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Children learn to maximize their residual hearing through the use of hearing aids or cochlear implants, and educational and therapeutic techniques that support development of audition and spoken language.
The goal of the auditory/oral method is to help children develop the spoken language and academic skills they need to be successful in a regular classroom environment and to work and live in a predominately hearing society. To meet that goal, children are often educated, at least for a time, in an intensive language-rich environment with other students with hearing loss.
Some auditory/oral education and therapy programs also have a strong visual component. In other words, there is an emphasis on using visual techniques to teach speech. In some cases, speech (lip) reading skills are targeted as a supplement to hearing. However, because of the vast improvements in hearing technology (hearing aids, cochlear implants, FM systems), there has been movement away from teaching speech reading.
Most auditory-oral educators/therapists focus on developing and strengthening a child’s auditory, speech/ language and pre-academic development as these will be the skills that he or she will rely on most when learning in a regular classroom. |