The Role of Sign Language for Deaf Children with Cochlear Implants: Good Practice in Sign Bilingual Settings

An approach designed to fail deaf children and their parents and how to change it

“…Unfortunately, we continue to observe that claims of success are reported in ways that at best obfuscate issues and at worst misrepresent results (see, for example, Hall and colleagues’ [ 21 ] critique of Geers and colleagues [ 94 ]). We continue to see few studies of the benefits of CIs when the child is in a signing environment, but existing ones show the combination of CIs with sign language is more advantageous than CIs alone (see [ 24 , 95 – 97 ], as well as citations in the next subsection pertinent to the points made there). Thus CIs should not be used as a reason for delaying or withholding exposure to sign language, yet those involved in CI production and surgery continue a general silence about sign language benefits or advise parents outright that sign language will not benefit CI patients.…”

A magyarországi siket gyermekek oktatásának kérdései. A nyelvi teljesítmény értékelése bimodális kétnyelvűségben

“…Hattyár 2008, részletesebben lásd 2.3. fejezet). Emellett fontos megjegyezni, hogy sikeres implantációs beavatkozás mellett is hatékonyabb és eredményesebb a fejlesztés, ha már a korai időszaktól kezdve a jelnyelvi input is biztosított (Swanwick-Tsverik 2007).…”

The Benefit of the “And” for Considerations of Language Modality for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

“…Some evidence suggests that certain speech production or auditory outcomes may be better for children who are only exposed to spoken language (and not sign language). For example, studies have reported that speech production or auditory skills tend to be better for children who are exposed only to speech than for children who are exposed to both speech and sign language (e.g., Dettman et al, 2013;Percy-Smith et al, 2010); however, overall language and social/emotional skills may be better supported by bimodal bilingual language use (e.g., Swanwick & Tsverik, 2007). Another study found that the speech-only children performed better only on speech intelligibility, auditory reception, and grammatical closure than did those exposed to both speech and sign language (Jiménez et al, 2009).…”