3. Moderate: The individual can hear conversational speech only at a close distance. Group activities, such as classroom discussions, present a
communicative challenge. 4. Moderate-Severe: The individual can hear only loud, clear
conversational speech and has much difficulty in group situations. Often, the individual’s speech is noticeably impaired though intelligible.
5. Severe: The individual cannot hear conversational speech unless it is loud and even then, cannot recognize many of the words. Environmental
sounds can be detected, though not always identified. The individual’s speech is not altogether intelligible.
6. Profound: The individual may hear loud sounds but cannot hear conversational speech at all. Vision is the primary modality for
communication. The individual’s own speech, if developed at all, is not easy to understand.
e. Examples of Possible Hearing-Speech Difficulties
This part presents some examples of possible hearing-speech difficulties Sattler, 1992: 100, such as:
1. Difficulty in discriminating consonant sounds; for example, hearing mat for bat, tab for tap.
2. Difficulty in discriminating and learning short vowel sounds.
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
3. Difficulty in sounding out a word, sound by sound; for example, difficulty saying k-a-t for cat.
4. Difficulty in sounding relating printed letters such as “f”, “pl”, and “ide” to their sounds.
5. Difficulty in separating sounds that make up blends; for example, difficulty determining that “fl” has the sound f-f…l-l.
6. Spelling and reading sight words better than phonetic words. Those examples indicate their weaknesses. However, the examples can be
used as the base to understand how hearing-speech defective students pronounce English sounds. Further, the teacher will be able to develop a teaching program
or activities to help them minimize their weaknesses. Besides, these can be used as the starting points to link between the theory and facts whether it is true or not
that all the examples mentioned above become obstacles for the students to learn a certain language.
f. Speech Reading as Method for Communication
The hearing-speech defective child may or may not have difficulty in producing normal speech, but he is likely to have significant difficulty in
understanding the speech of others. With assistance he can learn to fill in the gaps through speech reading. Johnson 1967: 422 defines speech reading as the art of
understanding a speaker’s thought by watching the movements of his lips, his face, and of his entire body, and it might be added by paying due attention to the related
PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
activities and the total situation in which communication is being carried on. The term speech reading is also known as “lip reading”.
Richards, Platt and Weber 1985:57 mention that lip reading or speech reading is a method used by deaf people and others to identify what a speaker is
saying by studying the movements of the lips and face muscles. The use of facial expressions can help the students to interpret what is being said to them.
5. Misarticulation
