ABSTRACT
The spoken language of deaf and hard of hearing students is typically delayed compared to hearing children despite years of intensive speech training, and most never learn to speak as intelligibly as their hearing peers. Deaf children can learn English through speech or spoken language, lipreading or speech reading, English signing systems, or through literacy. Regarding literacy, most deaf adults use reading and writing daily to communicate with hearing persons who do not know sign language. Psychological testing of children who are deaf has significant ramifications and should be done only by trained professionals and interpreted by an individual who has native language fluency in American Sign Language. A comprehensive communication and language assessment of a child who is deaf should include the following: a description of background variables that affect language learning such as age, age of onset, extent and type of hearing loss; an assessment of speech intelligibility, speech production, and speech reading ability.
