they encounter.  But cueing in your household allows the family to continue to converse in the language of the home, while including the child in the conversation.  It allows the family to “just start conversing with their child”.  It makes “conversation a regular part of his environment, (and) he (will) absorb most of the necessary skills.” 

If you listen to the Scher/Consacro family in the video below you will see how they have cued to their children from the day they were born. You can witness for yourself that immersing your child in the language of your home through Cued Speech does indeed make “conversation a regular part of his environment”.  Ultimately, it becomes apparent that a hearing impaired child in a cueing home can indeed “absorb most of the necessary (language) skills” in much the same way a hearing child would.

Who Uses Cued Speech? from National Cued Speech Association on Vimeo.

What is prosody?

pro•so•dy (noun) :    the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.

What does it involve? 

With spoken language, it involves pitch, stress, and syllabic length. With cued language, there are two main components:

Facial and/or gestural indicators.

• often follow stress, voice changes, tone, rhythm, etc.
• eyebrows, shoulders, head tilts, upper body motions, are just a few of these indicators. Many people use them naturally to differing degrees when communicating.

Pauses.

• of emphasis, hesitation, or by-products of syllabics.
• think about the phrase, “That that is, is.” Where are the pauses? What happens if you leave them out?

Why should you develop cueing skills in prosody, along with accuracy and fluency? 

Prosody in spoken languages imparts a LOT of meaning and emotion. All good storytellers are pros with prosody. Recall that in this day and age of emails and IMing, people talk about how meaning (especially implied meaning) is sometimes lost when not communicating face to face or voice to voice. If prosody is not used when cueing, nor faithfully transliterated, that same loss of meaning can happen- even with the visual medium of Cued Speech providing access to words. In my opinion as a native cuer, prosody is just as important a skill to cultivate as accuracy and fluency. 

I was once subjected to a transliterated rendition of the American national anthem during a school assembly, done without an ounce of verve or vim. It was a disgrace to Francis Scott Key.

Another transliterator was a pro with prosody… she would even cue the gravelly voice of the history teacher, and her transliteration actually looked “gravelly” to me- all grindy and gray, just like the teacher’s voice sounded to her! She could pick up the moods and idiosyncrasies of teachers… sarcasm, anger, boredom, etc. and show them through her cueing. 

Some parents of hearing children like to use different voices for characters when reading to their kids. Cueing can be used in the exact same manner, with prosody!

With cued language, you have the ability to convey not only phonemes, but idiosyncrasies of language, implied meaning, and emotions. The addition of that extra layer of communication grabs more attention (helpful with easily distracted children!) and can make communication clearer.

Stay tuned for part 2, with more examples and some ideas for improving your prosodic cueing. If you have questions, please ask!

E

The life of a Cued Language Transliterator is much like the above scenario.  We do some prep work when available:  perusing textbooks, reading newspapers, scanning power point slides, watching the DVD of “Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” 53 times in 4 days.  But the bulk of our job is one note at a time, revealed in rapid succession as people produce the phoneme combinations that we call “spoken language.”  In the ear and out the hand, as spontaneously as a professional musician who reads the notes and then plucks the corresponding strings or presses the correct valves.  We train for our jobs, but much of life is unrehearsed banter that must be transliterated immediately with appropriate prosody and without filters or prep time.  We do this every day.  It’s beautiful music.

Who Uses Cued Speech? from National Cued Speech Association on Vimeo.

The link to the video should show up above, but if it doesn’t and you cannot play the embedded video, you can go here: http://vimeo.com/2439515 

Barb

If you’re unable to see the video above you can follow this link. So, I hope you enjoy this demonstration and don’t forget to show it to the kids!

Barb

The last blog that I wrote has a comment from Esther asking if I have cued in all of the grades yet.  That’s funny because my colleagues joke that we should, by now, be smarter than 5th graders because we transliterate in Elementary school year after year.  It is random information:  the water cycle, regions of Virginia, tectonic plates, decimeters, and the lyrics to every Tom Chapin song.  As this new school year gets underway, I still love going to First grade to cue “Water travels in a cycle, yes it does… Water travels in a cycle yes it does… It forms clouds as condensation, comes down as precipitation, and goes up as evaporation… yes it does…” 

Hopefully my job won’t get “old” until I get old.  By then I hope to actually BE smarter than a 5th grader.  Or at least to have won the million dollars.

Mom and Dad learned how to cue almost immediately after the diagnosis of my profound bilateral hearing loss. All three sisters learned the system the same way I did which was visually. Mom has told me there is a picture of my younger sister cueing in the playroom when she was 18 months old.

My speech was basically unintelligible for the first few years of my life. Luckily, all family members were able to cue read so they could understand me. While it is a task for most parents to learn the communication mode they choose for their deaf/hoh child, I consider it extremely important for families to make sure the other siblings or family members who live in the same household (if any) learn the modality too.

Inclusion is important for every person in the household whether it be the hearing person trying to understand the deaf/hoh person or vice versa. One way hearing people build their vocabulary and literacy level on a daily basis is by picking up information through what is heard verbally. Some deaf/hoh individuals acquire their language visually; so every word they see is equally important. Now, I grew up with times where I felt frustrated because two people were having a conversation and I didn’t understand everything that was said so I would ask the two parties to repeat. They would respond with “Oh, it was nothing important”, or they would summarize the conversation from 10 sentences into one sentence. I would rather have had them repeat all 10 sentences to me because even the little details matter in building language.

Making an effort to understand every word the deaf/hoh individual communicates will most likely secure the relationships between them and family members. It may be a frustrating process at first while trying to learn how to cue read. In the long run, it should pay off. After all, the deaf/hoh individual wants to fit in with the family and be able to express all of his/her feelings knowing they will be understood to the full extent.

In conclusion, it is beneficial if all immediate family members learn the modality chosen for the deaf/hoh individual. It will bring the family closer together. While it is not easy to cue or lipread every word said, it is important to try to include all family members whether they are hearing or deaf/hoh. Every word counts.