Teaching Children With Hearing Impairment To Listen and Speak When the Home Language is Not English

Abstract

Many speech-language pathologists (SLPs), deaf educators, and audiologists (AuDs) are finding themselves serving increasing numbers of children with hearing impairment (HI) who come from families that do not speak English. The majority of these families are likely to select listening and spoken language (LSL) as the primary method of communication for their children. This paper will present issues that need to be considered to support develop of LSL in more than one language for an ever-growing population of children with HI in the United States. Specific areas discussed include bilingual capabilities of some children with hearing loss, achievements of children with HI at a few institutions in North America, determining the language(s) of intervention, understanding current models of intervention, and implementing strategies that facilitate successful multilingual learning.