Abstract

The aim of this study was to find out the effectiveness of the Bilingual approach to learning in the schools of the Hearing Impaired (HI). The Bilingual approach to learning for the HI was introduced in Malawi by the Ministry of Education in January, 2005 as a way of realizing a uniform way of teaching learners with HI. To collect data for the study, questionnaires were administered to twenty five learners with HI of standards seven and eight and twenty two members of staff comprising lecturers and Primary School teachers at Mary View Education Centre for the Learners with HI. During this research, it was revealed that, despite members of staff and the learners being in favour of the Bilingual Approach, members of staff, particularly lecturers did not receive any orientation on the approach. However, through trial and error method, they seem to have mastered it. It was further observed that of the four: Manualist Communication. Auditory-Oral Approach, Total Communication and Bilingualism, the Bilingual approach seems to be better as it takes on board the fact that individuals with HI attain statuses differently thereby, also requiring different approaches for them to acquire the level of education required. In the final analysis, it was shown that through the Bilingual approach learners with HI were able to attain high levels of education. To this end, it was concluded that education attained by the learners with HI through the Bilingual approach was effective as it enabled them to read different types of literature such as newspapers, magazines. novels and other materials and write extracts of their choice. This was a result of the fact that while practitioners of other media of communication for the learners with Hl such as Total Communication believed that speech should be the first and natural language for these individuals, Bilingualists had the opposite view that Sign Language is the first and natural language for one with HI. As such it acts as an aid to the learning of anything else like speech which, in this case, may be taken to be a second language.

More details

School	: Not specified
Issued Date	: 2012

Download full document