Q: Should I Ignore Phonics Because the Students are Deaf?

Some EFL teachers encounter deaf students who cannot “sound out” letters in a recognizable way and are unable to distinguish the difference between many sounds of the language using their amplifying system or by lip reading.  Hence the question – should phonics be ignored when teaching the students to read English as a foreign language?

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Phonics should absolutely not be ignored.

Since deaf students’ main exposure to English as a foreign language (Please note! Not second language, foreign) is through reading, they need to learn to read meaningful sentences quickly. I believe in an approach which combines acquisition of sight words (words that the student recognizes the same way she would recognize a picture) with phonics. The sight words enable students to read meaningful sentences with words like “notebook” in them before they have learned the letter “K” or know what to do when they see “oo”.

However, if the students are not taught phonics at the same time, they will be unable to read names of people and places. They will not be able to decipher cognates such as “popcorn” even though they know what they mean. The students simply cannot progress without phonics. Names cannot even be found in the dictionary.

The first time a new letter is introduced, the teacher has no choice but to resort to limited use of L1, so the student will know which sound is being referred to. A teacher can make the /n/ sound till she is blue in the face but the deaf student cannot hear such a short sound and the sounds /n/ /t/ and /d/ look identical on the lips.

However, use of L1 should be limited to the presentation stage so that the students will learn to decode. Each letter should be introduced with a sight word. The letter N should be referred to as the letter of “notebook” which is a nice long word with plenty of cues to recognize it on the lips. The /n/ sound needs to be practiced intensively for the students to remember it. The most fun way I have found to do that is to use names. Check for the /n/ sound in all your students’ names and in their families. Proceed to football and movie stars, or whomever your students are interested in. Play games in which the students have to introduce themselves as a charachter that has that sound in his/her name. Check out names of countries and foods that are cognates. If your L1 isn’t a very phonetic language, see if your students are interested in the Spanish-speaking soap operas. Mine are!

Remember, when comparing letter sounds, never ask your deaf students to compare between minimal pairs, such as /b/ and /p/!