Arizona State University - Sun Devil Spark / Sahuaro Yearbook (Tempe, AZ)

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lcornin io folk. what o soy to Cl silent world by Diane Mclntyre ln the child-size classrooms of the University's Speech and Hearing Clinic, very special ASU students work at the most important task of their lives: learning to talk. These special 'fstudents are children, many of pre- school age. They are all deaf or heard-of-hearing, they all need help mastering the complex system of language and speech that normal chil- dren learn unaided.That help they find at the clinic in the south end of the Language and Literature building. The Speech and Hearing clinic's facilities are the most modern in the state, said Dr. Gordon Cluff, director. The clinic is reasonably well-equip- ped, and is the only state speech and hearing service ac- credited by the Professional Services Board of the Ameri- can Board of Examiners in Speech Pathology and Audiol- ogy. Both problem evaluation and therapy work for speech and language disorders are part of the clinic. Persons coming there for therapy might have had their larynx removed because of cancer. Stutterers, or those who have suffered brain damage that affected their speech also come for treatment. The pre- school is also part of the clinic's therapy work. All testing and therapy is directed by Uni- versity students studying com- munication disorders and audiology. Faculty and grad- uate students act as super- visors. The preschool began in the spring semester of 1971, after Dr. john Hetherington had joined the faculty. Through an interest shown by a group of parents, we found there was only one other preschool for children with hearing handi- caps in the Valley, Dr. Hether- ington said. And because the University had no preschool, our students very seldom ever had an opportunity to see these types of children, or to work with them. The pre- school began that spring based on a program three graduate students devised as part of a class project. Five children took part. During the summer, the preschool was expanded to two classes, a primary class for children 2 and 3 years old, and an intermediate group for children about 4 and 5 years of age. About a dozen chil- dren form the preschool now. The main thrust of a pre- school deaf education program is to strengthen fundamental language concepts and capa- cities, explained Dr. Hether- ington. lt isn't, of course, an experience where the children learn how to read or learn how to write, but one in which they are exposed in a structured way to certain aspects of the environment so that they can internalize them. That is es- sentially what developing a Through an interest shown by a group of parents, we found there was only one other preschool for children with hearing handicaps in the Valley. Speech and Hearing Clinic-27

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language is, the internalizing of the environment, social as well as physical. Language allows us to ab- stract, to represent our en- vironment, continued Dr. Cluff. For example, the word over as an auxiliary verb has the relative concepts of moving over there and above some- thing. We can teach a child to say the word over fairly easily. What is more difficult is to associate for him the word with its various functions. What does it mean? What does it do? We have been establishing what we feel is a different type of educational approach for these children than what is normally used in most schools or preschools. Rather than teaching what is called the nouning process llearning names? we have gone into what we consider concept learning, explained Dr. Heth- erington. Numbers are an example. We have been suc- cessful in about six months teaching 2 and 3-year-olds a concept of numbers. We try to go through 10. We have been successful through about seven now. These children 28-Speech and Hearing Clinic Jive:-ww'