National Survey of Language Methods Used with Hearing-Impaired Students in the United States

A national survey conducted to determine current language methods and philosophies about teaching language indicated that many educators of hearing-impaired children combine different parts of various language approaches rather than adhering closely to any one method. Opinions as to the type of symbol system to use and when and how to use these symbol systems varied greatly. Some type of sentence patterns was the most popular symbol system in use, with Apple Tree (Anderson, Boren, Caniglia, Howard, & Krohn, 1972) being the most frequently specified set of sentence patterns (57.5% of the programs). The symbol systems were used for three major purposes: to help students produce grammatical sentences, to analyze grammatical sentences, and to correct ungrammatical sentences. These uses were specified by approximately 86%, 71%, and 79% of the programs, respectively. Implications of the survey and potential applications are provided.