Question 2- Language Assessment

Question 2- Language Assessment

Now that you have learned about the impact of a hearing loss upon language development, it is time to explore the progression of language goals for your child and look at how we determine if we are meeting those goals. You are already aware that when there is a “mismatch” in language learning between you and your child. That mismatch is importance for your family and your Deaf or Hard of Hearing child to overcome.

Be an Active Observer

As we begin to look at the progression of language goals it is necessary to focus on goals for your family, not just your child. Family centered goals help create an environment of acceptance and belonging for your hearing-impaired child. Activities that are important to your everyday living should be areas of focus for establishing languagelearning goals. Begin to notice what your baby gazes at, and their gestures. As you learn what draws your baby’s attention, you will gain greater understanding of what interests him/her. Bromwich suggests that there are six distinct levels of parent/child interaction.

• Level 1:

• The parent enjoys her child

• Level 2:

• The parent is sensitive observer of her child, reads his behavioral cuesaccurately, and is responsive to them

• Level 3:

• The parent engages in a quality of interaction with her child that is mutually

satisfying and that provides opportunity for the development of attachment.

• Level 4:

• The parent demonstrates an awarenessof materials, activities, and

experiences suitable for her child's current stage of development.

• Level 5:

• The parent initiates new play activities and experiences based on

principles that she has internalized from her own experiences, or on the

same principles as activities suggested to or modeled for her.

• Level 6:

• The parent independently generates a wide range of developmentally

appropriate activities and experiences, interesting to the child, in familiar and

new situations, and at new levels of the child's development.

Bromwich, R. (1981). As cited by Johnson, Harold A. (2008).

One of your family goals should be for you to become increasingly comfortable at moving to the deeper levels of parental involvement with your baby as stated above. We will work together to help you gain more confidence with these levels and increase your ability to describe what it is that your child is doing.

As part of being a good observer of your child, learning how to gain and maintain joint attentionis key. This is important to language development because seeing and listening together produce better results than just listening alone. Unlike your language learning, which was primarily sound (auditory) based, your child’s learning is based primarily on sight (visual), if he/she is without their hearing aid(s). Different modalities may require more listening sensitivity or more visual sensitivity. We will work together to build a language environment that will meet the language goals of your family. The main objective here is to practice putting yourself in a position where you can be seen and heard clearly by your child,as well as allowing your baby to see the object of your conversation. Zaidman-Ziat and Dromi (2007) discuss intervention programs for Deaf or Hard of Hearing children and their familiesthat should assist adults in gaining joint attention by learning “how to relocate objects as well as how to share interest in picture books. Likewise, mothers should learn strategies for timing of input. They should learn to wait until their child with hearing loss focuses on their face or hands before providing the linguistic input for the child (p. 1177).”

Gaining Joint Attention and Maintaining It

Deaf-mothers with deaf-infants are fantastic role models for hearing-mothers with deaf-infants. According to Spencer (2000), deaf mothers take the signing to the infant by signing on the child’s body, or signing on or near the object of attention. “They have also been noted to wait (sometimes for fairly extended periods) for the child to look at them before signing, and at other times to use tactile signals to redirect the child’s visual attention (p. 293-294).” As you get the opportunity to meet other families with Deaf or Hard of Hearing children you will see that hearing mothers also have techniques that they have found affective for their children. Remember, “What makes the choice work for your child is what makes the choice right. (Hands & Voices, Jan 27)”

Statistically both deaf and hearing children increased their communication by 90% by age 3 years when they were engaged in a common focus with their mothers (Lederberg & Everhart, 2000). Therefore, a second family goal should be to gain joint-attention with your child whenever communication is taking place. For joint-attention to occur you and your child must be looking at and communicating about the same object simultaneously. Because of gaining joint attention, your child will become increasingly aware that you are tending to his/her needs and that what is important to him/her is also important to you. They will also begin to realize that objects, actions, and feelings have names. Then, when they use the names appropriately, they will get what they want. For example, if your son says ball and points to the ball on the shelf, you may go to the shelf and get him the ball. Over time, you will see the number of joint-attention opportunities increase. You should also experience that each time you and your baby are interacting; you are engaged for a longer period.

Building a Language-Rich Home Environment

A third family goal should center on creating a language-rich home environment. From the Hands & Voices website, authors Corwin, Gallegos, Moeller, and Brown (2005) discuss the elements of a language-rich home environment for a deaf-child. They state, “Parenting any child is a developmental process. When a child is deaf or hard of hearing, families learn everything that any parent learns, but they add the process of figuring out how to provide and make accessible fluent language models and strategies to support increasingly abstract dialogues with their child.” The key elements that should be included in this environment are:

Respectful:Your child is a member of your family and should be fully involved in everything that occurs within the walls just as if he/she had no hearing impairment.

Rich and Meaningful:Your child’s interests and natural curiosity should drive your communication.Example: If he is looking at the dog, give his the word “dog”.

Nurturing: Language interactions should begin with the here and now and stretch the child's use of new vocabulary, complex language, and abstract ideas. Example: As your child grows, he will change his vocabulary for a drink from “baba” to “cup” to “milk” then “juice” and beyond. We are constantly building our vocabulary.

Responsive:Adults follow a child's lead and map language into communicative attempts that your child initiates. Example: If you are on the floor reading a book and your child starts to go for the blocks, take that cue and put the book away for now. Build a new language experience around the blocks.

Strategic:Language is flexible and will incorporate objects, repetition, rephrasing, and the like. In a bathtubexperience, you may say the word “water” 10-12 times to focus they attention and help them build that meaning through repetition.

Constant:Language happens everywhere. Your child is constantly cueing into an object, your voice, and your hands. Conversations will include questioning, sharing, problem solving… Remember to engage your child in conversation at all venues: grandma’s house, in the car, at the mall, in the doctor’s office, etc.

Guiding:Language is used to advocate and provide guidance. Your child will learn from you, his primary teacher. You set the standard that he will follow.

Social:Your child should be communicating with all other adults and children in their environment. Look for opportunities to engage with other children, those that are Deaf or Hard of Hearing, and those that are not. Children are capable of learning about diversity from very young.

Complete:Your child has fluent language models. Using your native language properly is the best way to help your child learn it the right way the first time.

Emotional: Language is used to communicate your child’s feelings and to get their needs met. Just as you learned that your baby has different cries (for being hungry, feeling sick, being mad), using language will help your child feel secure.

Thought-Provoking:The most wonderful aspect of language is that its purpose is to communicate and stimulate thought. The world is an amazing place that is full of surprises. Children need the opportunity to talk about the "whys" and "hows" of their environment. Language is the way you will stay connected with your child regardless of the modality you choose. As long as you and your child are communicating in the some modality, you are matched for further growth in language development.

Creating and supporting this language-rich environment will lead to countless opportunities for you and your child to experience language and interact on a variety of levels over the next several years. Items that will enhance this environment may include books, pictures, labels for items around the house, and interactive toys.

The Importance of Routines

Now that you are working on noticing the things in the environment that interest your child, you are gaining greater confidence in reaching joint attention with your child and we are creating a language-rich environment within your home, think of what routines you can establish that can lend themselves to great learning for your family. “Routines are functional events of daily living in which the consistent procedures provide a familiar framework for careproviders and children to engage in teaching and learning. Routines are valued as a context for intervention with children who have special needs because they are so repetitive and predictable.” “In most routines, a positive outcome is achieved.” (Kansas 1999, p. 3) Routines are how human manage their lives. We are, for the most part, predictable. Your routines should consist of activities that are valued by your family. Routines may include mealtime, playing with and cleaning up toys, bath time, and outside play- going to the park/playground. These are the activities you are your child can count on each day. They will begin to look forward to and predict what will happen next in their day. Table 2-1 is an example of how you can build a routine for your family and include all the necessary elements to make it a highly teachable time. Table 2-2 is a blank copy of the routine sheet for you to use to create a routine of your own. As time passes, the routines for your family will need to be modified to incorporate new skills for your child.

Your Child’s Progress

Your child’s language will evolve over time as you and your family continues with the activities we have discussed. As you areworking on gaining more joint attention with your baby, he/she will be responding to you by looking at you and at the objects that you place in his sight path. His/her desire and ability to respond to you is increasing. Your child will begin to initiate interactions with you by crying, or making some kind of noise. He knows that this form of behavior will lead to you attending to him. When he/she is able to point or reach for an object of desire, this indicates his ability to focus on that object and begin an interaction. The next behavior to watch for is his/her ability to use turn-taking behaviors. These abilities are all developed during your child’s language acquisition process.

Your next step is to understand how the language developmental process occurs. Thesteps are:

1-The child is an active learner.

2-The child’s exploration & interaction with the environment are evident.

3-The child observes the environmental response to the interaction.

4-The child develops expectations of what will happen; if a given behavioral strategy is used, (i.e. If I grab at the toy is moves.).

5-The child observes the expected outcome vs. the actual response, then a feedback system is established and learning occurs (i.e. If I keep looking and smiling at mom, she will continue to play with me, but if I look away, she will stop.).

6-The child gets assistance in this learning by a careprovider.

7-The child realizes the frequency, consistency, and immediacy of careproviders responsive behavior.

8-The careprovider recognition and use of the infant’s topic of interest continues the interaction.

9-The careproviders use specific communicative behaviors that are familiar to the child.

Benchmarks of Progress

Your baby will be making progress that you may not even be aware of. Here are a few goals that you may want to be watching for. These goals are just a beginning and may be modified to meet the goals and objectives you have for him/her. Your child will…

• …seek your attention in more sophisticated ways (crying, reaching for you, moving toward you, vocalizing for your attention).
• … in established routines, he/she will anticipate what comes next (i.e. when looking at a book, playing pat-a-cake).
• …begin to engage you in play (move in your direction and bring you a toy or book).
• … increase his/her attention to auditory/visual stimuli (increased time in joint attention either listening or watching adult).
• … increase his/her ability to distinguish--- loud v. soft sounds (auditory) or signs for categories of objects (foods v. animals v. toys).

Tracking Progress

So, now we tackle the question of how do we know if we are meeting the goals? There are many ways for you to document your progress as well as that of your child. You are all in a position to be learning from one another. Your child is learning about the world around them and you are learning how to help them adapt as a visual learning in a hearing world. Parents are their child’s first teacher. You have a unique opportunity to document your family experiences with this child and share them with others. You know your child best. Think about how you want to document your family’s progress. Do you enjoy scrapbooking, using the computer to create graphical representations, photography, calendar notations, diary writing, using note-taking techniques? All of these are great ideas of ways to document the progress. BoysTown Hospital has developed some videotapes that you may find interesting as you explore parent/child interactions and how to document the time you spend with your baby. See visit for more information. As well as keeping track of your baby’s progress, there are appointments, testing results, meetings, and insurance information to tend to. The following website contains templates that you can use to help yourself stay organized. Please visit

or more information.

Parents as Observers

Many parents do not feel qualified to observe and document the development of their own baby. Dromi’s 2003 study required direct observation by a parent for data collection. Parents were taught what to look for and how to report what they see. They also reported how many times each behavior occurred. Parents were given written documentation regarding definitions of key terms. Parents and professionals reported the same behaviors in the children 86.3% of the time. “These results soundly indicate that hearing parents of deaf children can provide reliable information on the communicative behaviors of their children at home when they are guided by a structured questionnaire that presents a closed set of optional responses (Dromi, p. 373).” Her study recommended that parents be regarded as collaborators in the assessment of their own children. Parents can make substantial contributions to helping educators, clinicians and researchers better understand their young children’s communicative abilities.

Many researchers have used the method of videotaping for observation so that they can rewind the tape and view it repeatedly. This method would be equally helpful for parents who wish to see more closely the ways your baby attempts to communicate with you. Using this method will make you become a confident observer of positive developments.

Carry-Over…What’s That?

Once your child has started to reproduce good language at home and we have been able to document their progress it is time to see if he/she will respond the same way in other environments. What about with a careprovider? What about at Grandma’s house or in the car? That is called “carry-over.” Can your child duplicate they interaction with different adults or in a variety of environments? Maybe their performance is different. How is it different and why? Learning in isolation is not enough. For growth in language development to continue, carry-over must be achieved.