Deaf person studying Chinese

[rmpalpha]

I am currently taking the first-year Mandarin Chinese course sequence at my university. So far, I'm really enjoying learning the Chinese language - I have a couple of questions, though, that arise from my current situation that I'd like your advice on.

I am a deaf person with negligible abilities in speaking and lipreading (in any language, really) - half of the words that my Chinese teacher says look exactly the same to me. So, I'm curious - suppose I decide to travel to a Chinese country. I will probably want to use as much of my Chinese language skills as possible. Unfortunately, the only avenue that I would be able to use to communicate with others is through writing. I don't know how receptive the Chinese would be to writing back and forth as a way of communication, though. My experience with living in the US is that most people are generally willing to write to communicate (with some exceptions) - but writing in English is likely much faster than writing in Chinese.

An issue that I have in my Chinese class right now is that the most dominant method of instruction, by far, is through listening and speaking skills. I can understand how that would be critical for hearing people to learn the language (tones, pronunciation, etc.), but such a teaching method is completely lost on me. Since Chinese characters are learnt through self-study (in my class, anyway), I end up not being able to use what I would need as my principal method of communication very much outside of homework, so I feel that I'm retaining much less grammar/sentence patterns/vocabulary than I could if I could participate in the class normally. Do you have any ideas on what I could do to (a) participate more fully in the class, and/or (B) practice writing in Chinese AND get feedback on whether I'm writing my sentences correctly (that the students are getting from the teacher through oral practice in class)?

Thanks!

[rezaf]

Maybe you should start communicating with Organisations in China that are in charge of teaching deaf people. Maybe they have videos or other stuff that can help you.

[wushijiao]

I don't know how receptive the Chinese would be to writing back and forth as a way of communication, though. My experience with living in the US is that most people are generally willing to write to communicate (with some exceptions) - but writing in English is likely much faster than writing in Chinese.

With electronic devices, it's actually just about as fast and easy to type in Chinese using pinyin.

Good luck!

[Meng Lelan]

rmpalpha,

1. Browse through my posts in the Forums under my forum name Meng Lelan. I'm all over the place but you will see some refer to speechreading, subtitles, etc.

2. I'm sending you a private message.

Thanks to a forum member for notifying me of this thread.

[Shi Tong]

rmpalpha,

This is really interesting..

Do you know any schools who teach Chinese who are teaching reading and writing just as much as listening and speaking skills? The reason I ask is because when I went to 文化大學 in Taiwan, they purposefully taught all skills together, saying that they thought (and I agree) that reading and writing was just as important to learning Chinese as speaking and listening skills.

The reason I agree is simply because, being able to break down sentances and 2 word words gives much more meaning to the language and, IMO, helps memorising of such things:

For example:

电视: Television, these words alone mean "electric/ vision".

电话: Telephone, these words alone mean "electric/ language".

So, this is why I think reading is just as important to Chinese learning.

There are probably other people here who know more about this and can point you in the right direction, such as meng lelan, but I thought I'd just give you a couple of my opinions and thoughts.

[Meng Lelan]

I'm sure the OP welcomes advice from anyone here regardless of hearing level (normal hearing, hearing impaired, deaf, etc). I have more to say but I have to go test some of my deaf students this afternoon.

[renzhe]

Chinese is probably more difficult to lip-read than many other languages, due to the tonal content, which is very important. But it is possible to lip-read it with good success. I don't know how many people there are outside of China who can teach this effectively, though.

When it comes to reading and writing, you'll find that Chinese is a very rewarding language and that you can likely communicate well with people through writing. It is also the part of the Chinese language that's the easiest to learn on your own.

[daofeishi]

Also, from the smattering of Chinese sign language I have been exposed to and briefly started learning when I worked as a volunteer at a 特殊学校, a school for visually/hearing impaired students, the grammar of Mandarin and sign language have a close correspondence. Learning one should facilitate learning the other, if that is of interest to you

I am not sure how common this phenomenon is, but where I was, it was pretty much expected that students would go into service professions like massage or shoe making after graduation. It wasn't difficult to find deaf people outside of the school to try my sign language on, there were usually several of them outside my local mall with shoe shine equipment. They were very adept at lip reading. All their business was done with talking customers, but they communicated in writing. There was no shortage of people talking to them, and I think you'll find that pen-paper conversation will work very well too. There is a large community of hearing impaired in China, and it is a sub culture that I think few foreigners have ventured into, so I wish you all the best with your project.

I'll leave it to Meng Lelan to verify if what I'm saying is right

[imron]

I'm sending you a private message.

If you're answering the questions raised by the OP, you could also reply in thread, that way future deaf learners who come across this will also be able to benefit from your answers.

[Meng Lelan]

If you're answering the questions raised by the OP, you could also reply in thread, that way future deaf learners who come across this will also be able to benefit from your answers.

I'll answer the questions raised by the OP here. Right now I am going to bed after a day of bedlam.

[rmpalpha]

Wow - thank you, everyone, for your responses to my initial post!

Shi Tong: Every Chinese course that I've heard about focuses primarily on oral communication skills (at least, at the first-year level, anyway) - I imagine this is good for hearing people because pronouncing Chinese words with the correct tones and sounds is, from what I've heard, a very challenging skill. In that sense, writing skills fall by the wayside, which doesn't exactly benefit me all that much. I am not aware of any courses that focus on writing skills in class apart from the occasional discussion of pertinent radicals in a lesson's vocabulary (similar to the example you give for 电).

renzhe: I don't personally know of any deaf native Chinese people, but I am skeptical that people are able to speechread Chinese effectively for the following reasons: (1) there is no tonal information that can be acquired from speechreading; (2) there are sound groups that look very similar, if not identical, on the lips such as b/p/m, s/z/c, sh/ch/j/zh, and so on. Deaf people who I know are able to speechread (in English anyway) depend extensively on the context of the conversation to be able to accurately infer what is being said. As has been said in daofeishi's post, deaf people who are in a certain line of work can expect people to say specific words/phrases more often than others, so that makes speechreading a little bit easier. Anyway, I've already said that lipreading is not a skill that I can do well at all in any language that I've learned so far

daofeishi: I'm surprised (and impressed) that you were exposed to, and learned some, Chinese Sign Language - that's very cool! Where did you work?

Meng Lelan: I've done a brief search through the forums using the keyword "deaf", but I'll be sure to browse the posts that you've made. Thanks for sending me a private message - I'm sorry I can't respond to it right now, as I'm a new member to this forum and private messages are disabled for me as far as I can tell.

The issue is not that I have trouble learning how to read and write characters - I just never have any practice actually using them apart from once a week for homework, or exams. Consequently, the characters and grammar are somewhat more difficult for me to remember compared to other people because I receive so little feedback as to whether I'm using either correctly. Hence, my questions

Edited April 3, 2010 at 05:52 AM by imron
merged posts - they weren't lost, just sitting in moderation

[Shi Tong]

Another encouragement for your writing Chinese would be the fact that the Chinese and Taiwanese people already think it's amazing for anyone to speak their language, but they would think it's even more amazing if you can write and read it.. meaning, basically, that you dont get sneered at, like you might do in some countries where they expect you to speak, read and write their language without any problems. So you will get a lot of local interest and encouragment.

One thing is that you probably dont want to become some celebrity (hey, look, this is the foreigner who can write), and everyone to crowd around pestering you.

But you might like that... I dunno!!

[Meng Lelan]

One thing is that you probably dont want to become some celebrity (hey, look, this is the foreigner who can write), and everyone to crowd around pestering you.

That is exactly what you DON'T want to happen to you. Let me tell you how I met my first deaf friends in China. I was strolling in a department store in Beijing. I saw two deaf girls my age walking and signing to each other. I didn't know any Chinese Sign Language and they didn't know any American Sign Language. So I whipped out a notepad and wrote in Chinese characters. Something like will you be my friends??? They wrote sure. By then a crowd of over 100 shoppers surrounded us, trying to see what we were writing. The cops had to come break up the crowd. I am not making this up.

What I really would like to see is some paradigm shift where the Chinese sneer at us non-Chinese who can't write in Chinese. But that's not going to happen.

Oh, where was I? Yes, I have to write a sticky for auditory challenged Chinese learners, but after I go wushu training in Houston this weekend. Got to pack now, bye kids, see you all, uh, maybe Sunday when I write up a new sticky, maybe.

[imron]

as I'm a new member to this forum and private messages are disabled for me as far as I can tell.

They are now enabled.

[rmpalpha]

Thanks, imron, I appreciate it! Sorry about the double post.

Shi Tong: Following Meng Lelan's story, I am not really that interested in attracting attention to myself (I have never, ever seen that kind of thing happen growing up in the US - kind of scary to read that story!). I was just wondering whether written communication was an effective way to communicate with others in Chinese, but I suppose I shouldn't do that in overly public places.

[roddy]

I think it's a perfectly valid option - a foreigner speaking Chinese is as likely to attract a crowd as one writing Chinese. You just need to be aware of what's going on and manage the situation a bit - if a couple of people have stopped stare back until they wander off, or if you're in a shop pick a quiet moment, or pause for a browse if you are getting a bit too much attention. Part and parcel of life here, basically. The less foreigners there are in an area, the more likely you are to get the attention (with the possible exception of tourist spots - while there are loads of foreigners there, the Chinese people have all come in from out of town and will quite happily stare away. They're sightseeing, after all.)

There's an older topic here on lipreading. Plus a book (looks academic rather than practical though).

[Daan]

I was once in a bar in Tainan that employed two deaf bartenders. Patrons ordered their drinks by writing them down on a piece of paper. No one seemed to find it weird when I did the same, and I even had a chat with one of the bar tenders by writing down stuff in my horribly illegible handwriting. It was quite interesting - he even taught me some sign language. Meng Lelan is surely more qualified to address this than I am, but I don't think it is at all weird for deaf people in China or Taiwan to communicate by writing. So don't be discouraged

Good luck with your studies!

[Scoobyqueen]

a couple of people have stopped stare back until they wander off

In this situation I ask them directly if they have a question. That also does the trick.

[Meng Lelan]

Here is the sticky that I promised – Learning Chinese for the Auditory Challenged. This is the sticky for those who consider themselves auditory challenged. I don’t care what your audiogram looks like, whether it’s flat lined, bell shaped, within the speech range curve, below the speech range curve, etc. whether you are amplified with Oticons and Phonaks or implanted with the latest Freedom cochlear impant etc. I don’t care if you are pro-sign language and regularly wear t-shirts emblazoned with “Shut Up and Sign” and “The Deaf Should be Seen Not Heard” or if you are pro-oral and regularly wear t-shirts that proclaim “Let the Deaf Speak for Themselves”. Or if you are like me, you are pro-don’t-care-about-anything-now-leave-me-alone and wear t-shirts that state “ I’m not deaf, I’m ignoring you." This sticky should address most if not all issues pertaining to the choices you will have to make as an auditory challenged student of Chinese.

Here I am including all options that are available to you regardless of your approach to managing your auditory challenges. Anyone that wants to add something can add something in separate posts. I leave it to the forum administrators and moderators to put this up as a sticky because I don’t know what the sticky protocol is.

1. Pinyin. Yes, you need to learn pinyin. You will need to learn the sound associated with each pinyin letter. Not necessarily that you should learn how to perfectly produce the pinyin sound, more so because you will need to learn pinyin to type characters on the computer and look up characters in a dictionary using their pinyin. Your Chinese language teacher should be instructing you how to type pinyin in order to write Chinese characters on the computer, the iPhone, etc. If not, then request this instruction. As an auditory challenged student, you will find pinyin a very powerful tool for connecting with those of normal hearing and making fast progress in your Chinese studies, whether you want all four skills in speaking, listening, reading, and writing or you want to concentrate on reading and writing.

2. Speechreading. Granted, speechreading is not reliable in any language except to my direct experience Hungarian, but that is getting off topic and will not discuss that in depth in here. Speechreading in Chinese is made challenging but not impossible by the tonal nature of the language. Refer to post #16 in which the link to the speechreading thread is provided. If you are truly serious about learning speechreading, you should get familiar with diagrams showing how each sound is formed. Try to get McGraw Hill’s Chinese Pronunciation. The enclosed DVD shows a live speaker pronouncing each sound, but the DVD has technical issues. Look at the Self Taught Course on ChineseHour and check out similar vids of a live speaker saying each sound. I tried to access the entire Self Taught Course but Chinese Hour staff were not extremely helpful to my quest for more information on this course other than I would have to be a paying student to access it. I still would recommend a look though.

3. Learning tones. Granted, tones may pose a challenge for the hearing impaired but it is not impossible with the right resources. It will take a lot of work but it is do-able. If you have some residual hearing, seriously consider FM amplification in order to learn tones. FM amplification should be provided as a free service from the office of disability services on your campus. I learned tones with the help of staff at Beijing School for the Deaf. I remember that in the 1980s, IBM donated software to the School to help student learn to produce tones. There are all different kinds of techniques to help you learn to produce tones. There was talk in here about Quooco, some kind of feedback software that shows where your tone is at (or should be at), but I haven’t seen anything come out of it, yet.

4. Never ever let anyone steer you away from Chinese by saying your hearing impairment will be a problem. It may be a challenge but there are actually hundreds of deaf Chinese who are learning English so you might well be a deaf non-Chinese learning Chinese. You may however still encounter teachers, administrators, course advisors, etc who think that just because a deaf student wants to take Chinese means the world is going to explode any minute from now. Unfortunately I work with these kinds of people all the time in my job and to educate them that the hearing impaired can do anything but hear is quite some task.

5. Isolation. You may or may not feel isolated in your Chinese language classes. You may experience negative reactions from others. For example your Chinese teacher may feel irritated when hearing eyes gravitate to your sign language interpreter because it’s so, well, eye catching. You may even experience mild ridicule as I did when stumbling through the oral class exercises and I found out one of my classmates was counting and documenting the “funny” oral mistakes I was making. You may even start to compare your progress with hearing classmates in all areas and wonder what you are doing in a Chinese class of all places. People may attempt to glorify you, don’t let them do that as it may set you apart and isolate you more. You may feel that people are talking to the interpreter not to you. Request they look at you to talk even though your eyes may be on the interpreter. You may feel isolated in your desire to focus on writing and reading when today’s Chinese classes are focused on speaking and listening especially in the beginning level. Sorry to tell you this but as a Chinese school teacher I can tell you that current teaching strategies recognize that early focus on speaking and listening helps reading and writing, but that may mean that the reading and writing focus ends up being delayed for one or two semesters. I’m not going to get into a discussion of debating those teaching strategies, but I can tell you things get better in second year Chinese. Your hearing classmates will be struggling through those character writing quizzes known as tingxie in second year Chinese, and you don’t have much of a problem because you focused on that area ages ago.

6. Writing. This was a lot easier 20 years ago where everyone was writing like crazy because there was no technology to do the writing for them. The Chinese generally do not mind writing if you want them to write. In fact what the young whippersnappers generally do is whip out their cell phones and type it all out for you. Old folks tend to use paper and pen, or even trace in their palms or even in the sand. Try Lang8 and italki for writing correction. There are actually a number of deaf members who find this a deaf friendly place to practice language skills and meet people. For learning to write characters, I am hearing positive reviews of skritter here. Just visit the threads on learning to write characters under Study Resources and you will be instantly overwhelmed with resources.

7. Chinese Sign Language. Be aware that true authentic Chinese Sign Language has its own grammar just like true authentic American Sign Language has its own grammar. Youtube and Youku have Chinese Sign Language tutorials. Just type in Chinese Sign Language in English or in Chinese when you get into youtube or youku.

8. Language exchange. This is a very hotly discussed topic here and personally I have never felt language exchange has ever helped me once in the 20 plus years I’ve been engaged in Chinese learning, but this is something you will have to decide for yourself. You can choose to do written only language exchange through skype, MSN messenger, etc or you can choose to do language exchange in person or a webcam/microphone if you can speechread and use residual hearing. But read through posts here about language exchange, as many have ended up spending all that time being an English teacher whether they wanted to or not.

9. Prepare to be an attention magnet. Pay very careful attention to what roddy said in his post above. Yes, it was a scary experience to be surrounded by 100 curious shoppers, but I think it is more true of the hearing impaired to attract attention because they may look different especially with a cochlear implant or hearing aids or may be using sign language. If you are in a situation where you are attracting attention, then keep moving, keep walking, keep going.

10. Remember that the hearing impaired approach Chinese language study in many different ways. There is no one right way. Do the way that works for you.

At the risk of sounding like a fortune cookie, I will add that your journey into Chinese language studies will be long and interesting. Keep coming back to the Chinese Forums for information, fun, resources, etc.

Thank you for reading my sticky.

Edited April 4, 2010 at 05:04 PM by Meng Lelan

[Shi Tong]

Meng Lelan,

Nicely done!

You sound like you have, or you might have experience of, more places in China than I have, since I've only ever been to Taiwan (my wife is from there).

Would you say that it's LESS likely to be crowded pointlessly if you go to somewhere where there are more foreigners around? I've found that in Taiwan, if you're speaking Chinese as a foreigner in Taipei, there's a lot less over excitement in relation to a white man (woman) speaking Chinese, whereas, as soon as you arrive somewhere more rural, you're almost a celebrity, even if you hardly speak at all. Personally, I'm not too bothered by the attention, if it's relatively interested and conversational, but I'm probably not the first one to be bored to death by the shouts of "laowai".. or even "meiguoren" (which is even more annoying because I'm English, and though I love Americans, I'd rather they didn't assume).. but it is funny when replying in Chinese and they dont really know where to put themselves.

So, rmpalpha, you might want to consider somewhere more.. err.. used to forigners for your visits, just because they will not be so surprised.

This may include large cities like Beijing and Taipei, but I'm not so sure about mainland China and their attitude, as I stated above, so if anyone could help on this topic?

Thanks!