Why it is it difficult for DHH people to learn English pronunciation?
Though the main impact of deafness from birth is the difficulty in learning and using spoken language, which is the type of language most commonly used by society in general (Marschark & Spencer, 2006; Archbold, 2015), spoken language development of deaf children may be more possible today than ever before (Marschark & Spencer, 2006). This has happened thanks to early diagnosis and intervention, the rapid development of technology (cochlear implantation at a very early age, good quality hearing aids, etc.), and DHH children being offered personalized care and education that gives them a higher chance of reaching their full cognitive potential.
Nowadays, spoken language development (especially in non-English speaking countries) entails not only national but also foreign language learning, and the younger generation in many countries is functionally bilingual, using English as a tool to access information, career opportunities, and entertainment.
The first successful attempts to teach foreign languages to DHH students were made naturally in the context of bilingual families, migration, and/or education in a bilingual or multilingual country: DHH children and young people in such contexts are exposed to and may acquire two or more spoken languages. The first formal foreign language classes for DHH learners started at Gallaudet University at the end of 19th century (Sutherland, 2008). This university has been providing foreign language education for many years within the Department of Foreign Languages, Literature, and Cultures, where Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Latin are taught, mainly in their written forms.
In most European countries, foreign language instruction has been obligatory for hearing students for several decades. However, up until the 1990s, DHH students were deprived of this possibility. It was not until then that foreign language classes for DHH students became available in non-English-speaking European countries (Domagała-Zyśk, 2003a). This teaching specialism is growing alongside research (cf. Domagała-Zyśk, 2003b; Janakova, 2005; Bajko, 2008; Kontra, 2013; Domagała-Zyśk, 2013a), thus paving the way for improved, evidence-based practice that addresses the linguistic challenges for DHH children and adults.
Speaking in a foreign language well enough for one’s interlocutor to recognize one’s statements and get the message is usually sufficient for successful communication, even if the statements are not fully grammatically correct. To some extent, this also applies to writing – the key point is to formulate the thoughts in such a way that they can be understood. Minor grammatical mistakes usually do not obstruct the achievement of this goal.
Teaching DHH students to speak in a foreign language is a practice fraught with controversy. Some teachers suggest that, as it is not possible for DHH students to listen freely to foreign speech, they should not be expected to learn to speak the language. Others prove that even if listening is not ideal for them, they may learn how to pronounce foreign speech and lipread it and participate quite effectively in oral communication. The second position is nowadays prevailing as more and more DHH persons actually speak in the majority spoken language and thus want to speak in foreign languages.
The most controversial issue when teaching DHH students to speak in a foreign language is the level of their pronunciation performance and establishing appropriate rules and benchmarks for it. The basis for these benchmarks should be a precise observation and diagnosis of the student’s pronunciation skills in his or her national spoken language, so that the aim can be to achieve such a level of pronunciation accuracy as might be achieved by DHH users of that language (cf. Domagała-Zyśk, 2013b).
Speech intelligibility has been defined as “that aspect of speech-language output that allows a listener to understand what a speaker is saying” (Nicolosi, Harryman, & Kresheck, 1996). The speech intelligibility of DHH persons is a dynamic phenomenon, changing throughout their life. It may rise when speech is regularly used and correct pronunciation consciously practised, and it may deteriorate when they are discouraged from using speech in communication, afraid of making mistakes, or worried about not being understood. The level of DHH people’s speech intelligibility also depends on social context. It is more intelligible for people familiar with the DHH person’s style of pronunciation, and in emotionally supportive and accepting environments with good acoustic conditions. Contemporary research on DHH speech pronunciation also deals with assessing proper articulation of single phonemes, syllables, and words, as well as breath control, speech rate, voice quality, and pitch. Research shows that DHH children learn the phonemes in the same order as hearing children, but this process usually takes longer (Blamey, 2003) and some delays in speech recognition and production are reported. However, this depends on their level of intelligence, level of hearing loss, family background, scope and type of educational and reading experiences, and other school-related factors.
The quality of speech of DHH persons varies according to individual characteristics, but some common features can be observed. The most characteristic factor is centralization of the pronunciation of vocal segments, which means that high vowels are pronounced lower, and low vowels higher. For the listener, it may mean that the majority of vowels sound similar to the neutral vowel schwa (Tye-Murray, 1991). As for consonants, they are usually easier to pronounce, but there are still some difficulties (Levitt & Stromberg, 1983), including incorrect pronunciation of sibilants; problems with sonority; replacing /k/ and /g/ with /x/, and /r/ with /w/; changes in the place of articulation, elisions, affricatives /t∫/ and /d /: are realized as one element only, with a weak plosive element. The quality of speech and intelligibility do not depend only on the correct pronunciation of single phonemes or syllables, but also on prosodic features such as stress, rhythm, and intonation (Ertmer, 2010).
Typical problems for DHH students in speaking English are described in Domagała-Zyśk (2013b), in which speech therapists of Polish and teachers of English were asked to assess the intelligibility and language production of DHH students in Polish and English. By analyzing the speaking profiles of her six students out of 35 participating in the study did not want to speak in English, and these were the individuals who only rarely spoke in their national language. The other 29 students spoke English, with varying levels of intelligibility. Ten of them were able to use only simple one- or two-word phrases, mainly during classroom conversations; 13 used more complicated English and spoke it both in and out of the classroom; and six were able to speak English freely whether traveling or studying abroad, and in everyday or professional situations. In each case their level of intelligibility in English was similar to or only a bit lower than in their national spoken language.
The six basic difficulties of Polish DHH students learning EFL are summarized by Domagała-Zyśk (2013b) as:
- pronouncing letters and words as they are written, without applying pronunciation rules and habits;
- using sounds from their national spoken language instead of English sounds, for example, using /s/ or /f/ instead of English /th/;
- adding unnecessary sounds where a consonant cluster appears (like in the word table);
- not pronouncing /s/ at the end of words in the plural or 3rd person singular forms;
- pronouncing the past tense ending /-ed/ in the same way for all words, without differentiating it into its three different pronunciations; and
- using incorrect stress, rhythm, and intonation patterns.
Numerous strategies have been devised to support DHH students’ English pronunciation. Visual Phonics and cued speech are among the most common ones. They possess some similarities: they are used at educational institutions to support national language learning, and though they use gestures, they are not signing systems. Visual Phonics is a system of 46 hand cues which can be used in conjunction with spoken language while teaching reading to primary school students. Its aim is to augment auditory information and make it possible for DHH students to perceive English phonemes in a multisensory way – auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic (W...
