Reading, Special Education, and Deaf Children
Supalla & Byrne
The UDL scholars point out that special education does not emphasize access to learning,
as it should. This deficiency causes Trezek Wang, and Paul (2010) to develop and maintain their
perceptions without considering what deaf children see in language or even how they best learn
language. More problems with special education can be found with Nussbaum, Waddy-Smith, and
Doyle (2012). These deaf education experts acknowledge that MCE is not a natural language, yet
assert that it can serve as "a support to clarifying English" (p. 312). To be sure, any clarification is
helpful, but it should not serve as an equivalent to language acquisition. Deaf children are known
for learning and mastering ASL with no clarification needed (Emmorey, 2002; Mayberry, 1993;
Mayberry & Eichen, 1991; Mayberry & Squires, 2006; Newport & Meier 1985; Newport, 1990).
Interestingly enough, Trezek, Wang, and Paul (2010) wrestle with making English support
work for deaf children as follows:
Although manually coded English might be effective in introducing vocabulary and
syntax of English, they represent English at the morphological level - albeit
incompletely - rather than at the phonemic level. Therefore, these systems might
not be effective in assisting children in acquiring the beginning awareness of the
sound structure of words. Even when combined, speech ('lip') reading and manually
coded English can never provide a complete picture of spoken English. Only Cued
Speech/Language has the potential to sufficiently represent spoken English at the
phonemic level. (p. 32)
In this quote, Trezek, Wang, and Paul (2010) provide a hint about English being a spoken
language and is inaccessible for deaf children. They continue to have 'blind faith' in supports,
however, and pull in yet another system, Cued Speech/Language. They are assuming additional
supports will translate into greater success for deaf children. Yet recall that UDL scholars
cautioned about special education's preoccupation with the amount of supports. Quality is a factor,
and deaf children must connect to their own language for reading development purposes. The fact
that the textbook authors added "Language" to the term Cued Speech only causes confusion over
what language really means to deaf children.
A critique of Cued Speech/Language as compared to what is known about signed languages
in general will help restore a clear focus on the language issues in deaf education. Cued
Speech/Language does not look like a signed language. Deaf children cannot detect words through
this system, for example. A typical word in ASL relies on the use of one handshape moving
through space, either on the signer's body or in the signing space. The signed word formation
properties identified in ASL are also found in other signed languages around the world as well
(Sandler, 1999; Zeshan, 2002; Brentari, 2002, 2011). Cued Speech/Language "words" are
produced with a sequence of multiple handshapes, and the movement information (that represent
certain sounds in English) is restricted in variation as compared to that of signed words. The
possible locations on the signer's body are also reduced to the area close to the mouth. A person
using Cued Speech/Language may think they are making the phonetic components of English
visible (all while the person speaks), but the system does not perform effectively with regards to
how words are produced in the signed language modality.
Of relevance is Koo and T. Supalla's (2010) empirical evidence that deaf children exposed
to Cued Speech/Language did not acquire the system like they should with any natural language.
However, these findings do not stop deaf education experts from having undue confidence in
English support. LaSasso and Crain (2015) wrote that Cued Speech/Language "is structurally
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No.1 – Spring/Summer 2018
41