Chapter 23: Nonverbal Films: Guidelines for Their Utilization With Deaf Learners

The continuing popularity of nonverbal films holds great promise for deaf Americans. But, ironic as it may seem, nonverbal films are not automatically understandable to hearing-impaired viewers. Reason: audio/cultural elements such as music, sound effects, animation, length, and country of origin. To find out which of those factors hinder and help utilization, a diversity of titles was compared and analyzed. The resulting conclusions provide specific criteria for predicting which nonverbal films are most likely to be functional in reaching deaf students. The same materials should be equally valid for other language-impaired children and would be doubly useful within mainstreamed classrooms. This study is preliminary only, but believed worthy of further research.