Hearing Impairment

Progress:

How can you detect someone who is hearing impaired?

  1. Eye contact

    The deaf person will look intently at you when you speak. You might think, “Wow, they’re so interested in the subject, they’re hanging onto every word I say…” WRONG! They never look down if a lecturer or tutor is talking, as they’re lip-reading! If they’re not looking at you, you’ll notice that they’ve missed information that’s too obvious to miss.

  2. Question Time

    In a typical class situation, if you ask a question to a student even if his/her head was down, they would be able to answer it almost immediately. However, for a deaf person, this technique will often result in the deaf person asking you to repeat it again… except this time, the deaf person is looking at you!

    What to do: next time, call the deaf person’s name to get his/her attention, then ask the question. After class, you can ask the deaf person to step aside discreetly, and ask them if they are having trouble hearing. You’ll know what to do from there!

  3. Speech accents and language errors

    Their speech is imperfect: the absence of ‘s’ in “She wants”, “3 fire trucks”. They will also forget to add seemingly unimportant words such as “a”, “the”, “is”, “are”.
    “I am exciting!” when they actually mean, “I am excited!”
    “This morning, I went school, and class boring…”
    They also may write it like this – omitting certain propositions that make up a proper sentence.

  4. They repeat what other students say

    They just didn’t realise they didn’t hear the other person! I.e. A student asks a question and the deaf person is writing something down. Later on, the deaf person asks you the question that she missed, but everyone knows that question has already been asked. This can be the same when you ask a question, and the deaf person says the same thing as the previous person said before.

  5. Excessive use of hand gestures

    Big telltale sign that the person signs.

  6. They may seem rude

    For example, you’re starting a class, but the person is still talking. It may be because they have not heard you, not because they want to ignore you.
Types of Students