ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses several points about deafness, its impact on the course of child development and the characteristic approach. Every condition which affects a child's overall health and well-being will increase the risk of both conductive hearing loss and poor performance in school. Aborigine children with histories of otitis media were much more likely to score poorly on the sound discrimination and blending tasks, when compared with children without the disease. The acquisition of language is perhaps the most critical achievement of childhood. The central part of the language model is taken by grammar and it may well be that a child's control and understanding of the grammar of language, particularly for the hearing-impaired child, will be more important in determining the child's progress, particularly in reading. Meaning can be described as the sense, significance or intention of language.