Translator: Jerson Partible Reviewer: Denise RQ
I am a speech language pathologist which is a wonderful profession
for people like me who care about communication.
We think that communication is a human right.
The focus of my career has been on children who are deaf.
And early on, I learned of an innovation for access to language
that I want to tell you about.
My first job was at a preschool in Washington, D.C.
that included both deaf and hearing children.
And the first child I worked with there was Bradley,
a three year old who had profound hearing loss.
He didn't get much benefit from his hearing aids
so his parents had chosen to use a visual mode of communication with him
called Cued Speech.
So I began to cue with him,
and during that preschool year, we did ordinary preschool things,
but with the help of Cued Speech.
We talked and I cued about everything under the sun,
and Bradley's language took off.
We read and I cued dozens of books.
And he learned to read.
He went on to great language and communication skills.
Academic achievement.
What was the key?
I will forgive you if you think I was the world's best speech therapist.
But that wasn't it.
The real key was we had a powerful tool in our hands.
We had Cued Speech. Cued Speech.
What is it? What am I doing?
We all use our eyes sometimes
when we're trying to hear a spoken message.
But lipreading is really difficult. Speech happens fast.
Speech sounds look alike when they are invisible.
With lipreading alone,
we understand only about one-third of a spoken message.
To overcome this,
Cued Speech was developed by Dr. Orin Cornett
at Gallaudet University in the mid 1960s.
He wanted to enable hearing parents with deaf children
to share spoken language.
His idea was a set of hand cues
that would add information to the natural lip movements of speech
to take the guesswork out of lipreading.
How does it work? It's a very simple system.
Hand shapes show consonants. Placements show vowels.
Cues along with the lip movements of speech show the sounds we're saying,
and allow a deaf person to understand 100% of what is said.
Let me give you an example.
Let's think about the words 'bat' and 'pat'.
If you are lipreading them, you can't tell them apart.
They look alike.
But if we add cues, we make them look different.
Bat. Pat.
You can even understand it without voice:
(voiceless) Bat. Pat.
If you have some hearing, cues can be a supplement.
But spoken language can be understood entirely
through vision if that's the need.
Here's the chart that shows the whole system on one page,
hand shapes and consonants.
For adults to learn to cue,
it's simply a matter of matching up the sounds you know
with the hand shapes and the placements.
Others can learn and understand language by being cued to.
What can we cue?
Anything we can say
like supercalifragilisticexpalidocious.
I'm showing off.
(Laughter)
But I'm also showing you what cueing can do.
I've been cueing in English, but we can also cue in Spanish,
and more than 60 other languages and dialects.
What about American Sign Language? ASL?
Why do we need cues when we have signs?
ASL is a language in its own right for a vibrant culture and community.
Yes, ASL and Cued Speech are both visual means of communication,
but they are conveying different languages.
We have a sign language interpreter here,
but he is called an interpreter for a reason.
He is changing one language into another.
It is possible to use both ASL and Cued Speech, to be fluent in both.
You don't have to choose between them. You can do both.
But when you want direct access to spoken language,
cues are an effective and efficient way to do that.
What about technology? Cochlear implants. Digital hearing aids.
Technology doesn't work for all. And it doesn't work all of the time.
Technology isn't a substitute
for being able to clearly and consistently convey language.
When we cue to children who are deaf,
much research and experience shows us they learn language easily and naturally,
with powerful effects on literacy and academic achievement.
One landmark study demonstrated that when we cue to deaf children,
they read like their hearing peers.
And that's a very significant outcome
if you know the history of literacy issues for children who are deaf.
But that's not all we can do.
Children who have language or learning disabilities,
hearing children who are learning to read, need phonics,
need a good knowledge of spoken language as the basis for decoding print.
Cued Speech can be helpful in all of those situations.
Let's take a minute to see Cued Speech in action.
We'll see a video that was produced by Aaron Rose.
And Aaron and Mary-Beth are parents
who are both deaf and grew up using Cued Speech.
And now they are cueing.
They are sharing their native English language
with their daughter, Arabella.
You will see her learning and understanding language
when it is cued to her.
And you will see her beginning to cue back to her parents.
(Video) (Woman sneezing)
[Achoo!]
(Gasping) [Peek-a-boo!]
[Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. Ooo. Ooo.]
[Arabella]
[Turn the page.]
[Purple fish.]
[Look at the firetruck.]
[Do you want some milk?]
[Leaf.]
[Show mommy the ball.]
[Butterfly. It's a butterfly.]
[Where is the turtle?]
[Where is the sun?]
[The sun's outside.]
[Where's the grapes?]
[Hoo. Hoo. Hoo.]
[More.]
[Yes!]
[Can you cue it? A.]
[B.]
[C.]
[D.]
[E.]
[One.]
[Two.]
[Three.]
[Go.]
(Applause)
I can tell you hundreds of stories and point to dozens of studies
that show the impact of Cued Speech.
I'll end with the encounter that led me to drop out of law school, learn to cue,
and decide that I wanted to work with families to help them communicate.
The first time I saw Cued Speech in action,
I asked the mother I just met why she had chosen to cue with her son,
and she said to me, "I want to share my language with my son.
I want him to understand my words.
I want him to get it when I say 'I love you'.
And he does."
For 50 years, Cued Speech has been a well-kept secret.
But language shouldn't be a secret.
Thousands of families have benefited from cueing,
but it still isn't widely enough known.
Someone you know needs access to language.
You can learn to cue. Or you can tell someone about it.
You can get the word out. You can give language a hand.
Thank you.
(Applause)