Question

Do deaf children go through the four stages of acquiring language? Use what you’ve read in the chapter to explain why or why not. Further, explain any differences and/or similarities that may take place.

Answer 1

• All children will progressively move through the same stages when acquiring articulation skills. Some children may need more time than others to acquire specific speech and language skills.
• Articulation refers to the movements we make with our lips, soft palate, lips and tongue when we speak. Some children may have difficulty in articulation some speech sounds and may need more time or assistance from a speech pathologist to learn how to articulate specific speech sounds.
• Language acquisition by deaf children parallels the development of any children acquiring spoken language as long as there is full access to language from birth.
• Despite limited access to spoken language, communication and language exposure are fundamental to deaf infants' general cognitive development and their engagement with their surroundings.
• Deaf infants immersed in fluent sign language from birth develop native language skills in that sign language in the same manner as any other child acquiring a language natively.
• Parents with a deaf infant are faced with a range of options for how to interact with their newborn, and may try several methods that include different amounts of sign language, oral/auditory language training, and communicative codes invented to facilitate acquisition of spoken language.
• While cochlear implants provide auditory stimulation, not all children succeed at acquiring spoken language completely.Children who received cochlear implants before twelve months old were found to be significantly more likely to perform at age-level standards for spoken language than children who received implants later.
• The general stages of language acquisition are the same whether the language is spoken or signed. There are certain unique features of sign language acquisition due to the visual/manual modality and these differences can help to distinguish between universal aspects of language acquisition and aspects that may be affected by early experience.
• Since infants attend to spoken and signed language in a similar manner, several researchers have concluded that much of language acquisition is universal, not tied to the modality of the language, and that sign languages are acquired and processed very similarly to spoken languages, given adequate exposure.
• For deaf children who use listening and spoken language as their primary mode of communication, their families will often participate in Auditory-verbal therapy, a means of enhancing the innate language and listening skills of deaf children.
• Most children who receive appropriate amplification before the age of 18 months and receive appropriate auditory-verbal instruction will follow language-learning trajectories of their peers who have typical hearing