1. English Proficiency I : Forum-Is it always spoken?
Scientists have long debated why babies babble. They suggest that babbling
shows a baby’s growing sensitivity to the patterns and the rythms of human speech.
From birth to before six months of age, babies have the ability to recognize the
sounds of almost any language in the world. It is during these first six to nine
months that babies acquire their native “babbling language”. A normal baby starts
first with simple syllables together to sound like real sentences and questions. What
happen, though, to children who cannot hear ? How do deaf children learn to
communicate ?
Based on our topic, we have invited some guests to tell us more on our
pleassure. Firstly, I would like to introduce Education professor, Miss Alicia Roberta,
who has been studying on how babies learn language for more than 30 years; Miss
Celline Daniel, PhD, professor of Speech communication at Pennsylvania State
University, and Madam Susan Ericson, who is credited with the popularization of
baby sign language. She is also the inventor of the “Sign With Your Baby System”
certified instructor who teach the language to parents and babies nation wide.
Chairperson : Alright, lets talk about the patterns of deaf babies of deaf parents
learn their languages.
Celline : Scientists found that only 10% of all deaf children are born to deaf
parents, are clearly a minority in the deaf population. However, these
children have linguistic advantage over deaf children of hearing
parents. Deaf children of deaf parents have an accessible language
available to them from an early age. Consequently, they develop
language at about the same rate as their hearing counterparts. Deaf
babies of deaf parents babble with their hands in the same rhythmic,
repetitive fashion as hearing babies who babble with their voices.
Chairperson : How deaf babies learn their languages from the interaction with their
deaf parents compared those hearing babies ?
Alicia : Deaf parents often sign in front of their deaf infants and may often
enlarge their children’s signs just as hearing parents elongate spoken

2. words in “baby talk”. The deaf babies who presumably watch their
parents use sign language at home start their manual babbles
before they are ten months old, the same age hearing infants begin
stringing together sounds into wordlike units.
Chairperson : Apart from that, what’s the difference of gestures between deaf
children and hearing children?
Celline : The gestures of the deaf children do not have real meaning but they
are far more systematic and deliberate than the random fingers
flutters and fist clenches of hearing babies. The motion seem to be
the deaf babies fledgling attempts to master language, said dr. Laura
An Pettito, a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal. She found
that the deaf parents use ASL to communicate with their deaf babies.
The deaf babies have the potential to indicate something when their
hand signs are placed together with other gestures.
Chairperson : Now, let Madam Susan tells us the description and linguistic structure
of ASL.
Susan : Well, ASL is an autonomous linguistic system independent of English.
It is a visual,spatial or gestural language that is very expressive and
dependent on visual cues of the hands, body and face. ASL is
symbolic and systematic, it has it’s own morphology and syntax. ASL
was originated in the United States in the late 18th centuary. It was
transformed into a true language that has been taught to many deaf
people. Like all other languages ASL uses arbitrary symbols and it’s
“word”. Word order of ASL varies according to emphasis, giving the
user many expressive possibilities.
Chairperson : If so, how ASL can be applied in education?
Susan : Across North America, the majority of deaf children attend public
schools. Some of them rely on lips reading and other people as note
takers, while others may have an ASL interpreters in the classroom.
ASL as well as signed English appear to serve, equally well, the same
roles on thinking as spoken language does for hearing children.

3. Chairperson : Next, let us discover on how hearing parents knowing that their
children are deaf and therefore how their children learn their
language.
Alicia : Deaf children of hearing parents typically begin language acquisition
later as a result of parents not knowing that their child is deaf, often
until the child is two to four years old. Therefore, a manual form of
language is not used infront of the infant, nor is the child receiving
another type of effective communication training because the infant
cannot hear information presented orally.
Chairperson : After being diagnosed, what are the first move of the parents?
Celline : After being diagnosed, some of these children may eventually first
learn on manual coding of English in the home along with speech.
Some of the hearing parents begin to learn ASL to teach their
children.
Chairperson : So, what are the findings after the babies being taught ASL in a
certain period?
Alicia : The deaf babies seemed to make hand movements over and over
again. Their hand’s motions started to resemble some of the basic
hand-shapes used in ASL. Next, they form some simple hand signs
and use these movements together to resemble ASL sentences.
Chairperson : Linguists believe that humans are born with capcity for language. A
baby’s brain is capable of learning any foreign language ing the world.
This is possible because the brain of an infant is malleable to mold of
the environment. A hearing baby whose parents are deaf and those
babies of deaf parents will be doing sign language. They will
communicate with their fingers, hands and facial expressions. For
those hearing babies who have one deaf parent will babble equally
with their hands and voices. The capacity for language is uniquely
human. As a result, the sign system of deaf is physical equivalent of
speech. In a nutshell, the old theory that only the spoken word is
language will have to be changed. At the end of this meeting, we

4. would like to thank to our guests for sharing their opinions. Thank you
for spending your precious time with us.