Speech reading is an effective means of communication for children with hearing impairments. Speech reading helps hearing impaired children in the visual interpretation of the spoken language by other people. Speech reading not only involves focusing on lip movement, but it also involves the observation of other facial expressions and bodily gestures to fully understand the spoken message.
- Speakers should also use visual cues like facial expressions or hand gestures to help hearing impaired children to understand what they are trying to lip read.
- For effective communication it is very important that the environment where the conversation has to take place should be well lit. The light source should not be behind the speaker, rather it should be behind the listener and should fall directly on the speaker’s face so that the speaker’s face is clearly visible.
- The room should be free from any extra noise. Hearing impaired children can observe and understand better in a quiet environment.
- The topic of the conversation should be told in advance to the children with hearing loss. This will help in them better understanding the objective of the conversation which will greatly benefit hearing impaired children in being prepared to listen and interpret what's being said.
- Teacher should not over-exaggerate. Too much loud speech will be difficult for the children to understand. Therefore in a class with hearing impaired children, teachers should speak softly and slowly.
- There should not be any obstacles in front of the speaker. Any moustache, hands over the mouth should be removed during conversation with children with hearing loss.
- Language is another important factor for good speech reading. It is difficult for children to speech read unusual pronunciations or a different language.
- During the conversation, the speaker should look straight instead of looking down or away from the listener.
- Sounds of some letters e,g, p, b and m look the same when speaking; therefore the speech reader must be able to differentiate between these sounds on the basis of other clues.
Therefore, speech reading skills can help hearing impaired children in developing effective communication abilities when done consistently and with specific techniques used to communicate the message and its meaning.
