Signing systems that attempted to represent spoken language via manual signs -- some invented, and some borrowed from natural sign languages -- have historically been used in classrooms with deaf children. However, despite decades of research and use of these systems in the classroom, there is little evidence supporting their educational…

Communication is an innate behavior people engage in to convey one's thoughts, needs, and interests to others (Knapp, Hall, & Horgan, 2014). Recommended Practices from the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children (DEC, 2014) encourage teachers to partner with families to implement strategies that support…

Recently, the authors' district reconfigured the program for deaf and hard of hearing students, combining the Total Communication (TC) and Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) programs for elementary students and relocating students and staff into a single school. This prompted staff to reflect on and discuss the pedagogy unique to each program.…

The author cites research that casts doubt upon the use of total communication as a means of facilitating speech, communication between parent and child, academic achievement, and vocabulary development in hearing-impaired children. He states that the Alexander Graham Bell Association is not antimanual communication, but rather prospeech. (CL)

This study investigated speaking rate and voice onset time (VOT) in speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC) by speakers with normal hearing. The somewhat enlarged voicing contrast during SC was consistent with previous findings regarding the influence of rate changes on the temporal fine structure of speech and voicing contrast…

A six-year longitudinal evaluation was made of the effectiveness of the various early intervention strategies being emphasized in seven preschool programs for hearing-impaired children. (Author/DLS)

The article reviews augmentative and alternative communication symbol classifications reported in the literature over the past decade. The "aided/unaided" dichotomy (based on user production of the symbol) is proposed as the superordinate level of classification, rather than the "static/dynamic" (based on transmission of…

This paper presents qualitative descriptions of the consonant inventories of 12 children who have used cochlear implants for at least five years, as well as descriptions of sound correspondences between children's systems and the ambient language (English). Qualitative differences were found between the inventories of oral communication users and…

This article presents initial guidelines for combining current conventions for analyzing sign language and spoken language, to represent signs accompanied by speech. Rules are outlined for transcribing utterance groupings in terms of their context, inflection, sign gloss, spoken component, and phonetic transcription. (JDD)

Receptive communication skills of 118 severely and profoundly deaf persons, (9-20 years old) were assessed by a multiple-choice pictorial test. The most efficient method of communication was found to be reading, followed by total communication and manual communication; oral methods were clearly the least effective. (Author/CL)

Reviewed are growth, activities, and changes of the Oral Deaf Adults Section (ODAS) of the Alexander Graham Bell Association since its establishment in 1964 to aid adjustment of the deaf to society. (MC)

A deaf adult argues that total communication as a combination of signs and speech is a fraud from the realistic point of view of a born deaf adult living in a hearing/speaking world. (GW)

The author presents a rationale for a total communication approach (involving speech, speechreading, amplification, writing, sign language, and fingerspelling) in educational programs for deaf persons. (GW)

This study investigated the overall intelligibility of speech produced during simultaneous communication (SC). Four hearing, experienced sign language users were recorded under SC and speech alone (SA) conditions speaking Boothroyd's (1985) forced-choice phonetic contrast material designed for measurement of speech intelligibility. Twelve…

Examined with 17 elementary level deaf children were the integration of deaf children with an oral, integrated instructional background with a deaf class with a total communication instructional background and the integration of deaf children with partial or total reliance on total communication with a hearing class. (SBH)