Language Development and Hearing Impairment

Hearing impairments can be present in children prior to birth. More than 12,000 children are born with hearing impairment each year. However, most children are not diagnosed with hearing impairments until the age of 2 or 3, which hinders their language development. Understanding how hearing impairments are addressed to promote language development, the signs of hearing impairment in children and the value of intervention can assist in aiding a child who may be hearing impaired.

Training for Moderate to Severe Hearing Impairments

• A child who cannot hear himself or those around him speak has a severe hearing impairment. When a child has this type of hearing impairment, the teacher cannot rely on the child repeating sounds to learn language. Therefore, the teacher will attempt to use visual or tactile aids to teach the child speech. This type of teaching may also be used for children who have some sense of sound but cannot make out clearly what those sounds are when using hearing aids. In addition, children with hearing impairments will usually learn sign language. Signing with either manually coded English or American Sign Language (ASL) will be taught.

Manually Coded English

• Manually coded English specifically focuses on the structure of words grammatically. The signs used were created for the English language. When manually coded English is taught, a child will learn to sign and speak at the same time, as well as wear his hearing aids. This process of language development is called total communication because it relies on every possible communication tool being used when the child speaks.

American Sign Language

• ASL does not focus on the grammatical structure of words in the English language, as in manually coded English, but instead uses symbols to relay the meaning of words and/or complete concepts. It is, however, based on its own structure for grammar, sentence structure and punctuation through the use of hand movements, body movements and visual cues. ASL is the most commonly used form of communication taught to the hearing impaired.

Signs of Hearing Impairment in Children

• If a child has never been diagnosed with a hearing impairment, hearing problems may be evident through monitoring the child's language development. For example, when speaking a child may not fully develop the words that he uses, cutting off the ends of words without the word being fully formed. In addition, the child may focus on the face a person with great concentration as the person speaks, or the child may demonstrate odd variations of pitch during speech because the child cannot hear his own voice.

Babies and Hearing Problems

• According to the University of Iowa, babies can be diagnosed with hearing impairments before the age of 6 months and be capable of developing strong language skills that will allow them to communicate effectively. A child of this age has the greatest opportunity for strong language development if intervention takes place before then and the child is capable of working with professionals to address his language development.