ABSTRACT
The majority of deaf and hearing-impaired children are born to hearing parents. The aim of an oral approach is to teach these children to speak so that they can communicate with their family and the rest of the hearing community into which they have been born. The promotion of intelligible spoken language and the ability to understand spoken language are therefore seen as primary goals of an oral approach, with the assumption that they will then be able to use their development of spoken language both as a language for thought and as a basis for developing literacy skills and achieving access to other curriculum areas.
