Cued Speech provides the foundation for all other communication interventions for deaf children right from the start.
We are concerned that currently over 70% of deaf children leave primary school with poor or extremely poor reading skills. With Cued speech it doesn’t have to be this way.
Deaf children brought up with Cued Speech can achieve age appropriate reading levels equivalent to hearing children. It enhances the ability to lipread so well that deaf children can start school with all the language they need to learn to read and write. They can then go on to explore the world through reading, which leads to high levels of self-esteem. With Cued Speech children have every opportunity to reach their full potential.
Cued Speech helps to prepare babies and children for ‘hearing’ language well before receiving a cochlear implant. There is no time to wait and see if the implant is going to work, parents need to be proactive about language – Cued Speech gets language in straight away. Your deaf child can see what you’re saying, which makes it easy for them to understand the new speech sounds they hear after their ‘switch-on’.
Cued Speech provides a full and rich first language on which to build other languages such as British Sign Language. Parents wishing to use spoken language AND sign language as well, for their children at home, find that Cued Speech works. This is especially true if the parent’s signing skills are only just emerging. Cued Speech allows parents to use their own language quickly, while they take their time learning the whole signed language of the deaf community. It’s even possible to add cueing to more than one spoken language.
Cued Speech UK aspires to a model of deaf inclusion, where deaf people have all the communication and literacy skills they need to thrive – at home, in school and at work.
A professional View:
Ruth Campbell, Ph.D. (Professor Emeritus, Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Division of Psychology and Language Sciences University College London) writes in her Foreword to the book, Cued Speech and Cued Language for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children (edited by Carol J. La Sasso, Kelly Lamar Crain and Jacqueline Leybaert):
‘The importance of Cued Speech is that it opens up the world of spoken language to the deaf child in a clear and simple way, from the outset. This has, as Cornett envisioned, the potential to allow a form of the traditionally spoken language to develop naturally in a deaf child, via a communication modality that the child and the child’s caregiver can use easily, fluently, and collaboratively.
‘[Research] has shown conclusively that children exposed consistently to Cued Speech gained and maintained a head start over deaf children of similar intelligence and skill who did not have Cued Speech. Those who started using Cued Speech before school were even more likely to forge ahead, often with literacy levels and styles indistinguishable from hearing children. Because this understanding is sound-based it is uniquely beneficial for deaf children both pre- and post-cochlear implant.’
Research:
Cued Speech and the Development of Reading in English: Examining the Evidence
Beverly J. Trezek
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Volume 22, Issue 4, 1 October 2017, Pages 349–364, https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enx026
Published: 06 June 2017