However, children who are either hard of hearing or deaf generally require some form of special education services in order to receive an adequate education. Children who are hard of hearing will find it much more difficult than children who have normal hearing to learn vocabulary, grammar, word order, idiomatic expressions, and other aspects of verbal communication. By age four or five, most children who are deaf are enrolled in school on a full-day basis and do special work on communication and language development. It is important for teachers and audiologists to work together to teach the child to use his or her residual hearing to the maximum extent possible, even if the preferred means of communication is manual. People with hearing loss use oral or manual means of communication or a combination of the two.
Oral communication includes speech, speechreading and the use of residual hearing.
Manual communication involves signs and fingerspelling. Total Communication, as a method of instruction, is a combination of the oral method plus signs and fingerspelling. Individuals with hearing loss, including those who are deaf, now have many helpful devices available to them. NE, Washington, DC 20002. A guide for parents.