velop and use à strategiesö in learning to speak (Foster, 1988, p. 27).
The Justification for Teaching Deaf Children to Speak
One justification for teaching deaf children to speak is the contention that a failure to learn oral language ômay give rise to the development of atypical functional specialization in various areas of cerebral cortexö (Wolff, Kammerer, Gardner, and Thatcher, 1989, p. 19). The development of such atypical functional specialization compounds the situation stemming from the
à relatively high prevalence of causes of deafness that are also potentially injurious to the central nervous system. This contributes to the existence of an unusually high proportion of individuals with varying degrees of neurological dysfunction among the deaf population (Wolff and Harkins, 1986, p. 58).
Ling (1979, p. 211) contend that teaching deaf children to speak is justified bec
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