Hi All,
I have a first year Chinese PhD student who is profoundly deaf and has had
a cochlea implant since she was 2 yrs old. She is 100% oral and English is
her second language. Fortunately she has been in the UK long enough to be
eligible for SFE DSA.
Her spoken language is severely impaired - from what I can hear of it (I'm
severely deaf myself) both 'deaf sounding' AND 'Chinese' in that she
doesn't enunciate consonants very well.
The area of concern is her speech as she wishes to teach undergraduates in
her dept - this isn't a requirement of her PhD but is something she can do
to gain experience and earn extra money.
The needs assessor raised her speech impairment with her during the
assessment to try and get her to consider having a facilitator to repeat
what she says in a teaching scenario. The student didn't want to have a
facilitator as she doesn't believe or recognise that her speech may be an
issue. The needs assessor has come back to me asking if I have any
alternative ideas and flagging the speech impairment and student's
unawareness of how others understand her as a concern that I should know
about.
There's several issues but I'll try and break it down:
1) Will SFE postgrad DSA fund disability support costs for teaching if it
is not a requirement? I'm thinking not... Has anyone had joy with Access
to Work for this? (I know they should support ANY UK tax payer as I phoned
them up once to ask this on behalf of a friend in 2008)
2) Has anyone any experience or resources of supporting a student with a
severe speech impairment who doesn't seem aware (or wanting to be aware)
of how impaired and unintelligible to others their speech is? Both the
needs assessor and I have tried raising her speech extra tactfully -
perhaps I need to be quite direct? Any dealings I've had with speech
impaired deaf folk up to now have been with folk who have at least 'some
sign' who are acutely aware of their speech, will use terps or creative
ideas involving text to speech software etc.
3) Has anyone supported a student (or non student) with severe speech
impairment who is providing information orally in a professional or
educational context and how they might go about it if a facilitator is not
a desirable option?
I really want to be able to support this student in her PhD including
teaching where possible so any ideas on or off list would be hugely
appreciated.
Many thanks,
Natalya
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