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rions and/or other information about the SCPI may contact us by telephone at (716) 475-6275 or (716) 475-6420 (both V/ TDD), or by writing us at NTID, Rochester Institute of Technology , P.O. Box 9887, Rochester, NY, 14623-0887. William }. Newell Sign Communication Department, NTID Frank Caccamise Communication Research, NTID REVIEWS Parents' Guide to Speech and Deafness, Donald R. Calvert, Ph.D., 62 pp., $9.50 paperback, Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, 3417 Volta Place, NW, Washington, DC 20007, 1984. The introduction to this book noted that it was "prepared as a guide to parents who want their hearing-impaired children to learn to talk and who want to be included in the act of teaching" (p. 1). Chapters 1-4 address the effects of hearing loss on speech, audiology, hearing aids, and the need for a consistent monitoring program. Chapter 5 describes how to evaluate the teaching of speech in the educational setting, and also defines various approaches to teaching speech. Chapter 6 addresses the objective stated in the introduction —how parents can help their deaf children use and improve their speech. This chapter is the weakest section of the book. It simply suggests the need for language experiences, carry-over between the classroom and the home, and the need for establishing an oral environment. Parent educators respond to many questions from parents about ways they can help their deaf children develop their speech skills. Parents need additional information on ways to enrich their children's language and speech environment. Neither parent educators nor parents themselves will find this book particularly helpful because this information is a summary of material that is already available in other sources, and it offers nothing new to the population for which it was intended. Ruth F. Howell, Ed. D. Family Educator Maryland School for the Deaf Frederick, MD 21701 Reading and Deafness, Cynthia King, Ph.D., and Stephen P. Quigley, Ph.D., 422 pp., $29.50, College Hill Press, San Diego, CA, 1985. Reading researchers and teachers who work eyeball-toeyeball with deaf youth will find a bulky book with very little substantive content to help them teach reading. Why? The authors present an erroneous and narrow view of the reading process by emphasizing the importance of syntax and de-emphasizing the cognitive, semantic, pragmatic, and social /cultural aspects of getting meaning from print. Given the promised scope of the title, Reading and Deafness, the authors have the responsibility to provide a more balanced 316 representation of approaches to the reading process. Unfortunately , they don't. For example, the developmental approach is omitted. The book neglects to describe early literacy behaviors of young deaf children even though there have been at least 3 dissertations since 1980 and a national literacy study out of Gallaudet University (2 years in progress ) that detail these behaviors. Teachers need this information in order to understand the overall reading development of deaf youth. Of the studies the authors do cite, they give positive remarks about their own work and assemble other studies to support their "syntactic " point of view. This biased and narrow view considerably weakens the book. Finally, although Dr. King and Dr. Quigley give practical suggestions to teachers, they give the reader no indication that they have tried out their ideas on real deaf children. This is not a trivial issue. Few of us would seek the medical advice of a doctor who has never cured a patient nor would we seek the legal advice of a lawyer who has never won a case. Teachers need educational prescriptions from teacher/researchers who actively work in classrooms with deaf youth, who videotape and study actual reading behaviors, then present their clinical observations of deaf youth's responses to print. Apparently, the authors did not believe that their suggestions needed to be piloted. Instead , they resort to arm-chair theorizing after selectively regurgitating the work of their colleagues. What is useful about Reading and Deafness? Even though it is neither an objective scholarly endeavor nor even a sufficiently original or imaginative volume, the book does contain an extensive bibliography. Graduate students may find this useful when shopping for a thesis topic. However, they...

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