II. Specific Language Disability" Word Deafness

I TEACH THE "'WORD DEAF'" by

LILLIAN CRAIG

H E was eight years old. His paren ts stood by help- lessly as he rolled over and over on the floor of the l iv ing room, screaming! Simi lar incidents had occurred several t imes, each worse than the one before. They had tr ied wh ipp ing h im but tha t had mere ly intensi- fied the trouble. Fo r some t ime a f te rwards they could see hate for t h e m in the face tha t usua l ly was ex- press ionless except for a s t ra ined look, a puzzled ex- press ion as he would s tare up into his paren ts ' faces. It was an appeal for help, help they did not know how to give.

This boy had a lways been d i f ferent f rom the i r o ther chi ldren. He was late in l ea rn ing to ta lk and even now talked but l i t t l e - -a few words and much poin t ing conveyed his meaning. But he had not been rea l ly unhappy unt i l he s tar ted to school. By and by, the teacher began saying, "Read," and o ther chi ldren would look at the book and say words they saw on the pr in ted page. But those words, to Tommy, were a jumble of funny lit t le marks, mean ing nothing. And for the most part, the words they said were funny li t t le sounds that mean t nothing. His c lassmates would look at h im and laugh. And on the school ground he would hear the word "dumb." " T o m m y can ' t read! T o m m y is dumb!" He didn ' t know wha t the word "dumb" meant , but it was someth ing he didn ' t like to be called, and it had someth ing to do wi th that awful th ing called a book. Books caused people to laugh at bim; books caused the teacher to be cross wi th him; books caused his mo the r to cry w h e n she said "Read" and he didn't . Books were his enemies, ye t the wor ld seemed to be full of them. He had t r ied to get rid of the things; he had th rown all in the book cases out of the window; he had in tended to burn t h e m later, but his fa ther had taken a long th ing called a whip that cut deep and hurt , and had forced h im to ca r ry t h e m all back into the house again. Now exhaus ted by the work of t h rowing severa l hundred books out and ca r ry ing severa l hundred books back in, suf fe r ing f rom the whip which still stung, puzzled by his paren ts ' cruel ty, f rus t ra ted in his efforts to get rid of b o o k s - - h e was lying on the floor screaming! Screaming!

His fa ther put his a rm around the m o t h e r and led her out of the room. "We must face it!" he said as the tears poured down his cheeks. "Our boy doesn ' t have good sense!" And she cried, "Let ' s take h im to a psy- chia t r i s t and see if any th ing at all can be done!"

So they took h im to a psychiat r is t . "Your boy is word-deaf!" he said. "He has per fec t ly good s e n s e - - that is, his mind is all r ight. But he wil l g row up wi th eve ry indicat ion of being feeble-minded unless you get help for him." Word deafness, the doctor ex- plained, was a condi t ion which the wisest physic ians didn ' t qui te unders tand. The hear ing of the child was perfect so the t e rm word "deafness" was a misnomer .

M@s Lil l ian Craig, n o w ret ired, .~'tudied w i th l)r . Samue l T. Or ton and ta~lght by his method.~ in Roanoke, Virginia , for a ~umber of years. She i.s. also the au thor of several novels.

Yes, he could be l ieve tha t T o m m y was the f irs t in the family to hear an airplane, or to hear a car coming up the i r d r i veway to the house. The boy unders tood sounds. But to h im words were only sounds - - sounds that d idn ' t make sense.

So this was the trouble! The parents now knew: the spoken word did not mean to this child wha t it did to others. W h e n a bucke t of food was handed to h im wi th a wave of the hand toward the hog pen, he could feed the hogs, but the fact tha t the words hogs, pigs, sows and shoats were all used about the same animals, had h im so confused tha t he did not call t h e m anyth ing; he had no word for the c rea tu res he daily fed.

He had shocked his rel igious paren ts by doing noth ing but giggle w h e n they had h im get on his knees to pray. Yet wha t was more na tura l than for this child to do that? He had never found out w h y he was told to get on his knees, nor to w h o m he was talking; he had no concept of God. His parents, edu- cated, conscient ious parents though they were, had long before classed h im as feeble-minded, but they had hidden this awful fact in thei r hear ts unt i l this day when they confessed the belief to each other.

Af ter he had been diagnosed, the boy was sent to me. "Wha t a handsome youngs te r you are," I thought , "but w h a t a b lank li t t le face." And I soon decided his mind was as b lank as his face. Long la ter I found his mind was not as comple te ly b lank as I thought , for there were memor ies of th ings stored there which I did not suspect. But so far as I could then learn, no th ing was there. The normal child hangs new th ings he learns onto the th ings he has a l ready learned, new exper iences onto past experiences, but apparen t ly T o m m y had not a th ing onto which to hang anything!

Firs t , I had to teach h im the Engl i sh l a n g u a g e - - jus t as if it were a fore ign language, only the average child would have learned that far more quickly. I showed him pictures and had h im say the word. The pic ture of a house had to be shown m a n y t imes and the word "house" said over and over. Then I would take h im outside and show h im my house. The words "porch, roof, window, tree, bush, grass" were t aught the same way. This vocabula ry bui ld ing was kept up all the six years I t augh t him, but af ter severa l weeks, I decided to t ry to teach reading. Firs t , I t r ied the word method. That a l ready had been t r ied for two years, wi th much, much coaching being done at home, and no progress w h a t e v e r had been made. But I t r ied it wi th associa t ing words wi th pictures. The re were no results. He s imply could not r e m e m b e r even a few words by sight. So I began teaching h im phonics. The f irs t sound I gave h im was the sound of the le t te r m. I said it, had h im say it, had h im notice how his mouth felt w h e n he said it, had h im pr in t it and notice how his hand felt w h e n he made it; and so wi th ear, speech, hand and mou th - -v i sua l , audi tory and k ines the t i c - - a l l w o rk in g for h im at the same time, he learned it af ter severa l days, and af ter going

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t h rough the process more than 500 t imes. He learned the second sound af ter 400 efforts, the th i rd af ter approx imate ly 300 and so on, each sound requ i r ing fewer repet i t ions before it was mastered. I t was a long process, but at the end of six years, he was a hand- some, laughing, wel l adjus ted boy ready to en ter a small p r epa ra to ry school. And there he is doing well. If he persists he can take a college education.

Yet for qui te a whi le af ter T o m m y first came to me, I would have to ask the same quest ion at least th ree t imes, before I could find a combina t ion of words which he unders tood. E v e n then, I would have to wai t for an answer whi le he s lowly though t it over and f igured out wha t I meant .

He did not l ike to be read to because he didn ' t unde r s t and the words, jus t as we would not enjoy stories to us in a fore ign language wi th which we were not familiar . But at last, by te l l ing a s tory in v e r y shor t easy sentences, and acting it out, some- t imes hav ing h im act out the par t of one charac te r whi le I took another , he began to unders tand wha t s tories were. Then I would tell them, whi le I pre- tended to read them, so as to get h im to associate s tories wi th books. I t r ied to make these happy periods and usual ly ended them with g iv ing h im a piece of candy. Bad for his teeth? Well, someth ing had to be done to convince h im books didn ' t deserve to be t h rown out of the windows!

At f irs t he did not ta lk plainly, not because he had not "heard" c o r r e c t l y - - b u t because he had not r e m e m b e r e d the sound correct ly . F r e q u e n t l y he gave names of his own to things, as call ing an umbre l la a ra inbre l la . In read ing he would subs t i tu te words, showing he associated ideas wi th them but could not recall the word itself. Such was the case w h e n he called "ba rn" farm and "hogs" corn which he fed to them. "Bal l" he cal led t h r o w and "candy" store.

Words wi th more than one mean ing confused him. I r e m e m b e r his disgust af ter he had become a good four th grade reader w h e n one day he announced that he would not f inish that story; the boy in it was an idiot, he said; tha t boy had taken his ten t far back into the mounta ins to go camping. And af ter ge t t ing it there, he had th rown it away. W h e n he read the of fending sentence to me, it was "Then Bil ly pi tched his tent ."

"You see," T o m m y cried, "to pitch a ball is to t h row it. And this idiot t h r ew his ten t away!"

W h e n I expla ined the meaning, he said, bell igerent- ly, "Pres iden t E i s e n h o w e r ought to make a law against words hav ing d i f ferent meanings . Words ought to say wha t they mean, and there ough tn ' t to be but one word to say it." I sympath ized with h im but I d idn ' t bel ieve even the pres iden t could r emedy this par- t icular s i tuation.

Some of the cases I have t augh t were more severe than Tommy ' s . There was Stella who was seven years old. She was v e r y ina t t en t ive as all of these chi ldren are, and jus t as we would be in a fore ign school if we didn ' t unde r s t and the language. These chi ldren close the i r ears to the sound of ta lk ing jus t as we do to t raff ic noises or to the whis t le of passing trains. W h e n v i s i t ing a home close to a ra i l road track, I have often been surpr i sed to hear one m e m b e r of the family ask another , "Has n u m b e r four p a s s e d ? " - - w h e n number four had caused the house to shake wi th its grea t

noise. But this family had successful ly closed the i r ears to the daily sound. Tha t is wha t these ch i ld ren do. And Stella was an exper t at it. Also she was v e r y active, so I had to tie he r in he r chai r and keep her d i rec t ly in f ront of me. It took severa l weeks to teach her a few words and severa l months to get her to produce even a two-word sentence "all on her own." I would point to a ball and say, "Pick up the ball. Th row the hall," and taking her hand, I would have her do it. Or I would say "Walk" or " R u n " and t ak ing her by the arm, I would have her do as I directed.

This child 's parents had felt she was hopeless w h e n she was not. Since she did not ta lk to them, they did not talk to her. And she had been neglected, not th rough lack of love, but t h rough lack of knowledge of how to help her.

E v e n in much mi lder cases, the parents , f inding a si lent child poor company, do not talk enough to him. And since the child pays no a t ten t ion to the read ing of stories, the paren ts do not read to him. The re fo re these chi ldren are depr ived of the vocabu la ry build- ing which the normal child gets automat ical ly . And so they fail to acqui re a great deal of i n fo rma t ion tha t they would get if they could quick ly unders tand the spoken word.

The "word deaf" of ten cannot r e m e m b e r syllables in sequence and are apt to spell, even in the h igher grades, and often to pronounce, three-syl lable words as " in teres t ing ," in-est-ter-ing, or "under s t and" as stand- under, and in this way m a n y words are p r o n o u n c e d - - and spe l led- -pecul ia r ly . I have found tha t they can do ve ry l i t t le wi th read ing and still less wi th spell ing unless they are t aught by the phonet ic method. I know that this is t rue because some of our great psy- chiatr is ts and some of our grea t educators have found it to be true. I know it is t rue because I have t r ied eve ry method in deal ing wi th them and have found that, for them, phonics is the only approach by which they can learn to read.

No one knows how m a n y of these chi ldren there are. Many of the more severe cases are placed in feebleminded ins t i tu t ions because people suppose a child who can hear but who cannot ta lk or under- s tand wha t is said, belongs there. Yet, u n d e rn ea th the disabili ty, they have good minds. Some of t h e m are placed in schools for the deaf, wi th the idea that some- th ing mus t be wrong wi th the i r hearing.

But there are many of these chi ldren who have jus t a li t t le of this t r o u b l e - - m i l d cases who are in the public schools. They of ten tu rn up in s low reading groups but they do not respond as the usual pupil does. They are to be pi t ied more than any others in our schools because they have a double language handi- cap, audi tory as well as visual, and the i r p roblem is seldom unders tood for wha t it is.

W h y have we not heard more about these aff l ic ted youngs ters? The only answer is tha t they go, for the most part, unrecognized. They are labeled "dumb" because they have t rouble l ea rn ing the i r m o t h e r tongue, in unders t and ing the wor ld of words a round them. For them, language at f i rs t seems to be made up of sounds, not words. Later , they miss out because they do not grasp the f iner shades of word meaning, do not a lways pronounce or spell t h e m correct ly . T h e y should be helped! They can be helped! I know; I have t aught the "word deaf."

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