Hearing Impairments

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Brief description of Hearing Impairments

Detailed description of Hearing Impairments

How Hearing Impairments can impact on learning, teaching and training 

Brief description of Hearing Impairments

People with hearing impairments may depend on their sight for communication e.g. they rely on  speech reading, lip reading, British Sign Language (BSL) or use a form of English using BSL vocabulary called Sign Supported English (SSE).  The DDA states that an 'inability to hold a conversation with someone talking in a normal voice' or an 'inability to hear and understand another person speaking clearly over the voice telephone' counts as a 'substantial adverse' effect under the Act.

When the consequences of someone's deafness or hearing loss are being considered, the effect of background noise should be taken into account. Any attempts to treat, or correct, a person's deafness or hearing loss are ignored for the purposes of the DDA. Importantly, this means that even if a person uses a hearing aid, his or her level of hearing without that equipment aid is what counts.

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Detailed description of Hearing Impairments

There are four types of hearing loss:

• Conductive hearing loss (the conduction pathways for sounds to reach the inner ear are affected). Conductive hearing losses usually affects all frequencies of hearing evenly and do not result in severe loss;
• Sensorineural hearing loss (from damage to the delicate sensory hair cells of the inner ear or the nerves which supply it). These hearing losses can range from mild to profound and they often affect the person's ability to hear certain frequencies more than others;
• A mixed hearing loss refers to a combination of conductive and sensorineural loss and means that a problem occurs in both the outer, middle and the inner ear;
• A central hearing loss results from damage or impairment to the nerves or nuclei of the central nervous system, either in the pathways to the brain or in the brain itself.

For severely and profoundly deaf people, the process of acquiring language is different to the way in which hearing people develop language. Usually language is acquired through plentiful exposure to meaningful linguistic interaction in early childhood. Severe deafness drastically reduces both the quantity and the quality of linguistic input available to the deaf person. For a deaf person, English language development is rarely natural and automatic, but can be a laborious process with numerous obstacles and pitfalls.

For many prelingually deaf individuals (those born deaf), English is their second language and BSL is their first. However, unlike other people who do not have English as their first language, those who are prelingually deaf are physically unable to learn English in the way, for example, a German or French person learns English. They cannot be immersed in the language around them for they cannot hear it. In addition, since BSL is entirely visual, deaf people do not have a written or spoken language on which to base their second language learning.

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How Hearing Impairments can impact on learning, teaching and training

For deaf learners who have English as a second language, it is not surprising that they can experience linguistic problems. Difficulties manifest themselves most obviously in written work, where mistakes may be found with sentence structure, verb tenses, word omissions, etc. To exacerbate the problem, carrier language is often hidden in fluent speech and therefore is difficult to lip-read.

The lack of hearing and auditory memory means that learners may be unable to rehearse what is put down on a page. Furthermore, BSL has a grammar and syntax that is quite different to that of spoken English, which can also cause confusion.

Research shows that the reading age of deaf pupils leaving school is below the national average.  It is likely, therefore, that deaf people entering into Vocational Education or Training  are already functioning at a relatively less advanced level and, as their vocabulary can be considerably restricted in comparison with their hearing peers, reading can remain a laborious task for some deaf learners. Moreover, unfamiliar words, or words which have not been specifically introduced to the individual, cannot be lip-read. Consequently, deaf learners often have to research not only the technical jargon relating to the subject, but also language that is commonplace for hearing peers. As a result an exceptional amount of time can be spent on reading and preparing assignments, often with the support of a language/learning support tutor.

In comparison to hearing people, the pathway to general knowledge may have been significantly blocked for the hearing impaired person. Hearing people often absorb general knowledge through reading newspapers, listening to the TV or radio and holding discussions with their peers. This incidental information often helps them to form opinions and develop the skills necessary for VET. Yet, deaf learners can be denied access to this whole wealth of general knowledge and life experience. The ‘knock-on’ effect is often reflected in a deaf learner's written work, which may be judged to be lacking in depth, containing immature and sometimes uninformed opinions and exhibiting problems with sequencing and overall structure.

Group work can be problematic for people with hearing impairments and a number of enabling strategies may need to be adopted by the rest of the group.

As an important component of many group activities is to devolve responsibility and control to learners, teachers and trainers may be concerned that their scope for intervention, and to take appropriate measures to include all learners, is necessarily compromised. To mitigate this, systems to encourage groups to take responsibility for the inclusion of all learners need to be in place.

Teachers and trainers need to think carefully about the structure of their course, tutorial support, resources, staff development and learning environments, as replacing activities in large classroom environments by more accessible resource based learning using small tutorial groups and computer based learning can reduce the need for communication support.

Providing course notes in advance can be a great help to the learner and support worker, and providing these in electronic format may be the most flexible approach. Using visual aids (e.g. PowerPoint) can also help support the understanding of spoken information.

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