Phonetics Curriculum Development and Implementation for the Deaf University Student

Phonetics Curriculum Development and Implementation for the Deaf University Student Darlene Geer Gould Deaf university students are among the undergraduate and graduate students in communication disorders programs. The deaf students train to clinically and educationally work with communicatively impaired individuals, particularly hearing-impaired persons. The population to be worked with by the deaf students may be comprised of infant, preschool, elementary, secondary, college, mature adult, or elder segments of society. In addition, the deaf communication disorders students may aspire to clinical research positions as career goals. A thorough understanding of theoretical constructs underlying the subject of phonetics and possession of, or at least considerable familiarity with, phonetic transcription skills is essential to the deaf communication disorders specialist. This paper addresses phonetics curriculum development and implementation concerns in conjunction with educational instruction of deaf university students. Five areas of curriculum design and the implementation necessary for learning phonetics as a deaf university student are outlined and discussed. 1. Programmed workbook materials which are organized to incrementally increased levels of difficulty must be available to each deaf student. Keys to workbook exercises should be contained within the workbooks or accompany the workbooks so that students can check their own work. Such curriculum provisions will allow students to be self-paced in the course. Carefully designed graded practice materials are particularly important to deaf students because such students cannot avail themselves of opportunities, indeed required experiences, to listen to phonetics audio tapes which are traditional modes of learning for phonetics transcription training involving sound identification. The deaf enrollee in a phonetics class will need to work from the printed page to supplied transcription sheets. A great variety of activities can be designed to introduce International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols and to encourage abundant practice in IPA tranThe author is the Clinic Coordinator, Department of Communicative Disorders at San Diego State University. scription. Not only will variety allow for graded levels of difficulty, but it will ensure maintenance of student interest. Types of workbook assignments might encompass a wide range of tasks, a few of which are suggested here. How many sounds in the words? Find words with high front vowels; Find words with low front vowels; Find words with mid front vowels; Find words with high back vowels; Find words with low back vowels; Find words with mid back vowels; Find words with central vowels; Find words with fricative sounds; Find words with plosive sounds; Find words with affricate sounds; Find words with nasal sounds; Write orthographically represented words from IPA; Find the errors; Write in IPA from orthographies; IPA sentences; IPA paragraphs; and IPA crossword puzzles. It is obvious that the deaf student cannot be expected to transcribe conversational speech. Although he/she needs to learn about regional dialects and foreign accents, theoretical knowledge will be derived regarding the nature of speech production variations rather than from direct listening experiences. 2. Technological instrumentation providing visual speech displays and tactile speech feedback is directly instructive to the deaf phonetics students. Visual and tactile modalities offer identification and verification information about human speech. Distinctive feature information can be illustrated via sonograms, speech oscilographs , video-tape, tactile phonation instruments , articulation film, cineflourographic studies , visual vocal pitch display instruments, speech analyzers of various kinds, sound level meters, oral manometers, etc. Speech sound transition information derived from spectographic analysis will impart information about rapid sequencing of articulatory movements which will be A.A.D. /August 1982 447 Phonetics Curriculum Development learned to the greatest extent through the auditory modality by the hearing student. 3. It is particularly important for a comprehensive clinical phonetics textbook to be an integral part of the course. The deaf student will probably more completely rely upon the text for scholarly input than will hearing students in the same class, even though deaf students may glean information from class lectures via speech reading , sign from an interpreter, or an official note taker. Supplementarily, rather thorough bibliographic resource materials must be accessible to the deaf student. 4. Multi-media materials such as illustrated phonovisual charts which show tongue, lip, jaw, velar, and laryngeal action for sound production will be referred to time and time again by the deaf student. Drawings, molds, simulated articulatory structures...